Boccherini:
Chamber Works for Flute. Sally
Walker, flute; Elizabeth Layton and Alison Rayner, violins; Stephen King,
viola; Thomas Marlon, cello; Celia Craig, oboe; Sarah Barrett, horn; Mark
Gaydon, bassoon; Robert Nairn, double bass. AVIE. $19.99 (2 CDs).
Classical
String Trios, Volume 4—Music by Maddalena Lombardini Sirmen, Haydn, Johann
Christian Bach, Simon Leduc (l’Ainé), Boccherini, and Joseph Schmitt. The Vivaldi Project (Elizabeth Field, violin; Allison
Edberg Nyquist, violin and viola; Stephanie Vial, cello). MSR Classics. $14.95.
Richard
Cameron-Wolfe: Chamber Works. New
Focus Recordings. $16.99.
The primary characteristic of chamber music, for many centuries, was
intimacy: works for small ensembles were sometimes intended as unobtrusive
indoor or outdoor background music, sometimes planned as meaningful ways to
engage listeners located in a suitably small indoor listening area, and always designed
to provide a more-intimate experience than works for larger instrumental groups
offered. The mostly quiet beauty of well-made chamber music is as engaging
today as it must have been when created centuries ago, as is clear from the
excellent performances of flute-focused chamber works by Luigi Boccherini
(1743-1805) on a new AVIE recording. There are eight works in all on this
two-CD set, seven by Boccherini and one attributed to him and sharing the charm
and poise of those known to be genuine. The primary material here consists of
six two-movement Quintetti, Op. 19.
They are for flute, two violins, viola, and cello, and give considerable
prominence to the flute and somewhat lesser but still noticeable material to
the cello, which was Boccherini’s own instrument and which he may well have
played in these pieces when the works were new (they date to 1774). The
quintets skillfully progress through five different keys: E-flat, G minor, C,
D, B-flat, and again D. Sally Walker is the central performer of these works,
or at least the one highlighted in the recording, but in fact the works’ poise
and balance mean that even when the flute is quite prominent, the remaining
instruments have quite an important role to play – the cello’s being a bit more
significant than that of the others, especially in Nos. 3 and 4, where Thomas
Marlin is called on for considerable virtuosity and produces it in fine period
style and with considerable panache. Unsurprisingly, the most dramatic of these
generally easygoing pieces is No. 2, whose minor key gives it more darkness and
weight than the other pieces receive, particularly in the first movement –
although this is certainly nothing close to the intensity that Mozart brought
to the same key in the same time period (Mozart’s Symphony No. 25 dates to
1773). The last of these pieces, No. 6, is called Las parejas (“The Couples”) and opens particularly interestingly,
with each string instrument playing in octaves. All the performers handle the
inherently cooperative nature of chamber music of this time period with
sensitivity and skill, blending well as an ensemble and standing out whenever a
single instrument is given a brief opportunity to shine – the only extensive
such opportunities, however, being reserved for the flute and cello. Boccherini’s
skill in chamber music including flute also shows clearly in the so-called Sestetto primo for flute, bassoon, horn,
violin, viola, and double bass – an intriguing work taken from a set called Sei Notturni (two of them unfortunately
now lost). This is a three-movement piece in E-flat that is notable for the
exceptionally careful balance that Boccherini brings to the three winds against
the three strings, all the while maintaining the flute’s prominence. The second
movement, Allegro ma non presto, is a
real charmer. This thoroughly engaging release concludes with a Quintetto for flute, oboe, violin,
viola, and cello that is of uncertain provenance but attributed to Boccherini.
Whatever its origin, it is a work that certainly shares the charms and delicacies
of the other pieces offered here, and it brings out the same level of cooperative
skill that the performers confer upon the rest of these unusually pleasant
pieces.
Boccherini’s music also stands out in the fourth MSR Classics collection
of delightful performances of delightful trios from the 18th
century, courtesy of the period-instrument ensemble The Vivaldi Project.
Although Boccherini’s Trio in C minor,
Op. 4, No. 2 lasts just 14 minutes, it is the longest of the seven pieces
on the disc – an indication of the modest scale of all the discoveries and
rediscoveries here. As in several of his works including flute, Boccherini here
offers a nominally balanced piece that in fact tilts heavily (or rather, in
terms of the pleasant nature of the music, lightly) toward the cello, which
dominates through much of the three-movement work and helps emphasize its dark
but scarcely gloomy minor-key character: this is one of a set of six trios and
the only one written in the minor. Interestingly, minor-key material is more
prominent on this CD than on the prior ones, making the disc somewhat more
thoughtful (if not really darker) than the three previous volumes. F minor is
the most-heard key here, being the home key of the two-movement Sonata, Op. 1, No. 6 by Maddalena
Lombardini Sirmen (1745-1818) and the three-movement Trio, Op. 5, No. 6 by Simon Leduc (1742-1777), whose name also
appears as Le Duc and who is somewhat confusingly known as “l’Ainé” (the old)
to distinguish him from his younger brother, Pierre (“le Jeune,” the young). In
addition, F minor is the key of the rather melancholy Trio in the second movement of the unusually serious two-movement Sonata, B. 40 by Johann Christian Bach
(1735-1782). Although none of these composers plumbs any significant depths in
these generally pleasant (even when darker-hued) works, the minor-key material
does nicely balance the still-dominant brighter and lighter material in the
major that dominates here as in The Vivaldi Project’s first three CDs. The
balance is especially interesting in the music of Sirmen, some of which the
performers also offered in Volume 3. Here Sirmen provides the bookends for the
recording, with her F minor work opening the CD and a more-substantial and
especially well-balanced three-movement Trio
in B-flat closing it. The attentive and historically informed handling of
all the music is a major strength of this disc, as of the previous entries in
the series. Interestingly, a three-movement Divertimento
in G, H.V:20, by Haydn, fits quite neatly into this set of works by lesser
and/or less-known composers: Haydn here proves, yet again, how adept he was at
crafting perfectly poised and beautifully balanced material for specific
instrumental groups without overdoing either technique or emotional content.
All the pieces on this CD were created from the 1750s to the 1770s, with the
latest being the three-movement Trio in
G, Op. 11, No. 3 by Joseph Schmitt (1734-1791). This dates to 1778 and
shares the charm and easy elegance of the other pieces heard here without in
any way advancing the form of the string trio or trying to make it any more (or
less) expressive. The Vivaldi Project’s always-assured performances make all
these Classical-era trifles a joy to hear, and if nothing on the disc is a
substantial piece, neither is anything unworthy of being rediscovered and
played again and again.
In the 21st century, chamber music is often considerably more ambitious than it was in the 18th, and is only rarely created as any sort of “background” material. Today’s composers tend to use reduced-size ensembles to make specific points that they feel are better communicated with fewer performers. Richard Cameron-Wolfe (born 1943), for example, creates some chamber works for only one performer, but expects that individual to assume multiple roles. A New Focus Recordings release of Cameron-Wolfe’s chamber music leads off with just such a piece: Heretic, which the composer labels a “micro-opera” in which he collaborates with a visual artist, videographer and writer. This type of piece lasts five to 15 minutes and is designed to be staged in a small space, which certainly echoes the “chamber” part of “chamber music.” But the effect of a piece such as Heretic is quite different from that of more-traditional chamber music. Marc Wolf performs it as narrator, vocal artist, guitar player and percussionist, and even without the visual element – inevitably absent in CD form – it is clear that this is intended as a dramatic play with music, using wordless effects as well as spoken text along with the instrumental material. The CD contains another “micro-opera” called Lonesome Dove: a True Story, featuring Geoff Landman on tenor saxophone and Umber Qureshi as the “watcher,” a role invisible in this recording but clearly integral to the bird-observing experience that Cameron-Wolfe seeks to illustrate both visually and with the usual techniques of avant-garde musical production. Virtually all the works on this (+++) recording have theatrical elements. Time Retracted for cello and piano was designed for dancers. Mirage d’esprit for guitar quartet uses microtonal tuning and requires technique that would be highly watchable in performance. O minstrel for soprano and guitar is part of a chamber cantata and is unusually attentive to the text for a work in strongly contemporary guise. Telesthesia: 13 episodes/deliberations on multi-planar syzygy for cello quartet is one of those deliberately over-titled pieces whose overstuffed name is attached to some surprisingly moving string writing – the piece is a memorial written after the death of a friend of the composer. Kyrie(Mantra)IV is another of those overdone-title works so common in the oeuvre of many modern composers, and features flute-and-guitar scoring that gives the constant impression of electronic amplification even when none is present. And Passionate Geometries for soprano, flute, guitar, and cello, using a text by Cameron-Wolfe himself, rather unconvincingly attempts to explore the mind of an angst-ridden poet with writer’s block – a cliché if there ever was one. Cameron-Wolfe’s insistent theatricality is more distinctive than any specific compositional style in these pieces, which collectively and individually blend into a kind of modernistic assemblage that is similar to the work of many other composers who may wish to be forward-looking but who effectively merely look askance at the traditions of chamber-music creation and performance without really expanding them in any meaningful way.
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