Customer Reviews

Vivaldi: Dixit Dominus; Galuppi: 3 Psalms

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

What a stunning work this is. It is impossible to exaggerate the sense of overpowering excitement that reverberated through the musical world upon the discovery that a manuscript, long thought to be a work by Galuppi, is in fact a full-scale sacred work by Vivaldi. A genuine and wondrous find indeed - and it's no surprise that performances of it the world over occurred as a result.

I had hoped the first recording of such an important piece (and such a genuinely great work in its own right) would be magnificent - and I was not disappointed. I was a little dubious when I saw that Roberta Invernizzi was the main soprano soloist, as I've not been entirely impressed with her singing on other recordings - but I am happy to say that my qualms were without foundation. On this recording, she's in wonderful control of her voice and sings like an angel. Sara Mingardo, the contralto, is mesmerising and almost unbearably beautiful, singing her solo work in tones like honey. Paul Agnew is remarkable as ever - the control this man has over his coloratura passages and the sheer beauty of his tone show why he is considered one of the world's finest tenors.

The playing of the ensemble is excellent.

My very, very faint quibble is that the conducting is clearly on the legato side where I found myself wishing it had a little more "spice" à la the exciting drive and accentuation of, for instance, Christie. But this is minor indeed in the face of such lovely performances.

The Galuppi works are very beautiful. Again, they present opportunities for each soloist to show their fine vocal attributes. Galuppi was extremely highly regarded during the period in which he composed, and it is a shame that he is not as well-known as Vivaldi. His genius deserves better than oblivion.

This is a recording to play over and over. It's an historic recording that has an important place in the oeuvre, but on its own merit, it is also glorious, glorious music, wonderfully sung and performed.

It's roughly a thousand kilometers from Venice to Dresden. Google Maps makes the astounding calculation that seven days plus a few hours should be enough to WALK the whole route, via Salzburg. I suspect that a traveler in the 1750s would have set a more leisurely pace by necessity. It was sometime in the 1750s, at least a decade after Vivaldi's death in 1741, that the Saxon Court in Dresden ordered "fresh" music for the Catholic liturgy from a thriving "copy shop" in Venice, owned by a priest, Guiseppe Baldan. The most prominent Venetian composer of that decade was Baldassare Galuppi (1706-1785), whose European fame was chiefly due, like Vivaldi's, to his operas, both comic and tragic. Accordingly, Baldan sent off a formidable sheaf of Galuppi's works, including the three splendidly almost-classical-still-vigorously-baroque compositions for chorus, soloists and orchestra recorded on this CD. If your previous listening experience of mid-18th C 'sacred music' is limited to Handel's Messiah, don't worry! Galuppi has more in common with Handel, both in technique and in quality, than almost any other composer of their era. Galuppi was 20 years younger than Handel, but 26 years older than Haydn; it would be unfair to describe his work as "conservative" but people did exactly that in his later years, contributing to his disappearance from the concert repertory for some 250 years. In fact, like Handel, Bach, and Zelenka, Galuppi incorporated wonderfully 'intellectual' counterpoint and bold chromaticisms into his genial, theatrical sacred works. Galuppi was an influential figure in the musical world of the mid 18th Century; the current rediscovery of his work is not merely another historical curiosity. His music is very satisfying, both in expressiveness and in construction. He was quite original in his blending together of chorus and soloist in the same movement, a structure that Handel seldom attempted. The soloists in this performance are some of the very finest baroque specialists in Europe today: sopranos Roberta Invernizzi and Lucia Cirillo, the marvelous contralto Sara Mingardo, tenors Paul Agnew and Thomas Cooley, and basses Sergio Foresti and Georg Zeppenfeld. It was my rapt appreciation of La Mingardo that drew my attention to this recording. The Körnerscher Sing-Verein Dresden is a thirty-voice chorus, and I'm notoriously skeptical of such choruses in recorded performances. This time, I'm delighted to say, the chorus is primo -- well in tune, well conducted, disciplined and rehearsed -- and the BIG bark of such a chrus suites the music perfectly. The orchestra includes strings, oboes, bassoon, theorbo, organ, and, on some pieces, trumpet -- all original instruments tuned to Venetian pitch. Conductor Peter Kopp is a moderating presence in control of such large and disparate forces.

Among the "Galuppi" compositions sent to Dresden by the priest Baldan there were, it seems, quite a number of forgeries or plagiarizations -- pieces by older or less renowned masters. At least four of these were works by Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741), possibly supplied to Baldan by Vivaldi's nephews. The "Dixit Dominus RV 807" is such a serendipitous fraud, which might have vanished except for Baldan's dishonesty. It was identified as Vivaldi's only in 2005, and this recording is its world premiere. The loss of such an imposing composition would have been tragic. This is not only authentic Vivaldi; it's Vivaldi at his best, a work of robust expressive scope and a clue to the enormous influence Vivaldi's music had upon composers of southern Germany and Austria, including Bach, Zelenka, Reichenauer, and Fux, in the next generation. Fans of the dark exuberance of Zelenka's sacred music will have an "aha!" epiphany upon hearing Vivaldi's Dixit Dominus; Zelenka studied with Fux in Vienna, but his Dresden works were patently influenced by Vivaldi. Note also the prominent role assigned to the bassoon in several of these compositions intended for the musicians of Dresden. Vivaldi, Zelemka, and Galuppi all exploited the skills of several successive bassoonists who worked in Dresden to extract the maximum virtuosity from that instrument.

Galuppi is high on the list of "neglected composers" of all time, but so is Vivaldi, even with the scores of recordings of The Four Seasons and other concertos. Listening to this Dixit Dominus, one can easily imagine that Vivaldi summarized all the compositional resources and all the expressive colors of Baroque music.

I wasn't expecting vocals on this album for whatever reason, but they were a pleasant surprise. The composition and sound of the pieces are excellent. This is great music to relax to in the evening after a long day at the office.