Johann Jakob Froberger: Suites for Harpsichord,
Volume 2.
Gilbert Rowland, harpsichord. Athene. $25.99 (2 CDs).
Bach: Harpsichord Works in A minor, D minor and C
minor.
Rinaldo Alessandrini, harpsichord. Naïve. $16.99.
Dance Music for Piano from the United States,
Argentina, Spain, France, Hungary and Russia. Lisa de la Salle, piano. Naïve. $16.99.
There is a tendency among some people to
think of older music, specifically Baroque music, as elegant, refined, and
essentially impersonal, a set of exercises in form rather than emotional
expressiveness. Listeners who have heard the works of Johann Jakob Froberger
(1616-1667), however, know how far this is from the truth. Froberger, one the
earliest developers of the dance suite and one of the most-skillful creators of
this movement sequence, composed highly distinctive forms of movements that again
and again had the same designation, including Allemande, Courante, Gigue,
Sarabande and others. He also created program music – indeed, music whose
programs were so precise that Froberger often wrote them out, sometimes in very
considerable detail, on the same pages as the musical notation. The second
volume of Gilbert Rowland’s very well-played selections from Froberger’s
suites, now available as a two-CD set on the Athene label, is an exceptional
introduction to the composer or, for those who know his music already, a
delightful expansion of their knowledge, since it is unlikely that many
listeners will already be familiar with all 12 of these suites. The very first
one offered here (in D, FbWV 620) opens with a descriptive and very personal
movement bearing the title Méditation sur
ma mort future, and although it is no more lugubrious than other movements
in these suites, the mere existence of the title engages listeners in thinking
about the topic that Froberger raised 400 years ago – and perhaps even about
their own mortality. The rest of this four-movement suite consists of a Gigue,
Courante and Sarabande, and all the other suites here – one in three movements,
one in five, the remainder in four – are simply sequences of these and other
dance movements. But “simply” is the wrong word, because Froberger’s rhythmic
irregularities and unusual handling of Baroque dance forms give the music a
level of complexity that Rowland explores with considerable skill and careful
attention to period style and Froberger’s particular sense of it. Froberger was
quite prolific and quite protective of his music, allowing only two pieces to
be published in his lifetime and having friends and noble patrons keep and
control the rest. And he apparently really did have a sense of ma mort future, since he is known to
have made funeral arrangements for himself the day before he died. He is an
unusual and highly creative composer, and was known as a keyboard virtuoso – as
is clear from the demands of the suites that Rowland plays. Bach understandably
thought highly of Froberger’s music, and the similarities and divergences
between the two composers’ keyboard works are quite interesting. But hearing
Froberger entirely on his own is all that is necessary to admire the quality of
his compositions and the extent to which their content belies the notion of Baroque
music as emotionally uninvolving.
It is nevertheless quite intriguing to
hear some Bach harpsichord works in juxtaposition with some of Froberger’s, and
to contemplate the varied ways in which emotional – one could even say
spiritual – connections can be made between composers and among the works of a
single musical creator. Rinaldo Alessandrini’s new Bach recording for Naïve is
a highly personal exploration of disparate Bach works, presented by
Alessandrini as three minor-key sequences – A minor, D minor and C minor – with
carefully parallel choices of pieces within each grouping. Each of the three
sets starts with a prelude, an invention and a sinfonia: the A minor uses BWV
931,784 and 799; the D minor BWV 940, 775 and 790; the C minor, BWV 934, 773
and 788. Each group then includes two prelude-and-fugue combinations from The Well-Tempered Clavier: respectively,
BWV 865 and 889, BWV 851 and 875, and BWV 847 and 871. And then Alessandrini
gives each of the three assembled sets of pieces a different type of
conclusion, thus distinguishing them by their overall musical arcs as well as
by their underlying key signatures. The first grouping ends with the Fantasia and Fugue, BWV 904; the second
with the Sonata for Harpsichord, BWV 964;
and the third with an intriguing combination of the Fantasia, BWV 906 with the Ricercar,
BWV 1079. The result of all this picking and choosing, all this assembling
of different works into sequences connected by their underlying keys if not
exactly thematically, is a very personal CD in which Alessandrini explores Bach
in ways that make considerable sense to him even though nothing here was
intended to be heard in these specific mixtures. The disc thus becomes one
providing insight into the performer as much as into the music he plays – and,
it should be noted, plays with great style and finesse. Alessandrini has
clearly thought carefully about the relationships among the works that he has
assembled in this form for this recital, and his exploration of the
similarities and differences among the pieces – in particular, the
similar-yet-different ways that Bach handles the six preludes and fugues – is
fascinating throughout. It is interesting that he, like Rowland in the
Froberger release, includes some pieces whose provenance is uncertain: several
of the Froberger works are attributed to him but not assuredly by him, and the
first piece Alessandrini offers (BWV 931) is of doubtful authenticity, although
it makes an effective lead-in to the A minor sequence. Alessandrini and Rowland
both show just how effective it can be to offer personalized, carefully
assembled (the current buzzword is “curated”) Baroque pieces in ways that
highlight their emotive elements while keeping historically informed
performance practice always in the forefront.
Lisa de la Salle takes personalization to
a different level – not higher, not lower, just different – on a (+++) Naïve CD
featuring dance music of various types from six different geographical regions.
This is a CD that listeners will find very appealing if they gravitate to the
music as strongly as the pianist does, if they do so in much the same way – and
if they enjoy the rather arbitrary assembly of the program. Unlike the
personalized Alessandrini approach to Bach – which listeners can enjoy if they
like Bach’s music, even if they are not accustomed to hearing it in this
particular setup – the de la Salle disc requires, for full effect, that
listeners like these specific pieces by these specific composers, and enjoy
them presented in this specific performer-selected order. The requirement to be
strongly in sync with both performer and composers limits the likely audience
for this disc, even though it is played stylishly and often with genuine
panache. The first four of these13 works are American, beginning with
Gershwin’s When Do We Dance? De la
Salle also uses that as the overall title of the recital; it may be a bit
cynical to say the answer is “never” when it comes to at least some elements of
this musical potpourri. The three remaining American pieces are Art Tatum’s Tea for Two (not the delightful
Shostakovich variations on the tune), William Bolcom’s Graceful Ghost Rag, and Fats Waller’s Vipers Drag. So we have four pieces from different eras, in
different styles, arranged a bit jarringly and played with enthusiasm. De la
Salle next goes to Argentina for, perhaps inevitably, Piazzolla’s Libertango, which is followed by
Ginastera’s very different Danses
Argentines No. 2. Then comes a quick trip to Spain for de Falla’s Danse du feu, and then a rather curious
voyage to France for Valses nobles et
sentimentales by Ravel (who was actually Basque), followed by Saint-Saëns’ Étude en forme de valse. As if there
were not enough contrast between the two French-inflected offerings, de la
Salle moves on to Hungary and Bartók’s Danses
populaires roumaines, then rounds out the program with three works from
Russia. They are Stravinsky’s Tango,
Scriabin’s Waltz in A-flat, Op. 38,
and Rachmaninoff’s two-piano Polka
Italienne as transcribed for solo instrument by Vyacheslav Gryaznov. This
is quite a selection of material, most of the pieces clearly unrelated to the
ones that precede and follow them, the generalized notion of dance being the
only unifying factor – and rather less so than in the suites of composers such
as Froberger and Bach. The playing is pleasurable throughout, and it certainly
seems as if de la Salle had fun assembling this musical mishmash that wanders
all over the globe and through many stylistic periods (the works’ years of
creation are roughly 1850-1950). Listeners who are swept up in, and by, de la
Salle’s enthusiasm will find the disc a great deal of fun. But it will misfire
for people who do not quite see and hear dance in general, or these specific
dancelike pieces from these specific composers and nations, in exactly the way
that de la Salle sees and hears them.
