Recueil Des Coursvolume 44 (1933 Ii)

Jordi Savall's exemplary performance of Handel's Water Music and Music for the Royal Fireworks is among the finest available on disc: refined and precise, but very big, with blood-stirring grandeur. This is just the kind of extroverted, rousing presentation that best highlights the music's open-air ceremonial function. Savall's Le Concert des Nations is essentially a chamber orchestra with double or triple winds, but the sound he elicits from the group is majestic and surprisingly powerful. The playing is crisp and the rhythmic articulation bracing, but the sound is never brash. In fact, more often than not it is seductively sensual, a heady integration of precision and supple, shapely phrasing. Handel left no authoritative edition of the score of Water Music and it has traditionally been divided into three suites, but Savall reorders the material into two suites, a decision that makes more sense in terms of key relationships and that sounds entirely satisfying.

'It would be difficult to find a simpler and more poignant subject', Massenet remarked during the composition of Ariane, a vast score in five acts premiered at the Paris Opera in October 1906. The libretto by Catulle Mendes is part ancient drama, part symbolist poem, and sets Phaedra and Ariadne, two sisters in love with Theseus, in violent conflict with each other. This epic work does not shrink from relating the combat against the Minotaur, from showing a ship tossed by the raging billows, nor even from transporting the audience to the Underworld where Persephone reigns. Despite its flamboyant orchestration, its grandiose scenography and its triumphant premiere, Ariane remains one of the few Massenet operas never recorded until now. The young Egyptian soprano Amina Edris takes the title role with ardour and passion, surrounded by a cast well versed in the specificities of the French style. The Bavarian Radio Chorus provides dedicated support in the epic scenes, under the baton of Laurent Campellone, a great champion of Massenet.

FonoForum 05 / 09: »Auf einem außerordentlich klangschönen Cembalo von Jean-Henry Hemsch (1751) trägt Frédérick Haas die Suiten 1 und 5 aus dem ersten sowie die Suiten 6, 7 und 8 aus dem zweiten Buch von François Couperin vor. Sehr gut gelingen ihm dabei die eleganten, geschmeidig inegalen Seiten dieser anspruchsvollen Musik, etwa in den berühmten ›Baricades mistérieux‹ oder den gleich darauf folgenden ›Bergeries‹.«

Renaissance composers frequently based sacred works on the melodies of secular songs, which were typically placed in the tenor part as a cantus firmus. The mixing of such elements, as in Josquin's Missa Di dadi and the Missa Une mousse de Biscaye, which were based respectively on the chansons N'aray je jamais mieulx and Une mousse de Biscaye, was common practice in the 15th century. However, Josquin also used images of dice in the tenor part of the Missa Di dadi, which have been interpreted as symbols representing time ratios, indicating the length of notes relative to the other three voices.

Marais's Alcione is the last great 'tragedy' in music from the reign of Louis XIV. It is a total spectacle at the crossroads of the 17th and 18th centuries, from which it takes the mythological source, it's praise of the sovereign's glory and the literary requirement to combine choreography and stage movements. Jordi Savall rediscovered this work and brought it back to life for the first stage production in Paris since 1771.

The graphics for this Tallis Scholars release mention scholarly disagreement over the Missa Mater Patris, long attributed to Josquin but "recently shown to be by the little-known Noel Bauldeweyn," writes director Peter Phillips. "Or is it?" he adds. He sketches out the controversy, pointing out that the mass does not resemble any of Josquin's other compositions in the genre; he doesn't answer his question. However, you might take the album as a rejoinder to those questioning the authenticity of the mass. Its possible removal from the Josquin canon rests entirely on this musical evidence, so Phillips is entitled to adduce musical evidence of his own: the genuine Bauldeweyn mass included here sounds nothing like Josquin but is basically a work in 15th century style with a bit of imitative counterpoint thrown in.

For this new recording of Vivaldi's Four Seasons, Jordi Savall conducts an all-female orchestra, as Vivaldi did in his time at the Ospedale della Pieta in Venice. The soloist Alfia Bakieva is a violinist of Tatar origin currently living in Salzburg, Austria. She is a multi-instrumentalist, particularly in the field of folk music, playing violin, folk fiddle, kyl- kobiz, ghizzhak and similar instruments. She studied Baroque violin with Enrico Onofri (Palermo Conservatory) and Hiro Kurosaki (Mozarteum University), focusing on historically informed performance practices in the Renaissance, Baroque, Classical and Romantic repertoires.