This week, samplings of three terrific Baroque concerts—a cosmopolitan chamber orchestra led by Italian violinist Fabio Biondi performs a “Suite of Nations”. The Czech Philharmonic Orchestra brings an oboe concerto by Alessandro Marcello; and a trio of top early music soloists—John Holloway, Jaap Ter Linden, and Lars Ulrik Mortensen—offer sparkling performances of pieces by Antonio Vivaldi and Joseph Bodin de Boismortier.
Download the Podcast for Program 9 (97 MB)
Performer Bios
John Holloway: Former concertmaster of Taverner Players and London Classical Players, John Holloway founded the ensemble L’Ecole d’Orphée, which made the first complete period-instrument recording of Handel’s instrumental chamber music. He has collaborated with such artists as Emma Kirkby, Stanley Ritchie, Andrew Manze, Davitt Moroney, and Marion Verbruggen, among others.
Jaap Ter Linden: Jaap Ter Linden has been principal cellist of Musica Antiqua Köln, English Concert, and Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra. In addition to John Holloway and Lars Ulrik Mortensen, he has performed chamber music with pianist Ronald Brautigam, violinists Elizabeth Wallfisch and Andrew Manze, and harpsichordist Richard Egarr.
Lars Ulrik Mortensen: A highly regarded harpsichordist, he has been Concerto Copenhagen’s conductor and artistic director since 1999, directing several productions at the Royal Danish Opera, including Handel’s Giulio Cesare and Monteverdi’s Il Ritorno d’Ulisse in Patria. As soloist and chamber musician, he has performed in Europe, North and South America, and Japan.
Czech Philharmonic Chamber Orchestra: The orchestra presently known as the CPCO was founded in 1977 by Pavel Prantl and colleagues from the world-renowned Czech Philharmonic. The Czech Philharmonic Chamber Orchestra marks its thirtieth anniversary with a North America Tour in October 2007.
Pavel Prantl: Pavel Prantl studied at the Conservatory in Kromeriz and the Academy of Music in Prague, garnering the first prize in various competitions. He has played as concerto soloist with numerous orchestras, as a solo recitalist, and in a duo with his pianist wife Martina Maixnerová.
Jana Brožková: Jana Brožková (oboe) won first prize at the International Double Reed Society (IDRS) Gillet Competition in 1997. She studied at the Prague Conservatory and the Academy of Performing Arts, where since 1999 she has been on the music faculty. Solo oboist for the Czech Radio Symphony Orchestra since 1987, Jana Brožková became solo oboist of the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra in 2002.
Fabio Biondi: Born in Palermo, Fabio Biondi has performed with period-instrument ensembles including Capella Real, la Chapelle Royale, and Les Musiciens du Louvre. With a repertoire encompassing three centuries of music, he has collaborated as soloist and conductor with such orchestras as Santa Cecilia, European Baroque Orchestra, Salzburg Mozarteum Orchestra, and the English Concert.
Europa Galante: Violinist and conductor Fabio Biondi founded the group in 1990 to draw the international public’s attention to a new Italian presence in the interpretation of Baroque and Classical music on original instruments. The ensemble has toured throughout the United States, Australia, Japan, Canada, and South America.
Playlist/Repertoire
Joseph Bodin de Boismortier: Trio Op. 37, No. 5 in A Minor
John Holloway, Baroque violin; Jaap Ter Linden, Baroque cello; Lars Ulrik Mortensen, harpsichord
Antonio Vivaldi: Cello Sonata No. 7 in G Minor, RV 42
John Holloway, Baroque violin; Jaap Ter Linden, Baroque cello; Lars Ulrik Mortensen, harpsichord
Alessandro Marcello: Oboe Concerto in D Minor
Czech Philharmonic Chamber Orchestra; Jana Broková, oboe; Pavel Prantl, conductor
Suite “Les Nations”
Europa Galante; Fabio Biondi, soloist and conductor
Program Notes
Joseph Bodin de Boismortier: Trio Op. 37, No. 5 in A Minor
Boismortier was a hugely prolific composer of instrumental music, cantatas, opera ballets, and vocal music. Between 1724—the year he began publishing his music in Paris—and 1747 he produced at least one hundred opus numbers of popular and commercially successful music, thus being able to live well without patrons. In his Essai sur la musique ancienne et moderne of 1780, J.B. de la Borde summed him up:
Boismortier appeared at a time when simple, undemanding music was the fashion. This gifted musician knew how to make use of this trend, and wrote countless Airs and Duets for the general public, to be played on flutes, violins, oboes, bagpipes and hurdy-gurdy…People said, “Happy Boismortier, whose fertile pen can produce a new volume each month, without stress.” Boismortier would only answer “I’m earning money.”
—John Holloway
Antonio Vivaldi: Cello Sonata No. 7 in G Minor, RV 42
Antonio Vivaldi died in Vienna in July 1741, leaving behind in Venice a vast collection of manuscripts (mainly of his own works, but also containing sacred music by other composers). By 1745 all these manuscripts were bound into the twenty-seven volumes of the Foa and Giordano collections which today belong to the Biblioteca Nazionale in Turin, Italy. Oddly, these volumes contain few sonatas of any description, and none at all for one instrument and bass. One can only speculate over the fate of the sonata manuscripts: given that we have, so far, more than five hundred concertos, forty-six operas, plus numerous sinfonias and pieces of sacred music, it seems highly likely that he composed more than the seventy-three sonatas for cello and continuo. Six of these were published in Paris by Le Clerc, as part of his reaction to an extraordinary vogue for the cello in Paris in the late 1730s (Le Clerc published at least twenty-six volumes of cello sonatas between 1738 and 1750).
—John Holloway
Alessandro Marcello: Oboe Concerto in D Minor
One of the best-known and frequently performed works for oboe, Marcello’s Concerto in D minor was among the works transcribed by Johann Sebastian Bach for solo harpsichord, contained in the collection titled XVI Concerti nach A. Vivaldi (BWV 874). There was no reason to question Bach’s misattribution, and in 1851 the authorship of Vivaldi was confirmed by Siegfried W. Dehn, editor of the transcriptions included in the first edition of Bach’s complete works.1 Dehn based his conclusion on another manuscript, Concerto III found in XII Concerto [sic] di Vivaldi elaborate di J. S. Bach, a collection of eleven concertos transcribed for solo harpsichord and one transcribed for organ.
Interest in these Bach transcriptions led other researchers to seek out the originals upon which they were based. Arnold Schering found a manuscript copy of the original oboe concerto in the Schwerin Library. Although the manuscript was signed only with the name “Marcello,” it was attributed to Benedetto Marcello in the Library’s catalog. Similarly, another manuscript copy of the concerto was listed in the catalog of the Darmstadt Library as Marcello, B. Concerto Accommode au Clavessin de J.S. Bach. Then in an article on Benedetto Marcello in Monatshefte für Musik-geschichte, Robert Eitner confirmed Benedetto as the composer of the oboe concerto transcribed by Bach.
The first scholar to suggest that authorship of the concerto could be attributed, not to Benedetto, but to his older brother Alessandro, was S.A. Luciani, who had initially reassigned the concerto to Vivaldi. Subsequently, in the British Library Frank Walker found the first edition of the concerto in a collection titled Concerti a cinque, con violin, oboe, violetta,2 violoncello e basso continuo, di Signori Rampin, A. Predieri, published in Amsterdam ca. 1716. Several years later, Albert Van der Linden, independently of Walker’s discovery, published an article in Die Musikforschung, declaring Alessandro as the composer.
Why the misattribution? First of all, there were no copyright laws in the eighteenth century; unauthorized copies proliferated; and sometimes composers claimed authorship of works they had not written, or famous composers were attached to spurious works. Like the concertos of Vivaldi and other Venetian composers including his brother Marcello, Alessandro’s work was typical of the genre during the late Baroque period. Furthermore, the family name sufficed to identity the composer, and since Benedetto was the more famous composer—dubbed the “Pindar of composers” and the “Michelangelo of music”—he was assumed to be the “Marcello” of such works. Finally, as a member of the Arcadian Academy, Alessandro signed the title page of his works with his Arcadian name, Eterio Stinfalico. Probably composed between 1708 and 1713, the Concerto for oboe in D minor is among Alessandro’s few works which were all written to be performed at gatherings of the Academy and other private soirees, but quite probably nowhere else.
- Tomás C. Hernández
Music Division, Library of Congress
1. The following account of the concerto’s misattribution is culled from the article by James A. Hobbs, “Marcello’s Concerto in D Minor for Oboe and Basso Continuo,” in the Journal of the International Reed Society, no 10 (1982), reprinted online at www.idrs.org/www.idrs/publications2/journal2/jnl110/marc.html (Return to text)
2. A word used at various times for the viol, violin, viola or cello—in this instance, a viola (Return to text)
Suite “Les Nations”
By the early eighteenth century, the French suite was a loose anthology of dances and gallanteries (character pieces), which composers all over Europe were writing. Dance movements had already invaded Italian music beginnings with the chamber sonatas of Corelli, and suites influenced by the French style had become extremely popular in Germany. At about the same time, the leading French composer, François Couperin (“François le Grand”) became interested in amalgamating elements of Italian and French music and their offshoots found in other countries into a single central style, which he termed Les goût reunis (united tastes). His greatest effort to achieve this ideal was a set of four suites titled Les nations: sonades et suites comprising “La Françoise,” “L’Espangnole,” “L’impériale” (German), and “La Piemontoise” (Italian).
The title of Biondi’s suite, “Les Nations,” is of course a tribute to Couperin. His suite goes a bit further by stringing together pieces of composers from various countries: Galuppi (Italy), Muffat and Telemann (Germany), Biber (Austria) and Campra and Destouches (France). Even more interesting is that in each piece, the composer expresses his impression of some land or culture other than his own. In a sense, then, this Biondi’s Les Nations is a musical travelogue of countries and peoples as perceived by foreigners.
—©2008 by Michael Fink
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Last Updated: 04/05/2010
