Standage

Handel's music is never more winsome than when it's written for special occasions, not least operas. Several of the items in this programme are arias, but they aren't sung. Like today's musicals, though not for calculated commercial reasons, some became what we would now term pops, and Handel reworked them as instrumental pieces, so no liberty has been taken here in presenting them in that form. The charm of this music hasn't escaped the notice of others in recording studios, but it has never been more persuasively captured than it is by Collegium Musicum 90. Other recordings exist of the complete operas and some of the individual instrumental items, but Arminio is represented by only one aria; there's nothing run-of-the-mill about the fugal subject of the Overture, or its treatment, and the Minuet is winsome and light of step.

There are many other highly recommendable recordings by Collegium Musicum 90 under Simon Standage on the Chandos early music label, Chaconne. If you’ve heard a reasonable cross-section of the music of Vivaldi and would like to experiment with some of his near-contemporaries, their recording of Alessandro Marcello’s six Violin Concertos, Op.6, known as ‘La Cetra’, together with an extra Concerto in B-flat, would be a good place to start.

Collegium Musicum 90 was founded by Simon Standage and the late Richard Hickox in 1990, and is today a well-established ensemble for the performance of baroque and classical music, with a repertoire ranging from chamber music to large-scale works for choir and orchestra. As an exclusive Chandos artist, the ensemble has recorded more than fifty CDs for the label, which includes nine discs of instrumental music by Telemann.

This is yet another addition to the Collegium Musicum 90's superb series of Telemann recordings. Their tone is suitably mellow, much more attuned to the baroque sensibility than any other period instruments orchestra I can think of. The works here are totally engaging. The chalumeau is a predecessor of the clarinet. It makes a woody, somewhat recorder-like sound, and, on this showing, has a limited amount of versatility.

This is a very good recording of a selection of Vivaldi's "concerti a quattro" - concertos for string orchestra without a solo instrument. Here we have a selection from the vast Vivaldi archive in Turin, selected, as Standage tells us, "on musical and pragmatic grounds with the aim of presenting an attractive cross-section".

Albinoni might be described as a specialist in the medium of the Concerto a cinque, of which he composed 54, published at intervals during almost half his productive life. The first six appeared in his Op 2 (1700), together with six sonatas from which they inherited some structural features, and were followed in 1707 by the 12 of Op 5. They were 'halfway houses' on the road to the violin concerto per se as we know it – and as Vivaldi established it four years later.Virtuoso passages for a solo violin appear only en passant in flanking movements and 'symmetrically' in the Adagios of Nos 3, 6, 9 and 12. Each Concerto is in three-movement form and all the finales are fugal, as they are in the Op 2, though in their simplicity they sound rather like rondos.

The English Concert directed by the great Trevor Pinnock presents these three beautiful concerts of J. S. Bach where we can admire the contrapuntal genius of the great German genius. Excellent execution, great musicality and excellent sound, obviously. Listen to interpretations of Simon Standage on violin, David Reichenberg in oboe and Lisa Beznosiuk in the flute, surround us in the musical depth of these beautiful compositions. A real pleasure.

Except for a couple of concertos recorded by Stanley Weiner a quarter of a century ago, this is the first representation in the catalogue of Rameau’s contemporary, Jacques Aubert. A member of the Vingt-quatre Violons du Roy, he became leader of the Opera orchestra, also frequently appearing as a soloist in the public Concert spirituel series. His unwieldily-titled Suites of 1730 are regarded as antecedents of the French symphony (the preface sanctions performance by a larger body than a trio, justifying the approach here), but both the present works from the set commence with a French overture, continue with half a dozen dance forms, and end in a chaconne whose refrain is interspersed with episodes.

By comparison with the ambitious, sometimes pioneering products of the last musically active decade of his life (1755-1765) much of Telemann's chamber music is conventional in language if not always in form. Nevertheless, we should guard against any assessment which views it as merely fluent. Telemann's chamber suites and cantatas, solo sonatas, trios, quartets and songs almost invariably carry the hallmark of a composer whose understanding of the voices and instruments for which he is writing is both imaginatively practical and technically informed.