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Gramophone Awards Shortlist 2016 Click on a CD cover to buy or stream from qobuz.com Baroque Instrumental JS Bach ‘Bach in Montecassino’ Chorale Preludes – Allein Gott in der Hoh sei Ehr, BWV675; Aus tiefer Not schrei ich zu dir, BWV687; Jesu, meine Freude, BWV753; Vater unser im Himmelreich, BWV683; Wenn wir in höchsten Nöten sein, BWV668a. ‘Chromatic’ Fantasia, BWV903a. Duets, BWV802-805. Fantasias and Fugues – BWV537; BWV904. Fantasia super Jesu, meine Freude, BWV713. Fuga sopra il Magnificat, BWV733. Fughetta super Wir glauben all an einen Gott, BWV681. Kyrie drei Sätze BWV672-674. Das wohltemperirte Clavier – Fugue, BWV846; Prelude, BWV870 Luca Guglielmi org Vivat F VIVAT108 (69’ • DDD) Played on the organ of Chiesa di San Nicolao, Àlice Castello, Italy Presenting Bach’s organ music in fresh pastures is no easy feat but the programming alchemy here is highly compelling. The first element is an original 1749 organ in Piedmont, mirroring the instrument that graced the Abbey of Montecassino before it was destroyed in 1944. The matching components are the renowned teacher (of Mozart among others), musicologist and arranger Padre Martini, and performer-collector Friedrich Wilhelm Rust, whose family contributed significantly to the first complete edition of the composer’s work, the Bach‑Gesellschaft-Ausgabe. Their documented part in disseminating Bach’s music in Italy in the 1760s inspires the content and topography of this most cultivated of recitals. Luca Gugliemi – not to be confused with another fine Italian Bach organist, Lorenzo Ghielmi – is the critical element in the jigsaw, and not just because he offers a consistently probing clarity in his articulation and colouring, binding these strikingly diverse musical styles. More crucial is how the narrative of the Martini ‘exhibition’ unfolds with such grace and ardour: fascination lies in hearing sources of non-organ works, such as the febrile harpsichord Fantasia chromatica reimagined in the delectable bloom of Chiesa di Nicolao as well as the hauntingly softpaletted C minor Fantasia, alongside preludes of intimate subtlety and range. Indeed, Gugliemi’s scope is harnessed to the astutely characterised and moderate scale of the musical works, especially projecting the contemplative within the so-called ‘Organ Mass’, the Clavierübung III of 1739. There are some exceedingly sweet registration changes, none more so than in the ubiquitous Jesu, meine Freude (from the quartet of works just before), at 3’23”. Gugliemi captures the imagination throughout while also celebrating those unheralded cognoscenti in the years immediately after Bach’s death, and before post-Mendelssohn venerating. A finely chiselled and innovative project, warmly recommended. Jonathan Freeman‑Attwood JS Bach Canonic Variations on ‘Vom Himmel hoch da komm’ ich her’, BWV769. Fantasia, BWV572. Partite diverse sopra il chorale ‘O Gott, du frommer Gott’, BWV767. Pastorale, BWV590. Preludes and Fugues – BWV535; BWV548. Toccata and Fugue, BWV565 Masaaki Suzuki org BIS F Í BIS2111 (79’ • DDD/DSD) Played on the Schnitger/Hinz organ of the Martinikerk, Groningen, Netherlands Of all the current doyens of modern Bach performance, Masaaki Suzuki knows no limits to his explorations. This is a dazzling recital (from a musician better known as a director-harpsichordist) discerningly assembled and held aloft by three great pillars: the ubiquitous Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV565; the Pièce d’orgue, BWV572, with Bach whisking the French 17th century from under its own nose; and, to conclude, the great Prelude and Fugue in E minor, BWV548 (the Wedge). If one’s reflexive default at the prospect of an organ recording – even an exquisitely curated Bach one – is one of dispassionate or nonchalant resistance, this recording is as likely to turn ears as any made. Along the way, in a deftly balanced presentation of strikingly contrasting essays, Suzuki offers beautifully turned, reflective and buoyant readings of sui generis ‘concert’ works. The Pastorale, with its exquisite musette-like opening, whose subsequent C major movement trips along in a manner organists seem universally reluctant to pursue, is simply a pearl. Each of the four movements is sweetly devotional in nature, skilfully preparing the way for the highly distilled and contemplative variations on the chorale ‘O Gott, du frommer Gott’. The seasoned reflective qualities of Suzuki, heard to such memorable effect in his complete cantatas series, are reawakened in the stunningly voiced combinations of sounds from the Schnitger/Hinz in the Martinikerk in Groningen – one of Holland’s finest Baroque organs, restored to its former glory by Jürgen Ahrend during the 1970s and ’80s. Unusual here, also, is how an emphatically non-organ-playing reviewer can effortlessly alight on the kinds of malleable Bachian conceits enjoyed habitually in the composer’s concertos, keyboard suites and vocal works. Great instrument aside, this is largely down to the judicious alchemy of Suzuki’s perception of how architecture and local colour can collide to mesmerising effect. The Fugue from the above-mentioned D minor is a case in point: the glistening parallel motion over the pedal at 3’20”, often a bloated gesture, enticingly holds back to set up the rich-textured gravitas that follows. Inexorable momentum here is born of fervent authority, a virtuosity of combined effects without gratuitous excess. The Canonic Variations on ‘Vom Himmel hoch’, written late in Bach’s life as a condition of membership of Lorenz Mitzler’s Corresponding Society of the Musical Sciences (hence the work’s proliferation of contrapuntal wizardry), can often leave the listener cold. Perhaps not surprisingly, Stravinsky was beguiled by the possibility of its intertwining lines in his inventive homage of 1956, with its supra-polyphonic interpolations. Suzuki’s performance will persuade you that Bach’s unsurpassed technique never obfuscates 4 GRAMOPHONE AWARDS 2016 gramophone.co.ukgramophone.co.uk
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B orgreve M arco : p h o t o g r a p h y Gramophone Awards Shortlist 2016 the essence of the chorale; its Christmas provenance is fragrantly atmospheric. The close, with its ingeniously compressed lines and the composer’s outrageous sign-off, literally spelling his name (B is B flat and H is B natural), is celebrated in some style by Suzuki. But it’s the gripping drama and involvement in the large-scale works that remind one of Karl Richter in his most durable organ-playing legacy on Archiv from the 1960s (funnily enough, until recently, only available in Japan). Richter’s captivating direction and intensity, complete with an almost hypnotic abandon, is a touch more measured in Suzuki’s hands but no less effectively communicated. The E minor Prelude and Fugue is the greatest tour de force here, and arguably Bach’s most ambitious single creation on the organ. Truly symphonic in grandeur, the work is harnessed impressively by this exceptionally experienced Bachian. Granite-like blocks of intensely chiselled harmonic progressions starting at 2’38” and building to the last at 5’48” are studiously laid down, as if for posterity, and yet there’s an underlying immediacy and restlessness in Suzuki’s rhetoric which leads to thrillingly choppy waters in the Fugue. Only Samuil Feinberg’s arrangement on the piano has lifted this piece completely out of its safe organ‑istic sphere – but I think it now has a partner in grandeur, flair and emotional risk. And it’s on the organ. Jonathan Freeman‑Attwood WF Bach Keyboard Concertos – Falck41; Falck43; Falck45. Sinfonia, Falck67. Allegro e forte, Falck43 Il Convito / Maude Gratton hpd Mirare F MIR162 (74’ • DDD) Bach’s eldest son, for whom the weight of his father’s inheritance – emotionally and otherwise – contributed to his dispersing the chattels to mitigate his famously precarious professional existence, finds glistening and characterful advocacy here in Maude Gratton’s brilliantly projected recital with her one‑to-a-part string group, Il Convito. WF Bach often comes with a staple diet of reputational baggage (before one hears a note), but this programme challenges the notion that only the solo keyboard vignettes deserve a place in the repertoire. From the beginning of the melancholic questing of the A minor Harpsichord Masaaki Suzuki: a master of Bach at the harpsichord and organ, and on the podium Concerto to the highly wrought pushmipullyu of the significant E minor work, a riveting concentration of harmonic and textural detail emerges. It’s a style that sails a course straight between his father’s motivic tautness and the dissenting galant of his peers, and it finds its best expression in the framing works, from his early and late periods (c1730 and 1770). What Gratton and Il Convito convey so persuasively in their assuaging and elegant performances is that, beyond Wilhelm Friedemann’s capricious figures, mental robustness and vulnerability cohabit as a kind of conceit. This is perfectly exemplified in the knotty Sinfonia, acting as one of two diverting links between the concertos: JSB’s muscularity at once yields to the fickle asides of CPE Bach but with Wilhelm Friedemann adding a dose of studied instability. Whether it’s really all conceit or partautobiography, the WFB experience is rarely relaxing. The layering of filigree, which doubtless encouraged Carl Zelter, Mendelssohn’s teacher, to judge his music as ‘petty and fussy’, is handled with exceptional sangfroid by Gratton and her colleagues, letting the music speak openly in her engaging and unforced solo playing, with the dark-hued strings responsive and mainly in tune. Something never quite adds up in WF Bach. Paradoxically, intelligent recognition of this by performers leads to an idiosyncratic flair which is well worth exploring. Most beguiling is the little Minuet from the Sinfonia: a vignette, unsurprisingly. This is a release that tells us a little bit more about this talented but awkward offspring of a very great father. Jonathan Freeman-Attwood Biber Rosary Sonatas Rachel Podger vn with Jonathan Manson vc, va da gamba David Miller archlute Marcin Swiatkiewicz harps, org Channel Classics F b Í CCSSA37315 (134’ • DDD/DSD) How heartening it is to see new recordings of Biber continuing to come through, even well after the double boost they got from gramophone.co.uk gramophone.co.uk GRAMOPHONE AWards 2016 5

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B orgreve

M arco

:

p h o t o g r a p h y

Gramophone Awards Shortlist 2016

the essence of the chorale; its Christmas provenance is fragrantly atmospheric. The close, with its ingeniously compressed lines and the composer’s outrageous sign-off, literally spelling his name (B is B flat and H is B natural), is celebrated in some style by Suzuki.

But it’s the gripping drama and involvement in the large-scale works that remind one of Karl Richter in his most durable organ-playing legacy on Archiv from the 1960s (funnily enough, until recently, only available in Japan). Richter’s captivating direction and intensity, complete with an almost hypnotic abandon, is a touch more measured in Suzuki’s hands but no less effectively communicated. The E minor Prelude and Fugue is the greatest tour de force here, and arguably Bach’s most ambitious single creation on the organ. Truly symphonic in grandeur, the work is harnessed impressively by this exceptionally experienced Bachian. Granite-like blocks of intensely chiselled harmonic progressions starting at 2’38” and building to the last at 5’48” are studiously laid down, as if for posterity, and yet there’s an underlying immediacy and restlessness in Suzuki’s rhetoric which leads to thrillingly choppy waters in the Fugue. Only Samuil Feinberg’s arrangement on the piano has lifted this piece completely out of its safe organ‑istic sphere – but I think it now has a partner in grandeur, flair and emotional risk. And it’s on the organ. Jonathan Freeman‑Attwood

WF Bach Keyboard Concertos – Falck41; Falck43; Falck45. Sinfonia, Falck67. Allegro e forte, Falck43 Il Convito / Maude Gratton hpd Mirare F MIR162 (74’ • DDD)

Bach’s eldest son, for whom the weight of his father’s inheritance –

emotionally and otherwise – contributed to his dispersing the chattels to mitigate his famously precarious professional existence, finds glistening and characterful advocacy here in Maude Gratton’s brilliantly projected recital with her one‑to-a-part string group, Il Convito. WF Bach often comes with a staple diet of reputational baggage (before one hears a note), but this programme challenges the notion that only the solo keyboard vignettes deserve a place in the repertoire.

From the beginning of the melancholic questing of the A minor Harpsichord

Masaaki Suzuki: a master of Bach at the harpsichord and organ, and on the podium

Concerto to the highly wrought pushmipullyu of the significant E minor work, a riveting concentration of harmonic and textural detail emerges. It’s a style that sails a course straight between his father’s motivic tautness and the dissenting galant of his peers, and it finds its best expression in the framing works, from his early and late periods (c1730 and 1770). What Gratton and Il Convito convey so persuasively in their assuaging and elegant performances is that, beyond Wilhelm Friedemann’s capricious figures, mental robustness and vulnerability cohabit as a kind of conceit. This is perfectly exemplified in the knotty Sinfonia, acting as one of two diverting links between the concertos: JSB’s muscularity at once yields to the fickle asides of CPE Bach but with Wilhelm Friedemann adding a dose of studied instability. Whether it’s really all conceit or partautobiography, the WFB experience is rarely relaxing. The layering of filigree, which doubtless encouraged Carl Zelter, Mendelssohn’s teacher, to judge his music as ‘petty and fussy’, is handled with exceptional sangfroid by Gratton and her colleagues, letting the music speak openly in her engaging and unforced solo playing, with the dark-hued strings responsive and mainly in tune.

Something never quite adds up in WF Bach. Paradoxically, intelligent recognition of this by performers leads to an idiosyncratic flair which is well worth exploring. Most beguiling is the little Minuet from the Sinfonia: a vignette, unsurprisingly. This is a release that tells us a little bit more about this talented but awkward offspring of a very great father. Jonathan Freeman-Attwood

Biber Rosary Sonatas Rachel Podger vn with Jonathan Manson vc, va da gamba David Miller archlute Marcin Swiatkiewicz harps, org Channel Classics F b Í CCSSA37315 (134’ • DDD/DSD)

How heartening it is to see new recordings of Biber continuing to come through, even well after the double boost they got from gramophone.co.uk gramophone.co.uk

GRAMOPHONE AWards 2016 5

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