Music on Thursdays
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Thursday
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Coronation
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Programme
Marin Marais (1656-1728)
Sonnerie de Sainte-Geneviève du Mont de Paris (1723)
The Bells of St Genevieve on the Mount, Paris (Patron Saint of Paris)
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
from Klavierbüchlein für Wilhelm Friedemann Bach (oldest son)
Invention No 12 in A major BWV 783
Sinfonia No 12 in A minor BWV 798
Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber (1644-1704)
Sonata Representativa C146 (1669?)
1 Allegro
2 die Nachtigall - nightingale
3 der Cucu (Kuckuck) - cuckoo
4 der Frosch - frog; Adagio
5 Allegro, die Henne - hen; der Hahn - rooster; Presto
6 Adagio - die Wachtel - quail
7 die Katz (Katze) - cat
8 Musketier Marsch - musketeer march
9 Allemande - elaborate 16th century German courtly dance
Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683-1764)
La Poule
Carl Friedrich Abel (1723-1787)
Adagio in D major for viola da gamba WK 187, from the Drexel manuscript 5871
Johann Sebastian Bach
from Klavierbüchlein für Wilhelm Friedemann Bach
Sinfonia No 9 in F minor BWV 795 Largo, mesto ed espressivo
Dieterich Buxtehude (c1637-1707)
Trio Sonata in A minor for violin, viola da gamba & basso continuo BuxWV 272
1 Allegro (Chaconne)
2 Adagio
3 Allegro (Chaconne 2)
Concert duration approx: 40-45 minutes
Please donate to help fund these concerts at: cafdonate.cafonline.org/14455
May Robertson
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Short Biography:
Violinist May Robertson has won praise for her ‘lovely gaiety’ (Daily Telegraph) and for her ‘virtuoso fidel playing’ (Lark Reviews). Her solo performances include Bach’s Fourth Brandenburg Concerto under Sigiswald Kuijken, and the first recording and BBC Radio 3 broadcast of a newly-discovered Vivaldi violin sonata. May has also performed in ensembles with Frans Brüggen, Judy Tarling, Barthold Kuijken, Margaret Faultless, and Jaap ter Linden. She is a long time member of medieval ensemble Joglaresa, and regularly collaborates across art forms. She holds degrees from Cambridge University and the Royal Conservatory of The Hague. The full Biography: |
Violinist May Robertson has won praise for her ‘lovely gaiety’ (Daily Telegraph) and for her ‘virtuoso fidel playing’ (Lark Reviews). Playing violin, viola and vielle, May performs baroque, medieval, and South Asian music, has a particular interest in the 17th century and the French baroque, and is a natural improviser.
May’s solo performances include Bach’s Fourth Brandenburg Concerto under Sigiswald Kuijken, and the first recording and BBC Radio 3 broadcast of a newly-discovered Vivaldi violin sonata. May has worked with Armonico Consort, Charivari Agréable, Chelys, and Musicians of London (co-principal). She has also performed in ensembles with Frans Brüggen, Judy Tarling, Barthold Kuijken, Margaret Faultless, Richard Egarr, and Jaap ter Linden.
As a medieval musician, May has worked with Joglaresa for over a decade, performing on numerous recordings and in concerts at the Brighton Early Music Festival, the National Centre for Early Music, and the International Medieval Congress. May is a member of BREMF Live! as part of a new medieval ensemble supported by the festival.
May’s work also regularly crosses cultural boundaries. She has co-created theatre music, improvised accompaniments to Sufi songs with Arieb Azhar, and collaborated with leading specialists of South Asian dance in performances at the Southbank Centre.
May holds degrees from Cambridge University, Trinity Laban, and the Royal Conservatory of The Hague. She grew up in Cornwall, but is today most often found in London.
May’s solo performances include Bach’s Fourth Brandenburg Concerto under Sigiswald Kuijken, and the first recording and BBC Radio 3 broadcast of a newly-discovered Vivaldi violin sonata. May has worked with Armonico Consort, Charivari Agréable, Chelys, and Musicians of London (co-principal). She has also performed in ensembles with Frans Brüggen, Judy Tarling, Barthold Kuijken, Margaret Faultless, Richard Egarr, and Jaap ter Linden.
As a medieval musician, May has worked with Joglaresa for over a decade, performing on numerous recordings and in concerts at the Brighton Early Music Festival, the National Centre for Early Music, and the International Medieval Congress. May is a member of BREMF Live! as part of a new medieval ensemble supported by the festival.
May’s work also regularly crosses cultural boundaries. She has co-created theatre music, improvised accompaniments to Sufi songs with Arieb Azhar, and collaborated with leading specialists of South Asian dance in performances at the Southbank Centre.
May holds degrees from Cambridge University, Trinity Laban, and the Royal Conservatory of The Hague. She grew up in Cornwall, but is today most often found in London.
Ibrahim Aziz
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Ibrahim Aziz specializes in the performance of renaissance, baroque and contemporary music for the viola da gamba, having studied with Alison Crum at Trinity College of Music, London.
He now works with consorts and ensembles such as Chelys and The Rose Consort of Viols, but also regularly performs as a soloist. He has recorded two solo CDs for First Hand Records and is also an artist on other classical labels such BIS, Delphian, Resonus Classics and others with various ensembles. Ibrahim’s playing has been praised by Gramophone, BBC Music Magazine, The Independent and the American Record Guide. He has worked for many distinguished musicians and concert venues worldwide. www.ibiaziz.com |
Dan Tidhar
Dr Dan Tidhar
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Dan Tidhar studied harpsichord with Mitzi Meyerson in Berlin and with Ketil Haugsand in Cologne. He currently combines a busy performance schedule as harpsichordist, organist, and conductor with research in musicology, teaching, and collecting and restoring historical keyboard instruments.
Dan is active as a recitalist and continuo player with various ensembles, both locally and internationally. His continuo playing can be heard on several recently released CDs, eg with the Chelys Consort of Viols (BIS) and Syrinx Winds (Resonus). He has performed in numerous festivals (including Stour Music, Southwell Music Festival, Roman River Festival, Regensburg Alte Music Tage, and many more), and is a regular member of various ensembles including Syrinx Winds and Concentus7. |
Dan is a well-published researcher in various fields, and in particular in computational analysis of early music, in which he holds a PhD from the TU-Berlin. At the University of Cambridge, Dan is the Historic Keyboard Advisor of the Faculty of Music, a member of the Centre for Music and Science, and a Research Associate at Wolfson College.
He has recently started teaching harpsichord at Anglia Ruskin University. Dan maintains a modest collection of historic keyboard instruments and provides restoration and tuning services to similar instruments in Cambridge and further afield.
He has recently started teaching harpsichord at Anglia Ruskin University. Dan maintains a modest collection of historic keyboard instruments and provides restoration and tuning services to similar instruments in Cambridge and further afield.
Recordings of the works in today's concert
Marin Marais (1656-1728)
Sonnerie de Sainte-Geneviève du Mont de Paris (1723) [8:50]
The piece can be considered a passacaglia or a chaconne, with a repeating
D, F, E bass line. It is perhaps Marais' most famous composition that explores the various techniques of the viol, an instrument he studied as a student of Monsieur de Sainte-Colombe.
The work begins with 4 measures of the bass line played by the continuo and viol, then, on the 5th measure the violin takes over the melody.
Throughout the piece, the violin and viol take turns with the melody.
The viol part is of great difficulty because of Marais' own mastery of the instrument. The centrepiece is not the violin and its melody, but the viol. This work can be thought of as something to showcase the violist's skill, even though it does not always have the melody.
The piece also exists in a version for solo double bass, having been arranged by Norman Ludwin. An electronic version on a Fairlight synthesizer was used in the soundtrack of the 1982 film "Liquid Sky".
In this recording we hear the ensemble Fantasticus, who are Rie Kimura, Baroque violin, Robert Smith, vola da gamba, and Guillermo Brachetta, harpsichord:
Sonnerie de Sainte-Geneviève du Mont de Paris (1723) [8:50]
The piece can be considered a passacaglia or a chaconne, with a repeating
D, F, E bass line. It is perhaps Marais' most famous composition that explores the various techniques of the viol, an instrument he studied as a student of Monsieur de Sainte-Colombe.
The work begins with 4 measures of the bass line played by the continuo and viol, then, on the 5th measure the violin takes over the melody.
Throughout the piece, the violin and viol take turns with the melody.
The viol part is of great difficulty because of Marais' own mastery of the instrument. The centrepiece is not the violin and its melody, but the viol. This work can be thought of as something to showcase the violist's skill, even though it does not always have the melody.
The piece also exists in a version for solo double bass, having been arranged by Norman Ludwin. An electronic version on a Fairlight synthesizer was used in the soundtrack of the 1982 film "Liquid Sky".
In this recording we hear the ensemble Fantasticus, who are Rie Kimura, Baroque violin, Robert Smith, vola da gamba, and Guillermo Brachetta, harpsichord:
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
from Klavierbüchlein für Wilhelm Friedemann Bach (oldest son)
Invention No 12 in A major BWV 783 [2:00]
Sinfonia No 12 in A minor BWV 798 [2:10]
Two short Bach pieces for harpsichord.
One listener to 13-year old Peiting Xue's recording of this Invention for the Netherlands Bach Society remarks: A hideously difficult piece brilliantly executed by Peitung Xue. Congratulations!
Kanji Daito, playing a harpsichord by Akira Kubota, takes the Sinfonia at a more measured pace:
from Klavierbüchlein für Wilhelm Friedemann Bach (oldest son)
Invention No 12 in A major BWV 783 [2:00]
Sinfonia No 12 in A minor BWV 798 [2:10]
Two short Bach pieces for harpsichord.
One listener to 13-year old Peiting Xue's recording of this Invention for the Netherlands Bach Society remarks: A hideously difficult piece brilliantly executed by Peitung Xue. Congratulations!
Kanji Daito, playing a harpsichord by Akira Kubota, takes the Sinfonia at a more measured pace:
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Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber (1644-1704)
Sonata Representativa C146 (1669?) [10:00]
1 Allegro
2 die Nachtigall - nightingale
3 der Cucu (Kuckuck) - cuckoo
4 der Frosch - frog; Adagio
5 Allegro, die Henne - hen; der Hahn - rooster; Presto
6 Adagio - die Wachtel - quail
7 die Katz (Katze) - cat
8 Musketier Marsch - musketeer march
9 Allemande - elaborate 16th century German courtly dance
The Sonata Representativa for violin was written in 1669 and imitates birds and aimals. Biber copied the bird songs straight out of Musurgia Universalis, a treatise on music by Athanasius Kircher published in 1650, which also included musical notation of birdsong.
This recording by Ensemble D4 comes from the Chapel of Rumpenheim Castle, Offenbach am Main, Germany. The players are Katerina Ozaki, Baroque violin, Christian Zincke, viola da gamba, Toshinori Ozaki, theorbo, and Alexander von Heißen, harpsichord with Gabriele Baba and Irene Mennen-Berg bringing us the birdsongs, aided by two child announcers.
The recording includes children telling us which bird we are about to hear Biber imitate - or rather "Represent", in his music:
Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683-1764)
La Poule [3:20]
Here cones another imitative piece, this time about hens. Here is a commentary that accompanies Bruce Liu's piano recording for Deutsche Grammofon:
Among Rameau’s harpsichord pieces, La Poule is certainly one of the most famous. It is a perfect illustration of the French harpsichord style of the 17th & 18th centuries, characterized by the use of numerous ornaments, the concern for the picturesque and descriptive intentions, and the supreme elegance and refinement of the melody.
“We get a bit of the feeling of the primitive side, getting back to the nature and having some quiet life. Especially in my case with a tight schedule, it was such a great feeling to have these thoughts while playing”. – Bruce Liu
Our recording is by Luc Beauséjour playing a 1981 harpsichord by Montreal-based Yves Beaupré. If this is Luc's own harpsichord, it is a copy based on the 1761 instrument by Jean-Henri Hemsch, held at the Museum of the Paris Conservatoire.
Carl Friedrich Abel (1723-1787) [3:30]
Adagio in D major for viola da gamba WK 187, from the Drexel manuscript 5871
Drexel 5871 is the manuscript of 27 works for viola da gamba by Carl F Abel
The Drexel Collection is a collection of over 6,000 volumes of books about music and musical scores owned by the Music Division of The New York Public Library.
Donated by Joseph W Drexel in 1888 to the Lenox Library (which later became The New York Public Library), the collection, located today at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, is rich with materials on music theory and music history as well as other musical subjects. It contains many rare books and includes a number of significant 17th-century English music manuscripts.
This is Ernst Stoltz:
And this is the page from Drexel 5871 (a catalogue number within the Drexel Manuscripts). It may not be by Abel's own hand.
CF Abel, Adagio in D major, WK 187, from Drexel manuscript 5871
Johann Sebastian Bach
from Klavierbüchlein für Wilhelm Friedemann Bach
Sinfonia No 9 in F minor BWV 795 Largo, mesto ed espressivo
The harpsichordist in this recording is Benjamin Alard:
Dieterich Buxtehude (c1637-1707)
Trio Sonata in A minor for violin, viola da gamba & basso continuo BuxWV 272
• 1 Allegro (Chaconne) • 2 Adagio • 3 Allegro (Chaconne 2)
Once again we hear from the ensemble Fantasticus who opened our recordings for this week's concert.
Previous concert
27 Apr 2023 - Tailleferre Ensemble (flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon) - click here
Next concert
11 May 2023 - Mark Dangerfield & Seungyeon Lee classical guitar duo - click here
