Early Music America Spring 2013 - (Page 19)

recordingreviews Edited by Tom Moore Antoine Busnois For the Love of Jacqueline Asteria (Eric Redlinger, tenor and lute; Sylvia Rhyne, soprano) Magnatune magnatune.com/artists/asteria Asteria, the New York-based duo of Eric Redlinger and Sylvia Rhyne, won Early Music America’s first Unicorn Prize for emerging performers of Medieval and Renaissance music in 2004. This lovely disc is their fourth recording of 15th-century songs. Like the first three, it focuses on musical works from a single manuscript anthology, but this time the works (except for two anonymous songs) are by a single composer, Antoine Busnois (c. 1430-1492). Busnois was the most prolific song composer of the second half of the 15th century. At first he worked as a chaplain at the collegiate church of St. Martin of Tours, where his contemporary Johannes Ockeghem was treasurer, and at the church of St. Hilaire le Grand in Poitiers. In his late 30s, Busnois entered the service of Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, travelling with him for over a decade. After Charles’s death in 1477, Busnois worked for the Duke’s heir, Mary of Burgundy; the following year, Mary married Maximilian of Austria, and Busnois entered the Habsburg-Burgundian court chapel, where he seems to have stayed until his death. The songs on this recording come from the Dijon chansonnier, one of five surviving songbooks copied in the 1460s and 70s in the Loire Valley, France, and thus likely date from the first part of Busnois’s compositional career. In performing 15th-century music with a mixture of voices and lute, Asteria can be seen as choosing sides in a long-ranging debate concerning Medieval performance practice. For their last album, “Un tres doulx regard” (Magnatune, 2009), Asteria recorded music from the Oxford manuscript Canon. Misc. 213, the very manuscript that, in 1895, prompted Sir Charles Stainer to conclude that Medieval song was performed with a mixture of voices and instruments. This view was challenged only in the 1980s, when Christopher Page founded Gothic Voices to try out the all-vocal performances he found documented in Medieval literature. The beauty and success of Gothic Voices’ recordings ushered in a new era of all-vocal performances. Asteria’s sound recalls that of the Medieval Ensemble of London and the Consort of Musicke, who, in 1980, produced the only complete recording of a 15th-century chansonnier, the beautiful Chansonnier Cordiforme, which was itself the focus of Asteria’s 2004 recording, “Le Souvenir de Vous me Tue.” The history of the voice-andinstrument debates is narrated by Daniel Leech-Wilkinson in the first two chapters of his book, The Modern Invention of Medieval Music: Scholarship, Ideology, Performance (Cambridge, 2002). Redlinger and Rhyne have beautiful voices, but even more important is their flexible and limpid sense of phrasing and the lovely balance between their voices and Redlinger’s lute. Astoria’s performances are intimate and very musical. They present these songs not as antiques or examples for historical study, but as songs that can be heard and enjoyed on their own terms. The standout for me is the virelai “Ja que lui ne si actende”: Busnois’s use of imitation and playful alternation of textures is perfectly suited to Asteria’s performance as a duet of voices Early Music America magazine welcomes news of recent recordings. Please send CDs to be considered for review and pertinent information to Tom Moore, Recording Reviews Editor, 2937 Chapel Hill Rd., Durham, NC 27707; recordings@earlymusic.org. Early Music America cannot guarantee the inclusion of every CD sent for review. All reviews reﬂect the personal opinions of the reviewer only. Label web sites are supplied with each review to assist readers who are unable to locate discs through Amazon.com, CDBaby.com, ArkivMusic.com, or other outlets. with lute support. In her article on the composer in Grove Music Online, Paula Higgins singles out Busnois’s “long, arching, wide-spanned melodic lines” as particularly characteristic of his musical style. In practical terms, these long melodies lead to my sole criticism of Asteria’s performances: occasional rushing, particularly at the ends of sections. But even that small flaw is charming, a reminder of the human, a small price to pay for phrasing so relaxed and shapely. —Elizabeth Randell Upton François Chauvon Les nouveaux bijoux Washington McClain, oboe; Alison Melville, recorders and traverso; Julia Wedman, violin; Michael McCraw, bassoon; Charlotte Nediger, harpsichord. EMCCD-7773 www.early-music.com This modest collection of late French Baroque chamber music features the works of François Chauvon (fl. 1710-1740). Relatively little is known about Chauvon: he was a student of François Couperin and was affiliated with the French court, holding the titles of “ordinaire de Roi” and “Huissier de la chambre de son Altesse Royale Monseigneur le Régent.” The works on this disc are eight suites from Chauvon’s 1717 collection entitled Tibiades, which was dedicated to Couperin. Chauvon regarded these works as novel combinations of Italian and French styles and designated them “nouveau genre de pieces pour la flute et le hautbois avec quelques sonates pour le violin,” though he did not specify instrumentation or textures—solo versus tutti sections—in his scores. The performers on this disc take Chauvon’s vagueness in this regard as a point of departure, passing solo or continuo roles among different instruments in turn so as to present a variety of timbres and textures. The disc opens with Chauvon’s Onzième Suite, comprised of a Prélude and four other movements with descriptive titles in the tradition of Couperin’s harpsichord Ordres. The Prélude foreshadows the rest of the disc in terms of liberties taken with instrumentation: the scoring is treble-oriented and light on its feet, with some colorful call-and-response between the instruments. The other seven suites on the disc are likewise a bit unpredictable, typical of the time in eschewing a standardized form. The Cinquième Suite, for instance, does not include a prelude; the Première Suite has eight movements, while the Neuvième Suite has only four. There is a wide variety of dance types represented between the suites, including courantes, allemandes, siciliennes, gavottes, minuets, cotillons, rondeaux, and sarabandes. These are heard alongside evocatively titled pieces such as the dreamy and halting “Réflextion” of the Première Suite, a gorgeous little piece of fluff—under 30 seconds in length— for violin and harpsichord that ends rather capriciously on a half cadence; or “Arpègement,” which immediately follows “Réflextion” and sounds at once like a miniature étude for solo harpsichord. The disc concludes very appropriately with “L’agréable,” the final movement of the Deuxième Suite: the piece’s mercurial character and playful syncopations, coupled with adroit ensemble playing, nicely sum up the music and approach offered here. The disc as a whole sounds beautiful: the recording is pleasingly reverberant but clear, and the balance between the instruments is excellent. The harpsichord is crystalline, and the oboe very punchy; the bassoon is rich and warm, while the violin and flute are by turns lyrical and fleet. There is, as one would expect, a certain sameness to some of this music—there are 47 tracks of lilting Baroque chamber music on the disc, on average about a minute and half in length—but the ensemble, through colorful arrangements and tasteful, energetic playing, have done a fine job creating variety and interest, accentuating the intriguing protean character of this music. > —Alexander Carpenter Early Music America Spring 2013 19 http://www.magnatune.com/artists/asteria http://www.early-music.com http://www.Amazon.com http://www.CDBaby.com http://www.ArkivMusic.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Early Music America Spring 2013

Editor's Note
Reader Forum
Sound Bytes
Profile: Peter Nothnagle Early Music Engineer
Musings: Best of the Year
Recording Reviews
"Skillful Singing" and the Prelude in Renaissance Italy
Almira: Handel's Fountain of Youth?
Tempesta di Mare: Making a Splash with Fasch
2013 Guide: Workshops & Festivals
What I Did at Summer Camp
Book Reviews
Ad Index
In Conclusion: Teaching Recitative in Mexico

Early Music America Spring 2013