GRAMOPHONE AWARDS SHORTLIST 2018
Blue Heron and conductor Scott Metcalfe impress with Vol 5 in their ‘Music from the Peterhouse Partbooks’ series (see previous page)
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The singers use a variety of techniques to engage and communicate, from beautiful clear phrasing to crisp, expressive consonants, which at times allows them to tread a deliciously thin line between soft singing and electrifying stage whispers. Every performance on this disc is illuminating, considered and committed. Take for instance the madrigal by Giovanni da Firenze (fl1340‑50): Angnel son biancho from the Panciatichi Codex, a moralising tale told from the point of view of a sacrificial lamb. The bright, shimmering sopranos Yukie Sato and Perrine Devillers sing in delicate unison as the voice of this lamb, relishing the onomatopoeic bleating in the text until the actual sacrifice is mentioned, leaving just one soprano to finish the madrigal with poignant stillness. More than once, this album has confronted me with old favourites performed in new ways. Solage’s (fl late 14th century) harmonically slithery, menacing ballade Le basile I had much admired in the rich, smooth vocalised performance by Gothic Voices on their then groundbreaking album ‘The Study of Love’ (Hyperion, 6/93), but here, Vivien Simon’s gloriously clear tenor voice is absolutely bewitching. Edward Breen (12/17)
‘Stravaganza d’Amore!’ ‘The Birth of Opera at the Medici Court, 1589‑1608’ Including music by Allegri, Brunelli,
Buonamente, Caccini, Cavalieri, Fantini, Gagliano, Malvezzi, Marenzio, Orologio, Peri and Striggio Pygmalion / Raphaël Pichon Harmonia Mundi F b HMM90 2286/7 (103’ • DDD) Hardback book includes texts and translations
This two-record set takes as its starting point the various strains of dramatic music that fed into early Florentine opera, above all the legendary and spectacular intermedi put together for the 1589 Medici wedding. Unprecedented in scale and unified by the theme of the power of music, this music is historically important precisely because it is constructed out of the elements from which early opera evolved, within a decade, in the same city. Ten excerpts are presented here, together with substantial sections from Giulio Caccini’s Il rapimento di Cefalo, Marco da Gagliano’s La Dafne and both Caccini’s and Jacopo Peri’s settings of L’Euridice, together with a selection of other works from the period in a variety of styles and forms by a constellation of composers. By grouping them into six imaginary intermedi defined by themes (‘La favola d’Apollo’, ‘Le lagrime d’Orfeo’ and so on), Raphaël Pichon has ingeniously encouraged structured listening across composers and genres of a kind that rarely occurs on record; the results are fascinating and, at times, revelatory.
This is not to say that all these pieces are masterpieces. Some, such as Malvezzi’s Sinfonia, were written simply to disguise the creaking of the stage machinery as the sets were changed. As with so much stage music designed to project a message across the footlights, many of them originally formed just one element in a complex experience designed to evoke a sense of ‘wonder’, induced by costumes, lighting, scenic effects and the music itself, which was intended to stupefy the listeners through the virtuosity of the performers and the unparalleled size of the forces required. Pichon and Pygmalion rise to this challenge magnificently. Speeds are finely judged, the sense of vocal and instrumental ensemble is well balanced and there is some impressive solo singing, including Luciana Mancini’s carefully wrought rendition of ‘Lassa, che di spavento’ from Caccini’s L’Euridice. Elsewhere there is some spectacular improvised instrumental ornamentation (just occasionally a little exaggerated), while the whole is expertly underpinned by a rich array of continuo instruments. The fruits of an ambitious and carefully researched project, these records come encased in a beautifully presented illustrated hardback book, with three essays and the texts of the vocal works translated into English, French, and German. Iain Fenlon
22 GRAMOPHONE SHORTLIST 2018
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