Sorry to have been off the page for so long, but what could I do? Life is just so full of "interesting developments"!
Anyway, prior to a roadtrip last week I dug out a couple of other CDs I hadn't listened to in a long time: a disc of opera overtures by Rameau and a disc of string quartets by Sirmen (who?)
Jean-Philippe Rameau was a court composer at the court of Versailles, and his music was largely written for the elaborate entertainments which were so often featured at that court -- part opera, part ballet, part pantomime, and all lavish and fantastic.
When I dug this disc out, I was expecting a collection of "French overtures". This is a form established by Lully, widely copied, and certainly familiar to lovers of Bach and Handel: a slow introduction in a dotted rhythm, a vigorous allegro movement, and a brief return to the slow introductory material before the closing.
Rameau was assuredly French, but he was determined to blaze his own path and diverge from the model followed by Lully and his successors for so many years. Rameau's overtures don't fall into the pattern at all. This entire Oiseau-Lyre CD is a collection of brisk, sparkling fast movements. Each piece has a distinct melodic feel to it. The opera-ballets for which these overtures were written were inevitably based on classical myths, and a knowledge of the mythical stories certainly helps you to decode the titles! The music uses a diverse, piquant range of instrumentation -- none calculated to make you sit up faster than the heavy thwacks on the bass drum in the penultimate track, which effectively simulate the swinging of Vulcan's hammer. The players of Les Talens Lyriques under the direction of Christophe Rousset do all of this music proud.
And then I came to a beautiful disc of the music of Maddalena Lombardini Sirmen. The name of course is a dead giveaway. Here is one of the great rarities of recorded classical music: a female composer. Not to say that female composers were themselves terribly rare -- but for them to achieve public notice certainly was rare, and for one to achieve the accolade of a recording rarer still. However, some enterprising recording companies have been taking steps in recent decades to set the record straight (groan), and this disc came from the Cala label in 1994. It features the considerable musicianship of the Allegri String Quartet.
Lombardini became famous across Europe for her considerable skill as a composer and her more-than-considerable gift as a concert violinist. Documentary records exist of her performances of her six violin concertos in a number of major musical centres. The quartets were written when she was still young, and at a time when the "string quartet" as we know it was just coming into existence. Thus, Lombardini was right on the cutting edge of a new musical form.
If her name has remained largely unknown in our own time, blame it on our obsession with just a few top composers. Adulation for Haydn and Mozart leaves little elbow room for any other composer of their day to achieve a hearing -- and that is our loss.
Lombardini's music sounds like just what it is -- contemporaneous with Haydn and clearly out of the top drawer. In over an hour of music (four quartets) there isn't really a single boring moment. Much credit goes, of course, to the Allegris whose artistry sets the seal on music of great beauty and substance.
