(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
The discovery of the music of the great Danish composer and organist Dietrich Buxtehude (c. 1637-1707) is due to the renaissance music of his admirer Johann Sebastian Bach in the mid-1800s. At 20 years old, Bach made his legendary just over 30 miles long walk you can also to Lübeck to hear Buxtehude playing organ. Music scholars have thought that since the great master admired this man so much, his works had to be worth looking into. They are!
Great style
Buxtehude is believed to have been born in Helsingborg. In the mid-1650s, he took over his father's post as organist at St. Mary's Church. In 1668, he moved to Lübeck to take over the organist's office in the Church of Mary after Franz Tunder. Here he built up a reputation as a composer and organist who would lead the meeting with the gradually more famous Thomas office 37 years later.
We have 21 chamber works by Buxtehude. Opus 1 and 2 contain seven each, all for gambe, harpsichord and violin; the last seven exist only in manuscript. These works belong to the North Germanic chamber tradition and are close to the new "fantastic style", which emphasized expressiveness, virtuosity and excitement. The combination of a good melodic sense and individual, contrapuntal voices is particularly appealing to this composer.
Hyperion has recently released a CD where English Convivium deals with opus 1. This is a trio consisting of three of the leading early musicians today, violinist Elizabeth Wallfisch, cellist Richard Tunnicliffe and harpsichordist Paul Nicholson. Their game is outgoing and very cohesive. Wallfisch's tone is admirably pure. My only objection is that they are a little too uniform in the phrasing – the impression is a little flat.
Gamben in the center
Two of the world's foremost gambists are playing on a new Buxtehude release from Astrée Naïve. Christophe Coin and Lorenz Duftschmid play in Ensemble Baroque de Limoges, which Coin also directs. Here we find sonatas 3 and 4 from opus 1, two cantatas and one Complain Lied, all of which include gambe in the instrumentation. In addition, we get three works for solo key instruments.
Coin is known as a cellist in Quatuor Mosaïques, whose last release this reviewer gave a lukewarm reception in the previous column. On this release, however, he impresses greatly.
For it must be said that the interpretation we get here of the sonatas is in a class of its own. Here there is more bounce in the rhythm, more vitality and more contrasts than in the English interpretation. Coin and company extend the general bass with a bass gamble, plus a theorbe in sonata # 3. This does not actually make the texture too thick.
In the cantata Rejoice in the Lord, BuxWV 64, we hear the bright tenor Rodrigo del Pozo, and in the other two vocal works soprano Bénédicte Tauran sings. The complaints Must be able to unbind, BuxWV 76/2, Buxtehude wrote after his father's death in 1674, and Gen heaven to my father is written for the Ascension of Christ. Tauran's voice fits this repertoire well, because it has a pure and melancholy tone postage. These are chamber cantatas, where the voice and instruments are equal partners.
William Jansen treats organ and harpsichord in the solo works for these, a preludium in g minor for harpsichord, BuxWV 163, a coral arrangement for organ of I went there with peace and joy, BuxWV 76/1, and a toccata in d minor, BuxWV 155, for organ. And if I have something to postpone on this recording, it is Janssen's sometimes a bit too rhetorically pointed play in these solo works, which I do not think is fully integrated into the music's progress. But that is not an objection that should get anyone from buying this very appealing release.
