Tage Alter Musik Regensburg 2019
Bavaria, Germany. 7-10 June 2019
The Regensburg Tage Alter Musik festival takes place annually from Friday to Monday over the Pentecost/Whitsun weekend, whose dates move linked to Easter. The 2019 festival, the 35th, took place over the weekend of 7-10 June, rather later than in previous years and the latest Pentecost weekend until 2030. With 15 concerts over these four days, it is a total immersion of early music performed in some spectacular buildings in Regensburg city centre. The historic city of Regensburg has its roots in the Celtic settlement of Radasbona and the Roman Castra Regina fort, remnants of which can still be seen. It was the early Medieval capital of Bavaria. The 12th-century bridge over the Danube increased its importance as a Free Imperial City within the Holy Roman Empire. It adopted the Reformation in 1542 but retained its Catholic Cathedral and Abbeys. From 1663 to 1806, it was the permanent seat of the Imperial Diet of the Holy Roman Empire, the so-called ‘Perpetual Diet’. The whole of the historic city centre is now a World Heritage Site. Continue reading
this distinguished orchestra has built an enormous international reputation, not least during the years from 1998 to 2011 when Sir Roger Norrington was their chief conductor, bringing his noted ‘historically informed’ performance practice to this modern instrument orchestra, producing a distinctive style – the ‘Stuttgart sound’. The two merging orchestras are both under the auspices of Südwestrundfunk (South West Radio), the public broadcaster for Baden-Württemberg and Rhineland-Palatinate, and have very different repertoires and styles. It was entirely appropriate that Roger Norrington, now their Conductor Emeritus, was the conductor for their final concert.
The weekend traditionally opens on Friday evening with the famous Regensburg cathedral boys’ choir, the Regensburger Domspatzen, 
Telemann taught himself to play the recorder, violin and zither before the age of 10, and continued to practice the recorder well into his teens – something very few youngsters do today. He seems to have retained a love for the recorder, judging by the number of pieces he wrote for it, including these Suites and Concertos. Incidentally, the two Suites are both titled Ouverture in their manuscripts, and are examples of Telemann’s so-called concert en ouverture style of composition, which combines elements of the traditional suite with the overture. Apart from the E-flat suite (which is intended for the flute pastorelle, which perhaps means the panpipes), all the music is from the same manuscript surviving in the Hesse Court library in Darmstadt, suggesting that they were composed for Michael Böhm, Telemann’s brother-in-law and a virtuoso woodwind player. They are all written for alto recorder.
The evening started, slightly unfortunately, with the Tragic Overture of Brahms, the bête noire of Bruckner and Hans Rott (pictured), and several others of a progressive ilk, such as Mahler. Unfortunate, because of the effect that Brahms’ withering comments on Hans Rott’s First Symphony had on the young composer. The unfortunate Rott (1858-84) was a student contemporary of Mahler and Hugo Wolf at the Vienna Conservatory, and studied organ with Bruckner, who saw him as his ‘favourite pupil’. Although Rott hadn’t impressed a conservatory competition panel with a piano reduction of the first movement, he went on to expand it into a four movement symphony. For reasons unknown, and certainly ill-advised, the then 22 year-old Rott showed the score to Brahms, an enemy of anything musically progressive, and of Bruckner and the Vienna conservatory. Brahms advised the already vulnerable young man to ‘give up composing’, leading to a possibly hallucinatory incident that resulted in him being committed 
Following her first CD, Upon a Ground (reviewed 
Although the sub-title, ‘Favourite anthems from Merton’, might not be quite accurate for every potential listener, this collection of anthems certainly represents a fascinating insight into Oxbridge choral tradition and its music. It opens with the premiere recording of Jonathan Dove’s Te Deum, a paean of praise with an exciting accompaniment that shows off their new organ. In a very mixed programme, we then have Tallis’s exquisite little If ye love me, before Elgar arrives with Give unto the Lord before giving way to Thomas Morley, a rather dramatic switch of musical styles. And so it continues, with Rutter, Parry, Quilter, Finzi, Harris and Patrick Gowers interweaved between Byrd and more Tallis.
The Brook Street Band, named after the London street where Handel lived for the last 36 years of his life, celebrate their 20th anniversary this year. As well as his well known Opus 2 and 5 sets of Trio Sonatas, Handel left a number of isolated examples of the genre, three of them normally referred to as the ‘Dresden’ sonatas where the manuscript is housed. To these three (HWV 392-4), are added two other proper trio sonatas (386a and 403) and two other pieces arranged by the Brook Street Band in a trio sonata format, the early Sinfonia and an early version of the overture to Esther, both of which helpfully lack an viola part. Many of the movements are examples of Handel’s re-use of material, and there are a number of familiar melodies that crop up with an otherwise lesser known group of pieces. Notable amongst 
Magnificat vocal ensemble celebrate their 25th anniversary with this CD of extraordinarily powerful large-scale polyphonic works by Renaissance masters, all influenced by the equally extraordinary Italian Dominican friar and prophet, Girolamo Savonarola. His rather alarming prophesies (including declaring Florence to be the ‘New Jerusalem’, the destruction of all things secular, and a biblical flood), his denouncement of the Medicis, clerical corruption, and the exploitation of the poor, together with his extreme puritanical views (resulting in the Bonfire of the Vanities) led, not surprisingly, to his getting himself caught up in Italian and Papal politics.
This is a re-release and re-packaging of a recording made in 2003 (first released in 2008) which stemmed from musicologist Francesco Zimei, the Institute of Musical History of Abruzzo, and a conference in Teramo that aimed to revive the music of the fascinating character, Antonio Zacara da Teramo. Antonio was active around 1400. The rather unkind nickname Zacara (which could mean a small thing, a thing of little value, or a splash of mud) stems from his being rather short in stature, and having a range of physical deformities (possible a result of what later became known as phocomelia) including several missing fingers, as depicted in the Codex Squarcialupi illustration. 
Jacques le Polonois (aka Jakub Polak and Jakub/Jacob/Jacques Reys) was born around 1545 in Poland. He was court lutenist to Henry III (briefly the elected King of Poland before returning to France, with Polonois, where he had inherited the throne) and Henri IV of France. As a lute playing composer, his pieces tested the technical abilities of other players. Much later writers wrote (with uncertain evidence) of his ‘good and quick hand’, mentioning that he ‘got the very soul out of the lute’. His extemporisation skills were praised. He left around 60 works for the lute, nearly half of which are included on this recording, many first recordings. Many include the word Polonaise in the title, referring to his county of origin, rather than the national style of his music, which was firmly French. Versions of his names, Jacob and Reys, also appear in several titles.
the late Renaissance, but with three of Bach’s motets and one by his second cousin and near contemporary, Johann Ludwig Bach. As is so often the case with programmes like this, the sheer power and musical conviction of JS Bach’s motets put all the other composers into the shade, but I guess the audience would have been smaller if JS Bach wasn’t represented.
A simple chorale-like setting of Ein neues Lied wir heben an by Johann Walther (1496-1570) was segued into Schütz’s sumptuous 8-part setting of Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied, the voices swinging from left to right in the Italian polychoral tradition. It was noticeable how Schütz used longer melismas for the passage referring to the joyful noise of the harp, trumpets and cornets. The one non-German composer was Giovanni Gabrieli, with his gentle double-choir O Domine Jesu Christe, here using high-low and well as left-right contrasts. Christian Erbach is a composer that deserves far more exposure than he usually gets. He was represented here by his Domine, Dominus noster, the rhythmic complexity and complex inner movement marking out a composer of distinction. The slightly later Martin Roth also impressed with his Allein zu dir, with its contrasting chorale-like sections and bouncy left-right altercations. However I found the lengthy organ introduction that preceded it rather curious; not least because of the harpsichord-like rapidly spread chords.
After a short tour in The Netherlands, the Tallis Scholars brought their programme of music by Thomas Tallis, Arvo Pärt and John Sheppard to St John’s, Smith Square as part of the SJSS 30th annual Christmas festival. Tallis’s Missa Puer natus est nobis (based on the introit for the Mass of Christmas Day) were threaded through the programme, but it opened with Arvo Pärt’s 1988 Sieben Magnificat Antiphonen and 1989 Magnificat in recognition of Pärt’s 80th anniversary. 
As part of the 30th annual St John’s, Smith Square Christmas Festival, Ensemble Plus Ultra contributed a programme of Advent and Christmas music from Spain, England, and Germany. The rather curious opening had three female singers on stage, while five men approached down the two side aisles, deconstructing the Advent chant Veni, veni Emmanuel by passing it between all three groups. The rest of the first half was a very effective interspersing of Victoria’s 1600 Missa Ave Regina caelorum with Byrd’s 1607 five-part Propers for Lady Mass during Advent. This was preceded by Victoria’s 1581 double choir setting of the Missa Ave Regina caelorum antiphon, upon which the parody mass was based. Although the 
With 15 contributors, from Germany, Poland, the United States, Canada, and Australia, it covers the detailed history of the complex world of 15 Germanic Courts, of varying sizes. Many people’s knowledge of such institutions often only comes from the brief background knowledge of Bach’s various tenures in local Courts, before his eventual move to Leipzig. The essays in this book puts Bach’s career into a wider perspective, and one that is relatively little known. The Germanic system of often very small scale princely courts might have made for a complex hierarchy of aristocracy and governance, and some tricky questions of inheritance, but it made for an extraordinary flowering of art and music, as each little domain tried to outdo its neighbour.
José Maurício Nunes Garcia: Missa pastoril para a noite de natal;
This timely (but subtle) release for the season includes three choral preludes on the Advent choral Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland, the Italianate Pastorella and the Canonic Variations on the Christmas choral, Vom Himmel hoch, together with the Prelude and Fugue in C (BWV 547) which some commentators have associated with Christmas performance. These works are enclosed within the well-known Fantasia and Fugue in G minor (BWV 542) and the final exhilarating Prelude and Fugue in G (BWV 541).
Composed in 1647 (to a libretto by fellow Italian Francesco Buti), Rossi’s Orpheus is generally acknowledged to be the first opera specifically commissioned for France – one outcome of the appointment of an Italian Cardinal as the Prime Minister to Queen Anne of Austria, the Regent to the young Louis XIV, and his attempts to introduce Italian culture to the French Court. Buti’s libretto is a curious affair, adding a bewildering array of miscellaneous characters to the story together with extended 
What a fascinating CD! With music ranging from the Renaissance, via the early Baroque to a composer born in 1984, the programme explores the musical colours of Venice and a none-too-subtle focus on its current environmental issues. Acqua Alta is a collaboration between the Renaissance ensemble Serikon, conductor Erik Westberg and the Artists for the Environment organization, and apparently also involves a meteorologist and climate specialist. With Venice flooding from rising sea levels with increasingly frequently and with higher water levels, it is an obvious city to focus on. 
The latest release in The Cardinall’s Musick Tallis Edition focuses on some lesser-known, but nonetheless fascinating pieces. The piece that gives the CD its title is one of Tallis’s earliest works, but probably not the first. It is nearly 16 minutes of rather convoluted praise to the Virgin Mary in which Tallis shows a considerable amount of early promise, not least in some of what was to become his trademark harmonic twists and turns. Detective work by David Allison has not only reconstructed the work from its surviving incomplete state, but has also explored the similarities between it and Robert Fayrfax’s setting of the same text. I would have preferred it to have started the disc (not least to match the order of the liner notes), but it appears after three opening Latin Responsories, the only other pieces in Latin.
You really do need to like the sound of the harpsichord to appreciate this CD, with its two powerful French harpsichords doing battle with each other and, on occasion, the eardrums. Guillermo Brachetta’s arrangement of pieces from Rameau’s Platée lasts about 50 minutes, and runs the whole gamut of the French Baroque vocal, instrumental and dance style. And it is an extraordinary style, aided by a very clever arrangement and the forthright and imaginative playing by Guillermo Brachetta and his former teacher, Menno van Delft. 
Andrew Benson-Wilson : Early Music Reviews + 