17th Century Sonatas from the Düben Collection
Spiritato/Kinga Ujszászi
rec. 2021, All Hallows’, Gospel Oak, UK
DELPHIAN DCD34276 [75]
The Düben Collection consists of over two thousand manuscripts of early Baroque music, gathered by three generations of the Düben family, who were Kapellmeisters at the Swedish Royal Court from 1640 to 1720. The collection was left to the University of Uppsala in 1732 on the death of the last of the line of Dübens, and then forgotten about for a century and a half. A project to digitise the collection began in the late 1980s, led by Swedish and American academics. It resulted in the
Düben Collection Database Catalogue, which has made the entire collection freely available to all. I know of one other recording that has utilised the collection (Daphne - review), and it has one work in common (the Albrici Sinfonia) with this Delphian release.
Buxtehude is the big name here among the nine composers, while a few others, such as Fischer and Melani, have a small presence in the catalogue. When you see “circa” and “flourished” applied to birth and death dates, you know you are in the realm of the obscure, though only three of the eleven works are identified as first recordings. I don’t intend to comment on each work, as I think there is a general aspect to the album that is more important, but let me highlight a few.
Albrici’s Sonata a 5, one of four works to include trumpets has a gracefulness and a gentle dance rhythm in its first section that is beguiling, but rather like something by Philip Glass, there is a lot of repetition. The Buxtehude sonata, the most recorded work on the album with at least ten in the catalogue, is given a quite slow reading, which doesn’t do it any favours. The version by Ton Koopman’s ensemble on Challenge Classics (review) has real verve; it is two minutes faster than Spiritato, which is really significant in a work around seven to eight minutes. Prentzl’s Sonata a 2 is possibly the pick of the album, the very different colours of the trumpet and dulcian providing a substantial contrast to the otherwise string dominance of the other works.
Unfortunately, I do have a reservation with the recording which prevents me from giving it my full approval. While there is plenty of variation in tempos, I felt an element of stylistic sameness emerge, especially in the rhythms. To an extent, it was hard to tell when one work finished and the next started. Certainly, the pieces with trumpets did help change the instrumental colours, but not enough to dispel my reservations. There are, of course, times when the rhythms – I will call them courtly – do change, but perhaps they needed to be accentuated a little more. For example, in the middle of the Thieme Sonata a 8 is a section in which there is clearly a dance rhythm in the strings, answered by trumpets, but it remains subdued dynamically, and soon passes. Not helping the overall impression was the decision to close the disc with two works dominated by slow tempos. It does cause the recording to run out of steam a little for the last twenty minutes.
My favourite album in the genre of early Baroque chamber music is the Naxos release Das Partiturbuch (review), also taken from a collection made in the 17th century. The two recordings have much in common, but the variety of styles and rhythms of the works in the Naxos release places it far above the Delphian for sheer enjoyment. Indeed, that highlights the difference between the two for me: the Naxos has a sense of joy whereas the Delphian has reverence.
Spiritato is a period-instrument ensemble with an interest in the obscure reaches of the early Baroque; their previous release on Delphian was received very favourably (review). I can’t fault their playing technically, but as I have said, I feel it is a little too buttoned-up. Surely, this music was not just intended to be simply played quietly in the background at court gatherings. I can’t help think that there is something ironic in the ensemble’s name when that seems to be for me what is missing from their performance.
The author of the booklet notes, Erik Kjellberg, has been one of the driving forces behind the catalogue, and he provides excellent background to the project, to the musical scene in the Swedish Court and the music itself, doing his best to provide the reader with information on composers where very little must exist. The sound quality is very good.
I very much wanted to enjoy this more than I did, hoping to have another album to play alongside Das Partiturbuch, but it seems that my search goes on.
David Barker
Contents
Clemens Thieme (1631-1668)
Sonata a 5 in B-flat
Sonata a 8
Vincenzo Albrici (1631-1696)
Sonata a 5
Sinfonia a 2 violino e basso
Dietrich Buxtehude (1637-1707)
Sonata in A minor, BuxWV272
D Prentzl (fl. later 17th century)
Sonata a 2 instromenti con basso
Andreas Kirchhoff (d. 1696)
Sonata a 4
Johann Wilhelm Furchheim (c. 1635-1682)
Sonata a 5
Johann Jacob Löwe von Eisenach (1629-1703)
Capriccio a 2 clarini, No 2
Johannes Caspar Ferdinand Fischer (c. 1665-1745)
Lamento ‘Herzlich thut mich verlangen’
Alessandro Melani (c. 1639-1703)
Sonata a 5 in C
Published: November 1, 2022
