Full of the joy of Christmas: music by Heinrich Schütz and his contemporaries

Heinrich Schütz

Heinrich Schütz The Christmas Story; Arcangelo, Jonathan Cohen; Wigmore Hall
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 23 December 2021 Star rating: 5.0 (★★★★)
Schütz's music for Christmas alongside that of his contemporaries, in an evening full of wonder and joy, vivid colours and amazing musical textures and timbres

We don't hear anything like enough music by Heinrich Schütz, so it was doubly welcome that Arcangelo (artistic director Jonathan Cohen) and Wigmore Hall decided to herald Christmas with a glorious sequence of Heinrich Schütz's music on Friday 23 December 2021. The second half was devoted to Die Weihnachtshistorie (The Christmas Story) whilst the first half was a sequence of Christmas motets by Schütz and Michael Praetorius with instrumental music from Johann Verdanck and Johann Hermann Schein.

A very full Wigmore Hall platform featured singers Miriam Allan and Zoe Brookshaw (sopranos), Alexander Chance (alto), Laurence Kilsby, Nicholas Mulroy, Guy Cutting (tenors), James Newby (baritone), Dingle Yandell and William Gaunt (bass), alongside a proto-orchestra featuring violins, viols, violone, recorders, dulcian (a sort of early bassoon), cornets, trombones, lute, organ and harpsichord.

One of the things to bear in mind about Schütz is that he was long-lived (dying at the age of 87!) and remained musically active into old age so that Die Weihnachtshistorie dates from 1660 when he was 75 (and published four years later), very much the grand old man, yet how vivid, vigorous and imaginative is the music. He had trained in Italy with Giovanni Gabrieli, and whilst his career in Germany involved much music for the Lutheran tradition, his grandest pieces written for the grand court of the Elector of Saxony in Dresden (where he worked for the Electors Johann Georg I and his son, Johann Georg II) have the distinctive tang of Italian music.

Richness of invention in the contemplation of God in the beauties of nature: Iestyn Davies and Arcangelo in Handel's German Arias

Handel: Nine German Arias - Iestyn Davies, Arcangelo (Matthew Truscott, Jonathan Cohen, Jonathan Manson, Thomas Dunford - Wigmore Hall (image taken from live-stream)

Handel Nine German Arias, Geminiani, Marais; Iestyn Davies, Arcangelo; Wigmore Hall
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 14 December 2020 Star rating: 5.0 (★★★★★)
Food for the soul, Handel's contemplative vocal chamber music in wonderfully engaged performances

On the day that it was announced that London would be going into Tier 3 and that entertainment venues would be closing to live audiences, we managed to slip in one last live concert, Handel's contemplative settings of poetry expounding the joy and beauty of God's creation, thoughts that we rather need at the moment.

Counter-tenor Iestyn Davies and members of Arcangelo (Jonathan Cohen, organ/harpsichord, Matthew Truscott, violin, Jonathan Manson, cello, Thomas Dunford, lute) performed Handel's Nine German Arias alongside Francesco Geminiani's Cello Sonata in F Op.5 No.5, Handel's Violin Sonata in A Op.1 No.1 and Marin Marais' Les voix humaine at the Wigmore Hall on 14 December 2020.

Considering the polyglot nature of his talent and the profusion of his works, Handel did not set very much of his native language. There are only two mature works in German and both of these have links to Hamburg and to the poet Barthold Heinrich Brockes (1680–1747), who was a Hamburg town councillor, Handel's Brockes Passion and the Nine German Arias. The passion seems to have been written in around 1716 and performed, alongside settings of the same text by Keiser, Telemann and Matheson (Handel had worked for the first as  a young man in Hamburg and was friends with the latter two) in Hamburg in 1719. Handel may have written the passion as a feeler towards a career in German if the political situation deteriorated (the Jacobite Rebellion had been in 1715, it many not have been completely obvious to those on the ground that the Hanover Dynasty would survive in England and Handel's fortunes were bound up with them). 

In 1721, Brockes’s collection of poems Irdisches Vergnügen in Gott, bestehend in Physicalisch- und Moralischen Gedichten was published in Hamburg, it was arranged in a way to encourage musical settings and was so popular that the 1724 edition nearly doubled the number of pages. It seems to be from the second edition that Handel chose nine arias to set for voice, obbligato instrument and continuo. Handel's links to Brockes are fascinating, Brockes was at Halle University the same time as Handel (five years his junior) was registered there, and Brockes held weekly concerts in his apartment. The two must have interacted whilst Handel was working at the opera theatre in Hamburg, and in 1727 when Brockes published his second volume of Irdisches Vergnügen in Gott, he directly referred to Handel's settings of his poetry. And in a later publication, Brockes refers to family boating trips in which he and his children would perform some of these arias, which implies that Brockes possessed a manuscript copy of the settings.

We don't know why Handel set them, perhaps there was another project in Hamburg. From 1721 his connections there included his friend Telemann, and we know that around this time Telemann set Brockes' poetry. The music was not published, so we do not have a dedication (often the source of much information in 18th century music) and Handel's manuscript (which survives in the British Library) does not specify the obbligato instrument (but the range is such that a flute could not be used for all the arias). They were probably not conceived as a single cycle, and Handel would be perhaps surprised to find us performing all nine together.

At the Wigmore Hall, Matthew Truscott played the obbligato line (except in 'Süsser Blumen Ambraflocken' when it was played by Jonathan Manson) with continuo from Manson (cello), Dunford (lute) and Cohen (moving between organ and harpsichord). We heard the arias in four groups, three pairs and a trio at the end, interspersed with solo moments for the instrumentalists, Geminiani's Cello Sonata, Handel's Violin Sonata and a lute transcription of a Marin Marais solo.

New Year's Eve with Arcangelo

Emöke Baráth

Blow, Purcell, Handel, Vivaldi; Emöke Baráth, Peter Whelan, Neil Brough, Paul Sharp, Arcangelo, Jonathan Cohen; Wigmore Hall
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on Dec 31 2017 Star rating: 5.0
A programme full of engaging vitality and fine music making

New Year's Eve was celebrated in style at the Wigmore Hall on Sunday 31 December 2017 when Jonathan Cohen and Arcangelo gave a us an enjoyably festive evening of baroque music, full of engaging and vital music making. The programme was full of symmetries, a pair of settings of the Gloria (by Handel and by Vivaldi), two concertos by Vivaldi (for bassoon and for two trumpets), and two Odes for St Cecilia's day (Blow's Begin the Song and Purcell's Welcome to All the Pleasures). The planned soprano soloist Anna Lucia Richter was unfortunately ill, and her place was taken at very short notice by the Hungarian soprano Emöke Baráth, and Arcangelo was also joined by Peter Whelan (bassoon), Neil Brough and Paul Sharp (trumpets).

With Jonathan Cohen directing from the harpsichord and organ, there was a vocal ensemble of eight singers who also took on the solo responsibilities in the Blow and Purcell - Charlotte Beament, Zoe Brookshaw, Anna Harvey, David Allsopp, Samuel Boden, Thomas Walker, Stephen Kennedy and Dingle Yandell - plus an instrumental ensemble of five strings, led by Louis Creach, with Thomas Dunford on lute.

Clérambault, Couperin, Monteclair - Arcangelo at Wigmore Hall

Sophie Junker

Couperin, Clérambault, Monteclair; Arcangelo; Wigmore Hall
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on Jul 21 2017
Star rating: 5.0
Early 18th century French chamber music and chamber cantatas performed with expressive style

The final concert of Jonathan Cohen and Arcangelo's residency at Wigmore Hall (21 July 2017) explored early 18th century French chamber music with two of the suites from Francois Couperin's Les Nations and chamber cantatas by Louis-Nicholas Clérambault and Michel Pignolet de Monteclair. Violinists Sophie Gent and Coline Ormond (replacing Bojan Cicic who was ill), flautist Georgia Browne, viola da gamba Jonathan Manson, soprano Sophie Junker, with Jonathan Cohen on harpsichord performed Clérambault's Léandre et Héro, Couperin's L'Impériale and La Francoise, and Montéclair's La retour de la paix.

Clérambault's Léandre et Héro was published in 1713 in his second volume of cantatas, Canatates francoises Mellées de Simphonies and it was one of his most popular works. The author the text was Marie de Louvencourt, the mistress of Hilaire Rouillé du Coudray, one of the aristocrats whose enthusiasm for Italian music countered the court's rigid espousal of the French musical style.

The cantata is a sequence of arias and recitatives, though it has an opening trio-sonata-like prelude and adds brilliant instrumental writing to some of the movements. The instrumental introduction was elegant and slow with some extremely expressive suspensions. Sophie Junker sang with an extremely plangent and highly elegant sense of line. Her recitatives were fluent and expressive, with Clérambault sometimes adding a decorative violin line. The first aria was lively with a busy bass line, whilst the second, 'Air fort tendre' was powerful stuff indeed, and Clérambault brought in illustrative instrumental writing on the word 'Volez' (fly). This descriptive writing continued in the 'Tempête' movement with is fast passagework for the instruments (including the viola da gamba). We finished with a graceful 'Air' with a nicely perky sense of rhythm.

Vilde Frang, Jonathan Cohen and Arcangelo in Mozart Violin Concertos

Vilde Frang © Marco Borggreve

Mozart Symphony No. 27, Violin Concertos Nos. 1 & 5, Haydn Symphony No. 47; Vilde Frang, Jonathan Cohen, Arcangelo; St Johns Smith Square
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on Feb 5 2016
Star rating: 5.0
Elegant and vividly engaging evening of Mozart concertos

Last year Jonathan Cohen and Arcangelo recorded a disc of Mozart Violin Concertos with the Norwegian violinist Vilde Frang. On Friday 5 February 2016 at St John's Smith Square they gave us the chance to hear Frang in action live when she joined Cohen and his ensemble for a programme which included Mozart's Violin Concerto No. 1 in B flat, K207 and Violin Concerto No. 5 in A major, KV219, Mozart's Symphony No. 29 in A major K207 and Haydn's Symphony No. 47 in G major, Hob.1:47.

Jonathan Cohen © Pascal Gély

The works in the programme all dated from the early 1770s, years when Mozart was in Salzburg and rather chafing at the restrictions there. In fact his Symphony No. 29 in A major K207 was written in 1774 when he had just returned from Vienna where he had failed to get any sort of alternative permanent appointment. The symphony's scoring, with just strings, two oboes and two horns, fits the forces available from the Salzburg court orchestra and Mozart's violin concertos were probably all written for Antonio Brunetti the leader of the Salzburg orchestra.

The concert began with Mozart's Symphony No. 29 in A major a remarkably poised and intimate work, considering it was written for the orchestra of an employer for whom Mozart no longer wanted to work. Arcangelo fielded 20 strings, a group big enough to make a vividly present sound yet small enough it to be clear that each player was important in their own right. They are an engaging and involving group to listen to, and this concert was no different.

Arcangelo at Wigmore Hall - Enchanted Forest

Anna Prohaska
(c) Monika Rittershaus

Arcangelo, conductor Jonathan Cohen, and soprano Anna Prohaska are half way through their Enchanted Forest tour and arrived at London's Wigmore Hall on Wednesday 15 January after successful concerts in Vienna, Munich and Frankfurt. The tour is linked to their new CD, Enchanted Forest, which appears in March on the Archiv label. The concert featured arias by Handel, Purcell and Vivaldi, alongside instrumental music by Purcell, Handel and Zelenka. The vocal items included a variety of nymphs and other enchanted creatures, with Handel's Poppea making an appearance at the end, linked by short instrumental movements. The result was designed, I suspect, to play without a break but such was the audience's enthusiasm for Prohaska's performances, that applause was inevitable.

CD Review - Handel's finest arias for Base voice

Perhaps we sometimes lose sight of the fact that Handel wrote for some of the greatest singers and singing actors of his age. In our era of  stylistic specialism it is all to easy for baroque opera to be relegated to the area of the specialist performer; but just listen to a great voice like Joan Sutherland or Renee Fleming, to understand. And in the oratorios, whilst great bravura is rarely used (Handel was writing for a group of singers that he had trained himself), expressivity was what was called for, the qualities of a great singing actor. For this new disc of Handel's bass arias, Arcangelo under Jonathan Cohen have teamed up with Christopher Purves.

Purves is perhaps a surprising choice, his stage repertoire has generally veered towards the 19th century and later. But he has never been anything other than versatile (he joined Harvey and the Wallbangers after leaving University) and has developed into one of our great singing actors, with a feel for text, line, music and drama. It is these qualities which he brings to this disc Handel arias.