The Arne Overtures were published in 1751 but some
date from considerably earlier – recyclings from operatic or stage works
– and of real variety. Arne adopts the French or Italian overture as
contrastive devices and engagingly so, and there are some splendidly
enjoyable movements throughout their length though in toto they
don’t really withstand close comparison with the work of a superior
technician and melodist such as Boyce. But the Andante of the
First Overture is especially vibrant and vocal, the con spirito of
the Fourth replete with some dramatic flourishes and solo lines – confident,
strong, delightful. Especially delicious is the flute writing in the
Fifth Overture and the arching line of the Allegro con spirito.
How delightfully as well Hogwood – I think that this was the Academy
of Ancient Music’s first record – gives vent to the mobile chattering
in the Sixth or the grand Largo of the final Overture, No 8 –
expressive and noble, involved and intense through to the conclusion
of the sprightly Con spirito last movement. Robert Tear concludes
the first disc of this somewhat miscellaneous collection in fine form,
singing recitatives and arias from both Bacchus and Ariadne and
Fair Caelia Love Pretended. He is convincing and fluent, florid
and with clarion tone – where necessary – and with an admirably firm
chested stance to the music, rising to a peak in his singing of the
aria Cease lovely nymph to weep. This aria from Bacchus and
Ariadne receives a performance quite worthy of its sympathetic beauty.
The second CD is something of a mixed bag of organ
concertos and songs opening in incendiary fashion with Joan Sutherland
(no less) floridly dealing with The soldier tir’d, shadowed
the while by trumpeter Harry Dilley. I’m afraid that the Fifth Harpsichord
Concerto was fairly uninspired stuff and not even George Malcolm can
save it; not only that but it reappears in the guise of the fifth Organ
Concerto where we have a second opportunity to investigate its threadbare
lack of inspiration – and no more inspiring when played by Jean Guillou
in the Lutheran Church in Berlin than it had been when dutifully gone
through in Kingsway Hall. The Fourth Organ Concerto is considerably
more impressive and I enjoyed Guillou’s rather reedy registrations and
generous amplitude. Emma Kirkby deals with four of the songs – delightfully
executed but not as quicksilver settings as one might expect – Arne
is just lacking in melodic distinction to raise them beyond the merely
attractive. Jennifer Vyvyan and master accompanist Ernest Lush bring
the recital to an end with their 1953 O ravishing Delight from
The judgement of Paris.
The typographical intricacies of the recording details
would, I think, have defeated better men than I; clearly clarity and
simplicity in piecemeal collections of this kind are difficult but these
Decca British Music Collections are now leaders in the field of confusing
the public with a profusion of detail concentrated in a small space
bristling with round brackets, square brackets and semi-colons.
Jonathan Woolf
See also review by Peter
Wells