Leonardo: Shaping the Invisible
I Fagiolini/Robert Hollingworth
rec. 2012/18, Tom Dick and Debbie Productions, Oxford;
Angel Studios, London
Texts and other details online.
Reviewed as 24/96 download with pdf booklet from
thesixteenshop.com
CORO COR16171
[71:35]
A one-word review would suffice: fabulous. Or, to expand, formidable, favoloso, fabelhaft, fantastisch … To have the
Leonardo paintings and the music, not directly inspired by them, but
related to them in spirit is a most enlightening experience. Actually, one
work was directly inspired by and commissioned for the project: Adrian
Williams’ Shaping the Invisible. The programme, celebrating the
500th anniversary of Leonardo’s death in 1519, has already been
performed in various places; if it hasn’t yet come your way, check the
details from the link above.
We open with the most controversial painting but the easiest music to
choose. Salvator Mundi, also illustrated on the CD cover, has only
recently been accredited and named. There remain doubts about its
authenticity as a work of the master – possibly it’s largely from his
workshop – but it recently sold for a stupendous price. It seems rather too
baroque for me – a touch of renaissance bling, even – but Martin Kemp, who
has curated the visual side of the programme, seems to have no doubts in
his booklet notes and who am I to doubt the word of the Professor of Art at
my alma mater? Like all the paintings referred to, it’s reproduced
in the booklet and, for downloaders, the online presentation presents
a clearer image.
Actually, even purchasers of the CD will need to go online for the texts –
a serious omission from the booklet, but happily the extra bother is
rewarded with more details, including a video presentation.
The two works which share the title of the painting come from almost the
opposite ends of the spectrum of the music included here: Victoria’s 1575
setting of the Latin text from the Roman liturgy and Herbert Howells’ in
1936 of the translation in the Book of Common Prayer, originally part of
the Visitation of the Sick but transferred to the Funeral Service in 1928
and the opening of the composer’s Requiem. Both offer deeply felt
settings of the words ‘O saviour of the world, who by thy cross and thy
precious blood hast redeemed us, save us and help us, we humbly beseech
thee, O Lord.’ (The online text slightly misquotes the English in the
Prayer Book, itself slightly different from the Latin.)
Better still, Howells easily bridges the three-century gap between the two
settings with music clearly of its time, yet of all time. If this
performance whets your appetite for the whole work, as I hope will be the
case with this and several other works, there are fine
recordings by Trinity College Cambridge with Stephen Layton (Hyperion
CDA67914 –
Recording of the Month)
or the Gabrieli Consort and Paul McCreesh (Signum SIGCD281 –
review
–
review
–
review)
and for budget lovers there’s St John’s Cambridge with Christopher
Robinson (Naxos 8.554649) or Hyperion Helios CDH55220 (Corydon
Singers/Matthew Best –
review). For a 2-for-1 album of Howells’ choral works, including the Requiem, from the Finzi Singers and Paul Spicer, Chandos CHAN241-34
would be a good bet, one of many Howells recordings surveyed in
DL Roundup June 2011/2.
I called it an also-ran there, but only for those who already have some
of the music on other recordings.
I seem to have gone a long way around the houses – typically, you may think
– before coming to the point that I Fagiolini, under the sure direction of
Paul Hollingworth, offer fine performances of both works, with the
advantage of being able to look at the painting at the same time. That in
itself makes this an essential recording for anyone who loves art and music
as much as Leonardo clearly did; he seems to have been a musician before
becoming a painter. It’s as major an undertaking, in a
different form, as the National Gallery’s Seeing Salvation
exhibition of some years ago, the associated CD for which, on which I
Fagiolini also took part, remains available on Metronome METCD1042.
But the new recording is about much more than the spiritual. There’s as
much variety in the music as there is in Leonardo’s own paintings. Track
three, inspired by Mona Lisa, brings us a Monteverdi madrigal. From
the vast repertory of these, many of them performed by I Fagiolini (Chandos
CHAN0730, CHAN0749 –
review,
CHAN0760 –
review
–
DL Roundup July 2009)
the chosen Era l’anima mia, from Book V, 1605, is not one
of the most overworked.
Those looking for a complete recording of Book V are advised to steer well
clear of the Naxos recording from Delitiæ Musicæ; like several of my
colleagues, I find their performances far too dull and, though it's offered
at budget price, the fact that the performances on their recent recording of
Book VIII
run to four CDs rather then three negates the bargain. Better to go for La
Venexiana on a single album (Glossa GCD920925, download only).
Inevitably, there’s a second helping of Monteverdi: the painting of The Musician is
paired with the better-known Tempro le cetra from the later (Book
VII, 1619) collection. Here they take the
music, with its plea to the Muse to inspire the praise of Mars, a little
faster than on CHAN0730, but equally beautifully. I should mention a
recording by Clematis of this madrigal on a Ricercar album which I tucked
away in my
Summer 2017/1
ramblings: it’s recommended, with minor reservations, for combining
Monteverdi with some of his more obscure contemporaries (RIC377).
My recommendation for the complete Book VII, from La Venxiana, is now
download only (Glossa GCD920927).
If the Victoria and Howells Salvator Mundi and the pairing of
Victoria’s Unus ex discipulis with Rubbra’s Amicus meus, both
from the Holy Week Liturgy a propos of The Last Supper,
represent the high point spiritually, Janequin’s riotous La Guerre,
presented side by side with the painting of the Battle of Anghiari,
requires a very different approach and I Fagiolini dig into this
representation of battle with enthusiasm. It’s a remarkable work for its
time – well before Biber’s equally remarkable musical representations – and
it receives an enthusiastic performance, horses, cannons and all, as does
Orazio Vecchi’s equally striking but little-known piece from his
madrigal-comedy L’Amfiparnassso, chosen to illustrate Leonardo’s Grotesques. The Janequin caught I Fagiolini’s imagination so much
that they repeated it, sans accompaniment, on the final track. Here
they really live up the literal meaning of their Italian name – they are
full of beans. (I guess that doesn’t translate well into Italian,
especially as I mean the expression in the UK sense, full of life. Perhaps pieno di energia would do it.)
I’m not too sure about the version of The Art of Fugue No.1, sung in
the manner of the Swingle Singers to accompany Vitruvian Man, but
that’s almost my only reservation about this album. I’ve no complaints
about the choice of one of Bach’s most cerebral works to illustrate this
painting’s academic significance, but the transition to the Janequin is a
bit abrupt – perhaps it was the intention to surprise the listener; if so,
it’s successful.
Whose music is better to accompany the intricacies of Leonardo’s Knot Design than that of Josquin? His L’Homme armé Mass sexti toni may not be quite his most intricate work – I’m thinking
of his mirror fugues, illustrated by a cover picture of a lady with a
mirror, on The Tallis Scholar’s Missa Sine Nomine and Missa ad Fugam (Gimell CDGIM039 –
review
– Recording of the Month:
review)
– but the Agnus Dei from L’Homme armé is pretty intricate.
There’s Josquin’s trademark mirroring here, too, and it’s beautifully
rendered here. Beautifully enough, indeed, to make the listener seek out
The Tallis Scholars’ CD of Josquin’s two Masses on this theme (CDGIM019 or
better value on 2-for-1 CDGIM206 –
review
–
Tallis Scholars at 30).
If anyone can top Josquin in my esteem, it’s Victoria, whose Alma Redemptoris Mater follows, accompanying the painting of The Annunciation. For more Victoria, equally beautifully sung, you
need to turn only to the recordings by The Sixteen, also on Coro – it is,
indeed, their own label. They offer Alma Redemptoris Mater in a
slightly slower-paced recording than I Fagiolini on COR16088 – my Download
of the Month in
May 2011/2
– and their Victoria recordings are assembled in a 4-CD set on COR16089.
COR16088 is best downloaded now from
The Sixteen’s own site.
My other reservation, apart from the singing of the Bach, concerns the
Adrian Williams work
specially commissioned for this programme. Thus far all the music, old and
newer, has been part of the mainstream and there’s a good deal of
contemporary music that qualifies for that description, too. The music of
some contemporary composers has taken some time to bed down for me – that
of Sir James MacMillan, for example – but I’m far from optimistic that Shaping the Invisible will do the trick for me, though I do like
Gillian Clarke’s 2018 poem which it sets.
Jean-Yves Daniel-Lesur’s setting of words from The Song of Songs, Le jardin clos, on the other hand, while I was a little baffled by
the association with the painting of John the Baptist, fits easily into the
modern extension of that mainstream, sharing the intensity of the Rubbra
and not sounding much more ‘advanced’.
With very minor reservations, then, I was bowled over by the
visual presentation,
the music, the performances and the recording, especially as heard in
24-bit sound. With the desertion of the SACD format by all but a handful of
labels, that’s the version to go for; in fact, Coro offer nothing between
mp3 and 24-bit quality, the latter in alac or flac.
Brian Wilson
Contents
Painting: Salvator Mundi
Thomas TALLIS
Salvator mundi
(1575) [2:17]
Herbert HOWELLS
Salvator mundi
(1936) [1:59]
Painting: Mona Lisa
Claudio MONTEVERDI
Era l’anima mia, SV96 (1605) [3:04]
Painting: Saint John the Baptist
Jean-Yves DANIEL-LESUR
Le jardin clos
(1952) [3:46]
Painting: The Last Supper
Tomás Luis de VICTORIA
Unus ex discipulis meis
(1585) [2:17]
Edmund RUBBRA
Amicus meus
(1962) [2:39]
Painting: The Musician
Claudio MONTEVERDI
Tempro la cetra, SV117 (1619) [8:26]
Painting: The Five Grotesques
Orazio VECCHI
Daspuò che stabilao
(1597) [3:29]
Painting: The Vitruvian Man
Johann Sebastian BACH
The art of fugue No.1, BWV1080 (c.1740-50) [2:30]
Painting: The Battle of Anghiari
Clément JANEQUIN
La guerre
(1528) [6:18]
Painting: Fantasia dei Vinci (Knot Design)
Josquin DESPREZ
Agnus Dei
from Missa L’Homme Armé sexti toni (c.1490-1500) [7:26]
Painting: The Annunciation
Tomás Luis de VICTORIA
Alma Redemptoris Mater
(1581) [5:25]
Painting: Head of a Woman with untidy Hair
Cipriano de RORE
Or che’l ciel e la terra
(1542) [5:50]
Adrian WILLIAMS (b.1961)
Shaping the invisible (2018) [10:03]
Clément JANEQUIN
La guerre
(voices only) [6:05]
