Koncz/Preussens Hofmusik - Naudot, L. and F. Couperin, Boismortier, and Bernier, 7 January 2024

Apollosaal, Staatsoper Unter den Linden

Jacques-Christophe Naudot: Flute Concerto in G major, op.17 no.5
Louis Couperin: Pavanne in F-sharp minor
François Couperin: Concert Royal no.4 in E minor
Joseph Bodin de Boismortier: Suite no.4 in A major
Nicolas Bernier: Cantata: Le Caffé

Regina Koncz (soprano)

Thomas Meyer (flute)

Laura Volkwein, Jueyoung Yang (violins)

Otto Tolonen (viola da gamba)

Matthias Wilke (harpsichord/director)

  

Autumn’s Barocktage brought Charpentier’s Médée to the Staatsoper Unter den Linden, conducted by Simon Rattle and directed by Peter Sellars. I was alas in the end unable to go, but as a consolation prize heard this intelligently programmed concert of French Baroque music from soprano Regina Koncz and members of the Staatskapelle Berlin in their Preussens Hofmusik incarnation, directed from the harpsichord by Staatskapelle violist Matthias Wilke. 

Jacques-Christophe Naudot was represented by a flute concerto in G major, a fine introduction to the concert and performance as a whole both in instrumentation and in uniting elements of French and Italian styles. It also showed that, whilst Naudot was unquestionably a ‘flute composer’, he was far from only that. Outer movements, played as skilfully and comprehendingly by the one-to-a-part orchestra – the sole occasion on which we heard both violinists – as by flautist Thomas Meyer led us down a broadly Italianate path, albeit with strong elements of French ‘language’ in melody and harmony. Flute and violin duets delighted as if this were chamber music—which, at least on this occasion, indeed it was. A richly expressive central Adagio revealed Naudot still more to be possessed of an individual voice, with roots in Lully yet not to be reduced to any one particular influence.   

Louis Couperin and Naudot’s friend Joseph Bodin de Boismortier, another ‘flute composer’ though more than that, were both to be heard in works for solo harpsichord, played by Wilke. The grave beauty of the former’s F-sharp minor Pavanne was brought sympathetically to life in all its often surprising harmonic colour. The latter’s A major Suite offered four character pieces, ‘La Veloutée’, ‘L’Indéterminée’, ‘La Frénétique’, and ‘La Brunette’, whose vivid titles might have led the more Romantically inclined to expect greater contrast than was forthcoming. Wilke certainly attended to their particularities, but also lightly imparted a degree of unity to them, again straddling that line of ‘national style’. 

In between came Couperin le Grand: the fourth and final of his first set of Concert royaux, its series of dances broadly alternating the ‘French’ and the ‘Italian’, explicitly so in the third and fourth ‘Courante française’ for spirited harpsichord solo and ‘Courante à l’italienne’ (violin, harpsichord, and gamba, but no flute). The two ‘goûts’ would be reunited in his second set, the Nouveaux concerts, ou les goûts réunis, but here there was a spirit of light, civilised contrast, reminding us what a joy it was to hear eighteenth-century French music played in such enlightened fashion on a mixture of modern and ‘period’ instruments, equally well paced and shaped, without vibrato-Verbot, yet likewise without trace of crashing anachronism. The courtly phrasing of the opening ‘Prélude’, the grace of the ‘Sarabande’, and the infections invitation to the dance of the closing ‘Forlane’, intriguing episode for gamba and harpsichord included: these and more contributed to a suite greater, yet certainly not heavier, than the sum of its parts. 

Nicolas Bernier ‘reunited’ or, perhaps better, united the French and Italian tastes in ‘the other’ coffee cantata, Le Caffé by not dissimilar alternation or, as Jean-Paul C. Montagnier puts it in his New Grove article on the composer, ‘equilibrium’, ‘vigorous recitatives and da capo airs … follow each other freely, while the expressive melody, with few wide intervals or long melismas, is rooted more in the French tradition’. Here the Gallic grace of the instrumental ‘Prélude’ betrayed just a hint of a shadow, but by and large, the mood was (rightly) bright and clear, as was Regina Koncz’s brilliant, idiomatic, and yes, expressive singing. Her invocation of ‘Caffé’ in the second of her airs seemed, by one of those tricks of history that are mere coincidence, to pre-empt Bernier’s more celebrated Thuringian contemporary. And the shameless thrill of the third air’s melismata, all the more startling for their trespass against accustomed style, was as stylishly despatched and unfussily shaded as anything in this lovely concert. It was a fitting thought to repeat it as an encore.

Waterloo Festival (1): Hewitt - Couperin and Brahms, 27 May 2021

St John’s, Waterloo

Couperin: Pièces de clavecin, Book III: 18e Ordre
Brahms: Piano Sonata no.3 in F minor, op.5

Angela Hewitt (piano)  

Images: Ilme Vysniauskaite

Taking as its theme the fifteenth-century English word, ‘respair’, the recovery of hope following a period of despair, the 2021 Waterloo Festival offers much of that desperately sought-after quality, not least the return of Anthony Friend’s Spotlight Chamber Concerts series, so cruelly cut short last December. Twice postponed, a recital by Angela Hewitt, originally conceived as a farewell to Beethoven Year (‘Geh, Hoffnung’) now offered music by Couperin and Brahms to a socially distanced audience of about 150 people. That in itself surely offered grounds for respair.


To the uninitiated, Couperin and Brahms might seem a strange combination. Brahms was of course a crucial figure in nineteenth-century revival of early music. He knew Bach’s cantatas intimately; it would be difficult to overstate the importance of Bach’s music for his own. Handel loomed large too: Brahms provided written out continuo parts (on piano) for an entire volume of Handel’s Italian duets and trios, gave the Vienna premiere of Saul in 1873, and the German Requiem speaks for itself. Brahms’s work with older German masters such as Isaac, Schütz, and Buxtehude likewise informed both concert life and his own writing. Brahms’s political nationalism—whatever some may tell you, far less tenuous than Wagner’s—notwithstanding, his musical inclinations were more generous. Advocacy for the keyboard music of Couperin, both as pianist and as ‘editor’ (it seems Friedrich Chrysander did much of the hard work in Brahms’s name), was, if more surprising, no less genuine. Clara Schumann declared herself baffled by Brahms’s interest in something that was ‘really of little interest musically’, yet Elaine Kelly makes a persuasive case for influence on some of Brahms’s later piano music. The Third Piano Sonata does not, of course, fall into that category. And whilst it would doubtless be fascinating to hear an attempted recreation, or at least reimagination, of Brahms’s performing style for Couperin, this was not attempted here. Nor, however, was this one of those perverse attempts to have the piano sound like the harpsichord. (Clue: it never will. If you want the harpsichord, play or listen to the harpsichord.)


Here we heard the 1722 eighteenth ordre, finally balanced between F major and minor—and thus preparing the way for the tonality of Brahms’s sonata. The opening allemande, ‘La Verneüil’ spoke with an occluded freedom very much of our moment. In Hewitt’s hands, it rightly took its time, but it (or rather she) knew where it was heading: respair, one might say. ‘La Verneüilléte’, presumably presenting the daughter of the previously evoked Duke of Bourbon, offered a more wilful obstinacy—make of that what you will—born of, yet extending beyond, its courtly idiom. In the rich melancholy of ‘Sœur Monique’, the acoustic vibration of Couperin’s ornaments in Francis Bedford’s church, proved part and parcel of its magic. Indeed as so often, ‘ornaments’ seemed quite the wrong word. ‘Le turbulent’, bright and busy, and the necessary contrast of ‘L’atendrissante’, all the more lugubrious on the piano, led to a delightful, dexterous musical box of a performance for the celebrated ‘Le tic-toc-choc’. There was finally an almost childlike delight to be had in the boisterous obstinacy, allied to that of ‘La Verneüilléte’, yet unquestionably different in character, in ‘Le gaillard-boiteux’.


Hand on heart, I am yet to be won over by any of Brahms’s three piano sonatas, all of them early works. Never say never, though, and it is quite possible that this performance will have edged me a little closer. There was no denying the captivating quality to the first movement’s contrast: tumultuous opening, soon scaled down to prophetic half-lights—far from solely the province of the composer’s late years—in a dialectic of tragic virtuosity. Hewitt captured well the Classicism with which the young composer already distinguished himself from Schumann: more than mere framing, though certainly that too. The ‘Andante espressivo’, to my ears more ingratiating, was sung without sentimentality and with clear direction, reflexively exulting in its material possibilities. If the Scherzo is giant, it is not elephantine; it sounded as serious, yet not so grim, as Chopin’s scherzi, in a reading plentiful in chiaroscuro. We heard more of the notes than there is any reasonable ground to expect. The pathos of a young Romantic already somewhat out of his time was readily, winningly apparent in the Intermezzo. The finale showed debts to Beethoven and Schumann if not settled then at least recognised and addressed.

For like so much else right now, they offer but a starting point, the future more uncertain than ever. In that spirit, Hewitt’s encore reignited our immanent sense of respair. Mary Howe’s transcription of Bach’s ‘Sheep may safely graze’ proved, perhaps inevitably, the most immediately moving music of all. Possessed both of dignity and of a freedom that comes of abiding acquaintance, it felt like meeting an old friend in fine new clothes. Where Bach remains, all is not lost.

Munich Opera Festival (4) - Lefilliâtre/Heumann/Jacobs, Music from the Court of Louis XIV, 25 July 2016

Klosterkirche St Anna im Lehel, Munich

Etienne Moulinié – Si mes soupirs sont indiscrets; Bien que l’Amour; O che gioia

Charles Hurel – Prélude
Nicolas Hotman – Allemande
Pierre Corneille – Psyché: ‘A peine je vous vois’
Michel Lambert – Ombre de mon amant; Vos mépris chaque jour
Sieur de Sainte-Colombe – Les Couplets
Sébastien le Camus – Laissez durer la nuit; Ah! Fuyons ce dangereux séjour; Amour, cruel Amour
Michel Lambert – Rochers, vous êtes sourds
Robert de Visée – Prélude; La Mascarade: Rondeau; Chaconne
Jean de La Fontaine – Fables, Livre XII, 14: ‘L’Amour et la Folie’
Charpentier – Profitez du printemps; Celle qui fait tout mon tourment; Au bord d’une fontaine; Sans frayeur dans de bois
Marin Marais – Pièces de viole, 3^ème livre: Prélude and Grand ballet
Couperin – Zéphire, modère en ces lieux

Claire Lefilliâtre (soprano)

Friederike Heumann (viola da gamba)

Fred Jacobs (theorbo)

Klosterkirche St Anna, 1727-33

In many respects, this second ‘Festspiel-Barockkonzert’  made for an intriguing pendant to the previous night’s premiere of Les Indes galantes. All of the music was earlier than Rameau’s opéra-ballet, some of that in the first half – the programme was broadly but not pedantically chronological – considerably earlier. Music from the court of Louis XIV covers, after all, a good number of years, the king having reigned between 1643 and 1715. The works by Marais and Couperin at the close were probably the latest, both dated 1711, four years before Louis's death. Rather to my surprise, although not without exception, it was the first half that proved more compelling as a performance to me. Perhaps that was partly a matter of having tired a little; although this repertory certainly interests me, I can lay no claim to great expertise. One has to listen intently to appreciate its subtleties and its variety, just as one does with, say, the music of Luigi Nono. Maybe, then, I am – perhaps unusually - more accustomed to listening to Nono.

For there was certainly variety in the programming, within its chronological and courtly framework. Its French title – ‘Au bord d’une fontaine – Airs et Brunettes’ – alluded nicely not only to one of the Charpentier works and implicitly to Versailles itself, but also to the celebrated 1721 collection of songs arranged for flute by Jacques Hotteterre, ‘Airs et brunettes a deux et trois dessus pour les flutes traversieres tirez des meilleurs autheurs, anciens et modernes, ensembles les airs de Mrs. Lambert, Lully, De Bousset, &c les plus convenables a la flute traversiere seule, ornez d'agremens par Mr. Hotteterre Ie Romain et recueillis par M. ++++.’ And so, rather than arrangements, we heard ‘originals’, mostly vocal, with Claire Lefilliâtre as soprano, but with instrumental interludes, from viola de gamba (Friederike Heumann), theorbo (Fred Jacobs), and the two instruments in concert. We also heard a couple of recitations, Lefilliâtre reading from Corneille and La Fontaine. 

What I think I missed most of all, especially during the second half, was something more outgoing in Lefilliâtre’s vocal performances. Now there is much to be gained from intimacy, which I valued greatly in the vocal music of Etienne Moulinié and Michel Lambert in particular, and not all of this music, indeed not much of it, is ‘operatic’, whether in a seventeenth- or a more modern sense. By the same token, however, there were times when, despite trying to listen as I could, I missed a greater sense of variation both within and between pieces.

The Italianate style of some of the first-half performances – more than once, I thought of Cavalli – initially surprised me, until I reflected on Cavalli’s own Ercole armante, commissioned by Mazarin for the 1662 wedding of Louis to Marie-Thérèse. As the harpsichordist Luke Green reminded me afterwards, the roots go back further, however: to the influence of Marie de Medici. Such tendencies are not absent, of course, even in Charpentier and Couperin; not only did I miss them being brought to the vocal foreground more strongly, however; I missed much of what made those composers different, more modern. Their music looks forward to Rameau as well as back to the earlier years of Louis’s reign. A further oddity was the inconsistency in Lefilliâtre’s ‘historical’ pronunciation, whether in the declamatory Corneille or the vocal items. I have no particularly strong feelings either way about the practice as such, whether in my own language or another, but it was unclear to me why some word endings should be pronounced and others not. Details matter in most music, but they certainly do here. Diction and intonation could sometimes be a little wayward too.

                                                                                                            

There was, though, a moving sincerity to Lefilliâtre’s performances at their best – enhanced for me by the warmth of the church acoustic, although others . Tales of love and death – are they not often one and the same? – drew one in. So too, very much, did not only the ‘accompaniments’ but the instrumental items. Heumann’s gamba playing proved her not only mistress of her instrument but above all a deeply sensitive musician, responding to it just as a fine pianist would to Chopin. The pieces from Marais’s Pièces de viole sounded not only as justly acclaimed summits of this still little-known (at least beyond certain circles) repertory, but as instrumental music fully fit to hold its own with more celebrated successors. Likewise Jacobs’s theorbo playing, pulse always clear, and for that reason capable of meaningful rather than arbitrary modification. I do not think I had heard the music of Robert de Visée before; it emerged in Jacobs’s hands as something clearly worthy of further exploration. And that, whatever certain reservations regarding vocal performances, is surely the point.  

Walker/Esfahani - Couperin, Quantz, Benda, Duphly, Rameau, and Philidor, 24 June 2016

Wigmore Hall

Couperin – Concert royal no.4 in E minor

Quantz – Two Capriccii
Franz Benda – Flute Sonata in E minor
Rameau – Pièces de clavecin en concerts: ‘Le Forqueray’
Jacques Duphly – Troisième livre de pièces de clavecin: ‘Le Forqueray’
Pierre Danican Philidor – Suite in E minor, op.1 no.5

Adam Walker (flute)

Mahan Esfahani (harpsichord)

 

This was my first visit to the Wigmore Hall’s series of late (10 p.m.) Friday evening concerts; I am sure that it will not be my last. It is a wonderfully civilised time to hear music, and these were wonderfully civilised performances of wonderfully civilised music. Adam Walker and Mahan Esfahani left one wanting more – which is just as it should be.

 

The fourth of Couperin’s Concert royaux made for an arresting and varied opening work. Its Prélude offered impetus and leisure; what could be more Versailles-like? Harmonies and melodies alike proved generative, but above all juste. The Allemande proved a playful response (even, I am attempted to suggest, quasi-liturgically and with an ear to the Boulezian future, a playful répons). Yet, as one listened, many of the same qualities as those heard in the preceding dance were revealed. The first Courante likewise presented continued affinity and difference: very much the trick in a Baroque Suite (so very different from the world of sonata form). In that ‘French’ dance, and in its ‘Italian’ counterpart, variegation was very much the thing. Character without exaggeration was to be heard and experienced; we were made, or perhaps better, gently yet firmly led, to listen. Dynamic contrasts, terraced and otherwise, were always meaningful, always tending towards musical explication. The Sarabande, graceful, but certainly not in a merely generic way, had me visualise knowing glances between dancing partners. A keen Rigaudon and a Forlane (opening with Esfahani tapping the rhythm on the case of the harpsichord) of impeccable rhythmic, and thus melodic, impetus proved both charming and exploratory.

 

Two Quantz Capriccii for solo flute followed. Walker truly transformed what can easily sound like mere studies – in a way, that is precisely what they are – into music, beautifully phrased and shaped. Esfahani joined him once again for Franz Benda’s E minor Sonata (published in 1756). Again, juste was the word that came to mind in the first movement, ‘Largo, mà un poco andante’: not just in mood, not just concerning tempo, but also with respect to its status as chamber music in the truest rather than just the default sense. The second movement, ‘Arioso, un poco allegro’ proved both quickened and quickening. It was absorbing to follow its twists and turns, our musicians the surest of guides. More than that, it was fun. Rhythm and harmony likewise worked together in the final ‘Presto’, goading each other to the conclusion.

 

Esfahani had the stage to himself for two ‘Le Forqueray’ pieces, the first by Rameau, the second by Jacques Duphly. In the former, rhetoric ‘spoke’, without the exaggeration sometimes marring performances of such music as music. Rather to my surprise, although I greatly enjoyed the busy quality of that piece, I found that Duphly’s perhaps went deeper. Or at least its mood was more thoughtful (the piece, that is, for both performances were excellent). Rubato was well judged: enhancing, enticing.

 

Pierre Danican Philidor’s E minor Suite concluded proceedings. The variety of flute colours summoned up by Walker from his instrument was not the least of the joys of the Prélude. Likewise the colours from Esfahani’s harpsichord. The players took their time, and the performance was all the better for it. Much the same might be said of the ensuing Allemande, although its mood and its mode of eloquence were, of course, quite different. The Sarabande took my mind back to that of Couperin, as much on account of subtle difference as kinship. The give and take between musicians ensured considerable variety, without sacrifice to a strong sense of the whole. The final Gigue did just what a Gigue should. Far less hard-driven than one too all often hears, this was a musical delight to conclude an evening of similar yet different delights.

 

Esfahani - Couperin, J.S. Bach, C.P.E. Bach, G.A. Benda, Takemitsu, 15 July 2014

 

Wigmore Hall

Couperin – Quatrième livre de pièces de clavecin: 26^th ordre

Bach – The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book I: Preludes and Fugues in D minor, BWV 851; C-sharp minor, BWV 849; B major, BWV 868

Toccata in F-sharp minor, BWV 910

C.P.E. Bach – Sonata in B-flat major, Wq. 48 no.2

Georg Anton Benda – Sonata no.4 in F major

Takemitsu – Rain Dreaming

C.P.E. Bach – Sonata in F-sharp minor, Wq. 52 no.4

Mahan Esfahani (harpsichord)

 

This was a splendid recital, my only (minor) reservations reserved for a couple of the pieces, certainly not for Mahan Esfahani’s performances of them. No such reservations were felt, naturally, for a first half of works by Couperin, J.S. and C.P.E. Bach. The 26^th ordre from Couperin’s Fourth Book was no warm-up, Esfahani showing himself immediately at ease, with a lilting rubato that emerged from within the music – and, to a certain extent, the instrument too – rather than being applied to it. This first piece, ‘La Convalescente’, and the subsequent movements were all well characterised, without the slightest danger of falling into the all-too-precious caricatures which bedevil so much present-day Baroque performance. The expressivity of spread chords was a case in point; so was the sense of dramatic, even declamatory, unfolding, reminding us that we were not necessarily worlds away from the Classical drama of Corneille and Racine. The Gavotte and ‘La Sophie’ were guided by a propulsive, yet never restrictive, sense of rhythm; whatever the tempo, there was space to breath. ‘L’Epineuse’ seemed to afford a glimpse of the vocal Couperin, perhaps even of what an opera from his pen might have been, not that that precluded harmonic, developmental ‘involvement’ which was very much of the keyboard world. The final piece, ‘La Pantomime’, benefited from a harmonic grounding that took one back to a time when musicians just happened to be harpsichordists, rather than having invented an aggressive, ‘Early Music’, alleged revanchism; more than once, I thought of George Malcolm.

 

Three Preludes and Fugues from Book One of the 48 followed. The D minor Prelude was very much a ‘prelude’ to what was to come, a fugue that danced without didacticism. A deeper, darker hue characterised the C-sharp minor Prelude, though it was yet recognisably of the same ilk. The stile antico opening to its fugue looked bark to a golden age of polyphony, not in a dreary quasi-archaeological sense, but as sustenance and, crucially, as inspiration. It was expressive and developmental, in keeping with, but not restricted by, the ‘Baroque’ period to which Bach stands in a far more complicated relationship than many care to realise. This was the Bach who inspired Mozart. A bright contrast of tonality and general mood came with the B major Prelude and Fugue, played with good humour, even a sense of fun. The F-sharp minor Toccata was rightly more exuberant, less innig, drawing upon earlier keyboard masters and their sense of Affekt and rhetoric. In a flexible account, the proximity to Bach’s early organ works was announced, the whole unfolding with great dramatic flair.

 

C.P.E. Bach offered a very different voice, already hinting at some of the keyboard music of Haydn and even Mozart, though the rhetoric is undeniably personal. In the B-flat Sonata, composer and performer offered a kaleidoscope of expression utterly distinct from Haydn’s thematic single-mindedness. Registration was perhaps especially telling during the slow movement, in which we heard an almost operatic dialogue at times. The finale was refreshingly bright and high-spirited. We returned to Emanuel Bach at the end. The opening flourish of the F-sharp minor Sonata was extrovert yet controlled: very German! Wrenching of mood was almost violent; ‘strangeness’ was neither smoothed out nor unduly exaggerated. The slow movement exhibited great metrical freedom, following an almost stream-of-consciousness approach: as, after all, does the score. Twists and turns, both melodic and harmonic, were savoured. The finale offered a nice contrast, emerging almost as an extended fantasia: part-way on the road to Mozart? Its conclusion came properly as a surprise.

 

Between the two C.P.E. Bach sonatas came a sonata by Georg Anton Benda and Takemitsu’s Rain Dreaming. I am not sure that I can quite share Esfahani’s enthusiasm for Benda, at least on the basis of this piece, but there could be little doubt that he proved an able advocate. Benda offered a more overtly ‘Classical’ voice, though not without audible connection to the world of Emanuel Bach. The first movement of the sonata benefited from an excellent performative balance between stateliness and exuberance, but I missed a real sense of development. Perhaps, as Esfahani suggested in his note, that is an æsthetic choice on the composer’s part; perhaps, but is it a good choice? The slow movement was, however, nicely contrasted, and more consistent as a compositional whole, whilst the finale’s byways charmed rather than perplexed.

 

As in the case of other works I have heard by Takemitsu, I was not entirely convinced of the substance of Rain Dreaming. Nevertheless, in this context, and whilst it may be a stretch to call the piece toccata-like, or imbued with a Neue Empfindsamkeit, there did seem to be a post-C.P.E. Bach or even post-Benda quality to the writing: testimony to canny programming. It was attractive enough as contrast, if hardly Ligeti, let alone Bach. Messiaenesque figuration was for me the most intriguing feature. A first encore of the Rameau Gavotte which Klemperer orchestrated whetted the appetite for Esfahani’s forthcoming release later this year of the composer’s complete keyboard works.

 

 

Pike/Arensky CO/Kunhardt - Ravel, Couperin, and Beethoven, 7 May 2013

Queen Elizabeth Hall

 

Ravel – Le Tombeau de Couperin
Couperin – Concerts royaux (excerpts)
Beethoven – Violin Concerto in D major, op.61

Jennifer Pike (violin)

Arensky Chamber Orchestra

William Kunhardt (conductor)

 

Matthew Sharp (actor)

Simon Gethin Thomas (lighting)

 

It is an obvious thing to do, or at least one might hope it would be, to perform Ravel’s Tombeau de Couperin with music from Couperin’s Concerts royaux; the problem is that to do so nowadays is to take on the ‘authenticity’ Taliban, a task which many, in the teeth of such vociferous hostility, have decided is no longer worth it. They are wrong, yet one can understand the reasons for their wariness. After all, even Pierre Boulez, not a stranger to controversy, once ruefully remarked, concerning Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos, ‘... even as I was making my way forward, until about 1978, the specialists were simultaneously taking over. They were starting to say, “If they’re not played in the true baroque manner, with baroque instruments, it’s useless to play them any other way.” Then one isn’t going to play them at all.’ One would have thought it axiomatic that, in Boulez’s words, ‘A musician approaching an eighteenth-century work after playing something from the twentieth would have a much broader view than these eighteenth-century specialists who end up locking themselves in an antique armoire.’ Alas it has taken longer than anyone, perhaps even Adorno, might have feared to escape the armoire, a state of affairs compounded by the culture industry’s compartmentalisation of ‘period’ music as something akin to so-called ‘costume drama’. Three cheers, then, to the Arensky Chamber Orchestra, already having made quite a name for itself in terms of bold programming and bold presentation, for defying the armoire fatwas! 

 

Anyway, irrespective of inclement performing conditions, the concert’s the thing. Interspersing movements from the first, third, and fourth Concerts royaux with those from Le Tombeau de Couperin proved an inspired choice. The ‘Prélude’ was swift, fleeting even, perhaps a reflection of the relatively small forces (strings 6.5.4.4.2) but perhaps not. The sharp attack and unanimity I have noted on previous occasions again proved a hallmark of the ACO’s excellent ensemble. William Kunhardt conducted without the score (though he would use one for Beethoven.) Urgency was perhaps underlined by the players’ standing to play (save for cellos and basses). The ‘Prélude’ from the Third Couperin suite was taken, as indeed were all the Couperin excerpts, with darkened lighting, focused upon the soloists, a chamber rather than orchestral approach having been decided upon. It was a good choice to follow the Ravel, not least on account of the continuity of oboe-playing (here, beguilingly played by Johnny Roberts). Strings, who had definitely been ‘accompanying’, came into their own in the ensuing ‘Forlane’ from the fourth Concert royal. Rhythms were nicely turned throughout. Ravel’s ‘Forlane’ was characterised by freshness, by a spring in its step, rhythmic alertness apparently ‘carried over’ from its Couperin predecessor. The ‘Menuet’ was more relaxed, indeed affectionate, Kunhardt differentiating it nicely from the previous dance. Harmonic echoes of, for instance, the Pavane pour une infante défunte were allowed to speak; rubato was well judged. There was a true sense of a world – ‘real’ or ‘imaginary’ – lost. The ‘Menuet en trio’ from Couperin’s first suite had a good degree of give-and-take between parts; violin, flute, and cello were equal partners in a graceful reading. Strings again played alone in the ‘Rigaudon’ from the fourth: a catchy reading, somewhat akin to courtlier Purcell, with especially fine articulation from Charlotte Maclet’s violin. Ravel’s own ‘Rigaudon’ perhaps suffered a little from less-than-ideal balance, the brass somewhat dominating the small orchestra. Otherwise, it was a lively account, with welcome hints of greater languor in the central section.

 

Beethoven’s Violin Concerto followed the interval: a contrast rather than a connection, but no less welcome for that. Actor Matthew Sharp, dressed as Beethoven, seated at a desk, read the ever-moving Heiligenstadt Testament (in translation), after which Jennifer Pike, a former BBC Young Musician of the Year, joined the orchestra onstage. Wind instruments were naturally more prominent in a small orchestral performance than they would have been with a full symphony orchestra, and very good they were too. But there was, from the outset, a febrile intensity to the string playing too. Kunhardt led a relatively swift, but never hard-driven, performance of the first movement, Pike proving a bright- and clean-toned soloist, quite ready to yield where necessary. Ensemble was again excellent throughout. If the soloist’s intonation were not always perfect, nor were any such shortcomings other than minor. Certainly, taken as a whole there was a proper sense of the goodness of composer and music, as heard in the Testament, and anyone who does not regard Beethoven’s music as concerned with ethics has no business performing it. Small string forces emphasised the kinship of the slow movement with chamber music, poised in this case not so very far away from the Beethoven of the string quartets, whilst woodwind offered a quickening sense of the world of the outdoor serenade. Pike’s silvery tone brought the music closer to Mendelssohn than one often hears. The transition to the finale was very well handled by conductor and orchestra alike; that movement brought with it more than a faint echo of the Mozartian ‘hunting’ finale, more ebullient than often, and rather winningly so. Horns and other wind unquestionably sounded in their element.

Angela Hewitt piano recital, 13 June 2009

Wigmore Hall

Rameau – Pièces de clavecin (selection)
Dukas – Variations on a theme by Rameau
Couperin – ‘Sixième ordre’ from Pièces de clavecin, Book II
Ravel – Le tombeau de Couperin

We live in curious times, musically speaking. French Baroque keyboard music is undergoing a mini-revival of interest on the piano, such repertoire, Marcelle Meyer notwithstanding, never quite having been considered mainstream or even acceptable before. Meanwhile, the days when Bach and Handel were part of the symphonic and mainstream choral repertoire – again, the French Baroque never really was – seem more distant than ever. Almost sixty years ago, Theodor Adorno could see the way the wind was blowing, lamenting in his brilliant essay, Bach defended against his devotees, that the sole concern of Bach’s ‘devotees’ – soon to become the fully-fledged authenticke Taliban – was to ensure that ‘no inauthentic dynamics, no modifications of tempo, no excessively large choirs and orchestra’ should be employed. Palpable was the potential fury, ‘lest any more humane impulse’ should become audible. Things could only get worse – with the exception, that is of the piano. Pianists never agreed to relinquish Bach, of course, yet, even a few years ago, one would have been hard put to foresee that wonderful artists as eminent as Alexandre Tharaud and Angela Hewitt would be championing Rameau and Couperin. The clattering harpsichord retains the lion’s share of performances; yet, not only to reclaim lost territory, but to mount the occasional, though repeated incursion such as this, represents a remarkable turn of events.

One obvious way to programme such music is with later French piano music, especially that avowedly inspired by the clavecinists. Hewitt took this path, with results amply justifying the means. My reservations, such as they were, tended to lie with the later repertoire, in which I was not so convinced as I have been upon hearing, say, Tharaud in similar circumstances. Still, an enthusiastic audience – surely including a good number of Hewitt followers – seemed to respond most warmly of all to her Ravel, so mine was perhaps a minority opinion.

Opening the menu was a Rameau selection. From the Suite in D major we heard Le lardon and La joyeuse. Hewitt’s ever-sensitive touch seemed perfectly attuned to the delicacy required from the French baroque, never neglecting the pianistic opportunities afforded by the modern instrument. She proved flexible of rhythm and projected an undeniably ‘French’ quality to her performances. Likewise in the feminine charm of the Fanfarinette from the Suite in A minor and the succeeding selection of four pieces from the Suite in G minor. A nice contrast was drawn between the opening, gentle melancholy of Les triolets and the forthrightness of the celebrated piece, Les sauvages, subsequently incorporated in the opera-ballet, Les indes galantes. Les sauvages showcased Hewitt’s pianistic staccato and marcato, without unwarranted excursions into Gouldian territory (not that I am aware of her fellow Canadian ever performing French Baroque music). Repose and restlessness were held in perfect balance in the startling L’enharmonique, which does what it says on the tin. Telling rubato aided and abetted the composer’s chromaticism. The final piece, L’egyptienne employed the full panoply of the piano’s resources. In its almost Vivaldian – yet more interesting – drama, sequences and all, we heard an apt conclusion to this Rameau selection.

Paul Dukas’s 1902 Variations, interlude, and finale on a theme by Rameau followed, the theme being Le lardon, heard at the opening of the recital. The variations immediately plunge us into late-Romantic territory, the first almost Reger-like in harmony and texture. Yet there remained hints of the Baroque, pointed to in Hewitt’s underlining of dotted rhythms. I am not entirely sure that Dukas’s work adds up to more than the some of its parts, but it is an interesting journey, worth making occasionally. (In her programme notes, Hewitt related that she first learned the piece thirty years ago, when ‘some judges in international competitions couldn’t understand why I bothered!’) The fifth variation sounded somewhere between Franck and Busoni, whose parallel spirit surfaced from time to time throughout the work. Lisztian harmonies were projected to full effect in the sixth, followed by an admirably skittish account of the seventh, preparing the way for a big Romantic tone in the subsequent variation. In the final, eleventh variation, we heard a great build up of such tone, followed by an ominous subsiding into the interlude, and then the compendious finale. If a little distended, it was fun to hear hints – and more than hints – of what had gone before, with something of Franck (Debussy’s ‘modulating machine) and even the odd Debussyan shift.

The Couperin ordre received an alert, enlightening performance, its opening piece, Les Moissonneurs, presenting an immediate sense of gentle rhythm, nevertheless strongly projected: delicate, yet never effete. Les Langueurs-Tendres was languorous, as the title would suggest, without lacking in forward purpose. There followed Le Gazoüillement and Le Bersan, the former marvelously elegant, its chirping evoking mental images of a Watteau scene. Les Baricades Mistérieuses – what a wonderful title! – benefited from a nice swing, judicious rubato, and clear textures in a potentially muddy register. Les Bergeries sounded aptly pastoral, Hewitt evincing typical care for detail, yet pointing out the wood as well as the trees. I found La Commére somewhat strident, though perhaps it should be, in its presentation of a gossip. And the closing piece, Le Moucheron, once again benefited from an excellent sense of rhythm.

Ravel’s Le tombeau de Couperin was the masterpiece on the programme. Much of Hewitt’s performance was very good, but I sometimes found her a little lacking in style, especially when compared with her Baroque performances. The Prélude was forthright, resolutely unsentimental, but could perhaps have sounded a little more delicate. I suspect that the pianist’s chosen Fazioli instrument lessened the chance of pastel shades. Ravel’s part-writing was splendidly handled in the Fugue, followed by an excellent account of the Forlane. Here, Hewitt’s rhythmic sense was spot-on from the outset; we heard a true dance, elegant too, with links to Couperin, especially in the composer’s ornamentation, readily to be heard. It is difficult, though far from impossible, not to sound a little heavy-handed in the Rigaudon. Hewitt did not entirely succeed, though there was a lively and once again forthright character to her performance. The Menuet was startling slow, Romantic in both tempo and flexibility. Rhythms were nicely twisted and nostalgia pervaded without overwhelming. Old France was beautifully and movingly evoked; this is, after all, Ravel’s memorial to friends who had fallen on the battlefield. I was especially taken by the powerful climax in the minor-mode section. More than a hint of Liszt here prepared us for the pyrotechnics of the concluding Toccata. Hewitt sounded every inch the virtuoso here. She was generally elegant, though at times she could err a little towards the heavy-handed. The ‘French’ sound and style pervading her Rameau and Couperin were intermittently present in her Ravel, then; much the same could be said of the encore, Debussy’s Clair de Lune. Ultimately, however, this was a splendid opportunity to hear French Baroque music, not only on the piano, but in such enlightening company.