Tír Na HiFi

A richly rewarding recital, centering on composers from the first half of the 18th century.  There is a warmth, an Italianate charm, to these performances that, crucially, do not veer into virtuosic blandness (like so many performances of Italian baroque instrumental music) but remain lively, insistent, urgent and emotionally engaging throughout.

Three exceptional recordings of works by Luigi Boccherini.  There is a cerebral nature to this composer's work that is Haydnesque not only in its mastery of classical structure but also in the way it gently and subtly radiates a sense of immense human warmth.  The more I listen to this music, the more I get the sense of a life well lived, in its geniality and urbaneity and charm fleshed out by suggestions of darker emotions which are subsumed beneath the surface.

I have been returning to the Alina Ibragimova/Cédric Tiberghien cycle of Mozart violin sonatas on Hyperion over the past few nights and the experience has been deeply rewarding.  I purchased the individual volumes as they appeared over the past few years and, now that the fifth and final volume has recently been released, the entire cycle takes its place in my affections alongside the Rachel Podger/Gary Cooper cycle as the most fulfilling recordings of these perennially underrated masterpieces that I have yet heard.  There is a gently understated physicality and vigour in the sense of continuity and intuitive nuance which Ibragimova and Tiberghien create in these performances that makes them sound uniquely compelling.  They understand that the performance extremes of glacial pellucidity or giddy virtuosic abandonment are inadequate means of expressing the deeper emotions within these works.  Throughout their performances, there is a continual sense of light and shade and a sense of open-hearted discovery as the lyrical and emotional depths of this wonderful music are gradually unfurled before the listener.

Mozart's mastery in these works is reflected in the absence of grandiosity or any kind of big-boned statements which a lesser composer may have resorted to in order to artificially manipulate the listener's emotions.  Simply put, he never had to raise his voice to articulate the swirling passions of the human heart.  These are works of immense generosity and understanding, phrased with tenderness and delicacy, but which harbour the most intense of emotions, keenly assimilated within the composer's mind and articulated with a ruthless precision where not a single note is wasted and all is concentrated.  It is a mistake to dismiss these works as merely charming salon pieces.  Charm is the primary impression, to be sure, but closer listening reveals secondary layers of wistfulness and calm reflection, a sense of the composer contemplating past memories of joy and pleasure and pain and frustration and inwardly tempering the immediacy of these emotions.  All is hinted at and merely suggested and it is in close and dedicated listening that we find ourselves awoken to these deeply embedded sensorial images and inwardly moved by the the emotions they arouse. 

It is perhaps Ibragimova and Tiberghien's greatest achievement in their performance of these works that they create a sense of emotional space in this elegant music which evokes to my mind Yeats's great poem, "Long-legged Fly" and, in particular, the amazing line, "Like a long-legged fly upon the stream/His mind moves upon silence".  This beautiful paean to quiet meditation is analogous not only to the passage of deep thought that gave rise to great art but also to the space that we, as listeners, must give ourselves to truly engage with this great art.  Mozart's mind was uncluttered by authorial ego and unburdened by the shallowness of unnecessary complexity which served only to flatter the ego of lesser composers. Throughout his life, he strove for essential simplicity which sought only to express and make sense of the turbulent emotions tumbling deep within the human heart.


"THAT civilisation may not sink, 
Its great battle lost, 
Quiet the dog, tether the pony 
To a distant post; 
Our master Caesar is in the tent 
Where the maps are spread, 
His eyes fixed upon nothing, 
A hand under his head. 
Like a long-legged fly upon the stream 
His mind moves upon silence. 

That the topless towers be burnt 
And men recall that face, 
Move most gently if move you must 
In this lonely place. 
She thinks, part woman, three parts a child, 
That nobody looks; her feet 
Practise a tinker shuffle 
Picked up on a street. 
Like a long-legged fly upon the stream 
Her mind moves upon silence. 

That girls at puberty may find 
The first Adam in their thought, 
Shut the door of the Pope's chapel, 
Keep those children out. 
There on that scaffolding reclines 
Michael Angelo. 
With no more sound than the mice make 
His hand moves to and fro. 
Like a long-legged fly upon the stream 
His mind moves upon silence."

Long-Legged Fly
by W.B Yeats

The documentation of flautist Barthold Kujiken's recorded output for Accent in a series of themed box sets (the flute music of Telemann and Haydn and a box devoted to French flute music) has resulted in some of the most profoundly enriching listening experiences for me over the past year.  I missed many of the original releases and they have become a little tricky to track down individually so Accent have done the sensible thing and re-released them in these beautiful boxes.  This morning I have been listening to the box devoted to the chamber music with flute of Haydn and Kujiken's virtues of delicacy, warmth and acute sensitivity to the text and to the contributions of his fellow musicians are beautifully present throughout all of these performances.

Very highly recommended.

Listening this evening to a recent purchase, a new recording of Rossini's masterly Semiramide on the ever enterprising label, Opera Rara.  The main selling point of this recording is the utilisation of period instruments which have become commonplace in Baroque and Classical repertoire but is still somewhat of a rarity in Romantic opera (although Bellini and Donizetti have been recorded very successfully with period instruments in recent years).  Roger Norrington and Marc Minkowski have recorded some Rossini with period instruments but, based on the success of this performance, I sincerely hope that we see more such ventures.  (It does strike me as somewhat strange that the playfully inquisitive mind of Nikolaus Harnoncourt never alighted on Rossini, however.)

String textures have a bite and piquancy to them as do the woodwind and brass sonorities which never lapse into a homogenised instrumental stew.  Singing from both the principal leads and the chorus is consistently strong throughout  -  there is an intensity and vitality here, lending a passionate ardour to the ensemble scenes and a delicate intimacy to the arias and duets.   

A complete success and very highly recommended.