by EDWARD TATNALL CANBY
Handel: Music for the Royal Fireworks; Three Concertos. English Chamber Orch., Leppard. Philips 6500 369, stereo, $ 6.98.
Handel: Ballet Music, (Alcina, Ariodonte, Pastor Fido). Academy of Saint Martin-in-the-Fields, Neville Marriner. Argo ARG 686, stereo, $5.95.
Handel's orchestral music, if it catches you early enough in the musical game, can infatuate and often does.
How many millions have fallen for the well known Water Music! Handel was my favorite when I got my start in records, though in those days he came on 78s and the choice was limited, with plenty of Sir Hamilton Harty and Sir Thomas Beecham, who never played Handel straight. They did symphonic arrangements for large modern orchestra.
The Royal Fireworks Musick (to use a nicer spelling) has never struck me as the equal of the Water Music (to use the same) but it has fine moments and indeed is a sibling work.
The English Chamber orchestra presents an up to date styling of the music, briskly played with the proper ornaments, brilliant in the brass, lively in strings and oboes. If there isn't nearly as much of it as in the Water Musick, perhaps it is because the said fireworks prematurely set the place on fire. More likely, Handel used a lot of music out of other collections to supplement the new stuff he composed for the occasion.
More interesting than the Fireworks music on this disc are the three Concertos, with various groupings of solo wind instruments; they seem to have been earlier tries at some of the music in both Fireworks and Water Musick if those two works are already familiar to you, the Concertos will be most interesting to hear. Same only different.
The body of Handelian orchestral music includes, in addition to the special Fire and Water music and a great many Concerti, some splendid groups of pieces from stage works, including the long Overtures, more properly, Ouvertures (i.e. openings), of the multi-movement sort which we today call Suites, beginning with a grandiloquent slow movement and a fast fugue, continuing in a string of dance movements. The Ouvertures are often complemented by other works, ballet music and so on. One of my all-time favorite 78 discs was music from Handel's Alcina; here on the imported Argo LP is Alcina again, to my great pleasure. The LP, of course, includes many more movements, and the complete Ouverture. I was knocked for a musical loop by its beginning--the finest orchestral rendition of the now-restored "double-dotted" rhythm, with ornamentation, that I have ever heard. You will not be able to keep your seat, so swinging is the pulse of it. The entire Alcina side of this disc is first rate.
Side 2 moves on to similar music from Ariodante, plus a couple of short bits from II Pastor Fido (Handel himself did plenty of transferring from one work to another). It struck me as less effective, possibly because there are too many successive jaunty fast dance movements. But maybe it was just because I played this side second, and my ears were already full of good Handel.
Performances: B +, A- Sound: B, B
Handel: Semele Vyvyan, Watts, Herbert, James; Saint Anthony Singers, New Symphony Orch. of London, Lewis. L'Oiseau-Lyre OLS 111-3 (3 discs) synth., stereo, $ 17.94.
Another, and major, reissue in London's L'Oiseau-Lyre series out of the 1950s, reprocessed for stereo, re-cut and repackaged. Semele is not an Italian opera but an English oratorio, one of the few that is based on operatic-style classic texts, full of Gods and Godesses and their royal pawns on earth. (Most of the oratorios are concerned with Old Testament stories.) The oratorios were given in theatres, but without scenery; the drama is entirely in the music. Some are true "spectaculars," notably "Isreal in Egypt" and "Messiah" but this one is so much like an Italian opera of the time that, on records, only the English of the text distinguishes it from that category.
You will have quite some fun figuring out the plot, English or no! L'Oiseau-Lyre doesn't include a story line synopsis. The text is there, to be read, but its highly stylized classical expression is picturesque but not very revealing. No matter at all-the music is superb, and the general drift of occurrence is easy enough to follow.
The Gods Juno and Jove back different human characters and their squabble is vivid-Jove puts out Juno's altar fire via thunderstorm, and then does it again, just to prove his point; he also runs off with Semele in helicopter style; he converts to an eagle, and just lifts her up and away. She loves it.
As of 1956, this production is reasonably modern, with the proper instrumentation, with harpsichord continuo (Thurston Dart) and small orchestra, and the singers, British except for a very American-sounding Juno, do their trills and elaborations dutifully. But certain anachronisms are noticeable if you are a stickler. No double-dotting in the Overture-unthinkable! (Most listeners won't care.) The sound, like most in this series, is mildly substandard as of today. The synthetic stereo is very gentle and quite unobtrusive. You will soon forget about the recording's age.
Brave, honest London! On every disc in this series the original copyright date is given uncompromisingly. I wish some of our record companies would be as straightforward in their reissues. Over here, if it isn't either fabulous or legendary, you have to half-pretend it's brand new.
Performance: B+, Sound: C+
Bach: Das Kantatenwerk (Complete Cantatas) Vol. 4: Weinen, Klagen; Meine Seufzer, meine Tränen; Wäre Gott nicht mit uns; Herr Gott, dich loben wir (BWV 12, 13, 14, 16). Soloists, Tölzer Knabenchor, King's College Choir Cambridge, Leonhardt Consort, Gustav Leonhardt. Telefunken SKW 4/ 1-2 (two discs), stereo, $11.96.
Well, it had to happen. After all, we recorded the Complete Beethoven Piano Sonatas back in the early 1930s on 78 shellac and, since LP, the urge to get down the Complete this or that, no matter how enormous the task, has never let up. Result-assorted in complete series, there being not enough lifetime available. Haydn Symphonies, the Complete Vivaldi (that would take fifty years at least ... ) and so on. If this coalition group, from several countries, manages to get down all the hundreds of Bach Cantatas under one management, it will be a monument to German-Dutch-English persistence! Yes, the beginning is good, and up to the latest technical and musical standards for these rapidly changing works-changing, that is, in the manner of their present-day presentation.
Gustav Leonhardt, Nikolaus Harnoncourt and David Wilcox, associated with this venture, are leaders in the new all-out "authenticity", the music done as closely as possible in the manner of the original works. Nowadays, it isn't merely an old organ, a harpsichord and maybe a recorder or two (I mean the instrument with the finger holes). Now, we have a complete orchestra of Baroque stringed instruments, subtly different in sound from the modern hepped-up, high-tension strings, plus Baroque flutes, oboes and whole ranks of exotic winds such as oboe da caccia, all in the original non-modernized form, all sounding memorably richer, more reaucous, more colorful, than their bland modern equivalents.
And most of all, we have the Old natural trumpets and natural horns without valves. The playing techniques, seemingly impossible only a few years back, have been handily revived and now every difficult note that Bach wrote for these splendid instruments sounds out with never a single finger being moved anywhere. It's all done with the lips, and the overtones.
Boys' voices, and young men's, too.
That is at least an approximation of the vocal instruments Bach used.
Whether they sound like his, we can only guess, since voices do differ.
The four performances in this volume are in the best of taste, the vocal soloists (too many to list), ranging from boy soprano, high male countertenor, to basso, well chosen and the over-all balance of forces beautifully right. Needless to say, all sorts of minor details such as trills, delayed continuo cadence figures, the entire continuo itself, are impeccably right, too, and the tempi are, well-suitable.
They fit the music. My only complaint is with the faster ornamental pieces, where an all-too-familiar short, jagged "ha-ha-ha" vocal technique seems to me unpleasant. But who knows? maybe Bach's little boys sang "ha–ha-ha" too, on the difficult lines of fast notes. They have to be produced somehow, and present vocal training doesn't help a bit. When I looked at the score-the entire printed music for all the works is included in miniature format-I must admit I had to take back my criticism-any choir that can sing the runs and chordal arpeggios of Cantata 16, the last one here, is to be marveled at! Bach was forever grousing and groaning as to the inadequacy of his choirs. Yet look what the poor kids had to sing.
I would not call any of these performances really exciting. They are smooth, correct, thoughtful, and just a trace on the low-voltage side. There are other German recordings of Bach with more genuine communication, and a reasonable authenticity, too. But then-we Americans always are looking for high voltage. These people, so to speak, let Bach's own scores do the talking, which in the long, long run is probably a good idea.
Performances: B +, Sound: B +
Bach: The Six Brandenburg Concertos. Anthony Newman and Friends. Columbia M2Q 31398 (two discs), SQ quadraphonic, $6.98.
Imagine it--Bach 16-tracked in quad, with a complement of authentic primitive-type Baroque instruments! That's the Newman-and-Friends approach, with the wholehearted cooperation of Columbia's technical producers. The photos show the performers surrounded by such a forest of mic close-in stands you can scarcely make them out. Practically everybody has his own track, by the looks of it. The sound of the resulting Bach album is thus a mixdown and there could be dozens of different mix-downs, with quite different sounds, all made from the "original" master tape. So multi tracking really comes to the classics! Anthony Newman is that furiously prolific young organist/harpsichordist who plays anything by Bach and friends for fingers and keyboard faster and more energetically than anyone else, and has very much a mind of his own as to how it should sound. It mostly sounds faster and furiouser, and a lot of people like it, not including the stodgier of our church organists.
Serves them right. Mr. Bach. Anthony Newman will have you know, is not a composer to go to sleep by. Newman as musical director of his own group of young professionals is a new thing. Needless to say, group discipline requires a bit less reckless virtuosity, and Anthony's friends are not forced into eccentricity, give or take a few slightly mannered endings and somewhat odd tempi (the very slow minuet in Number One, for instance). And yet there is, more than Newman probably imagines, a typical American sound to this virtuoso work-out of the six Brandenburgs. One senses, somehow, the American approach to professional performance, via high-discipline virtuoso control rather than long, leisurely and philosophical study. No time! Life moves on. Time costs money, etc, etc. We are anything but plodding when we launch a project costing money and tying up expensive facilities; we Get Things Done, whether it's an advertising campaign, a computerized science project or a performance of music. That's what one hears in these records. High-power youthful efficiency. The sheer virtuosity is enough so that there are no flubs nor any overt clumsiness or haste. The Friends are easily able to keep up with Anthony Newman's prevailingly peppy tempi, even on the old Baroque oboes and recorders that contribute to authenticity. Even so, the slight edge of controlled high tension is always there, the sense that every minute counts. You'll like it or not depending on your own inclinations.
Compare these playings, for instance, with the all-out-authentic Complete Cantata Series performances on Telefunken, if you would hear the contrast. Now if we could just internationalize a bit further, bring the European smoothness of ensemble and totality of correct instrumentation, down to the last instrument, over here; transport at least a bit of the intensity and drive of Newman and Friends over there. That would be Bach indeed!
The quadraphonic sound is really an excellent mixdown-for it can be nothing less than that. There is a curious composite room effect that, while a bit synthetic, is only occasionally false in spatial relationship. (The horns in the First Concerto, for instance, sound close and boxed-in, the other instruments out in the open.) To have Bach's colorful and essentially intimate solo groups spread around is absolutely the height of sonic authenticity, for these were never in any sense "symphonic" pieces for a concert stage. Indeed, this sound is probably nearer the truth, musically, than any live concert of the music likely to be heard in public, at least in this country.
Of course, if you want to argue, Newman can always come right back at you-not one of the Brandenburg Concerti was ever performed at all in Bach's lifetime! Virgin musical territory.
Performances: B +; Sound: A-
(Audio magazine, Feb. 1973; Edward Tatnall Canby)
More music articles and reviews from AUDIO magazine.
Classical Record Reviews (Mar. 1973)
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