I’ve
written about Initium’s fascinating work in the past, having
devoted a single review to no less than seven in this series
(see
review).
Volume eight has escaped review but nine is available and
the subject under discussion now. In case you don’t want
to plough through the previous text on the subject a few
largely reprised words should cover what this project is
and what it does.
Initium,
presided over by Roderick Simpson, has now produced a series
of nine discs attempting to restore rare eighteenth century
music. He uses a combination of synthesizer and computer
and has put to scholarly use the research he has made into
performance practice, orchestral layouts, acoustics – sizes
of the halls in the main – orchestrations and techniques
of the composers involved. If the words synthesizer and computer
strike fear into your heart you should know that Simpson
is an accomplished musician and has programmed his electronic
equipment with care and discretion.
This
volume is predicated on the idea of it taking place at a
concert
in the Teatro Italia, Venice, in 1776. It’s a concert of
Mozart and Wagenseil, the latter something of a project rediscovery
for Simpson. We are long used to recordings of the Trombone
Concerto by Wagenseil as well as symphonic works and the
Harp Concerto too I suppose. But the Fortepiano Concertos
are rare birds; these are the focus of the disc. There’s
real buoyancy in the D major, engaging, and with considerable
phrasal sensitivity in the slow movement. The E flat major
sports a very tricky solo part indeed – not that the Fourth
was a doddle – and it’s played with a degree of panache here.
So too the lovely slow movement. Significant historically
informed questions are raised, discussed and musically and
editorially implemented in these works – and the booklet
notes make highly instructive reading on such things as figured
bass parts, cadenzas, the use of batement and other matters.
In
the Mozart symphony the synthesised sounds do reveal themselves
more markedly – the strings retain a degree of integrity
but it’s one that sounds like an organ/harpsichord sonority.
These
clever performances encourage me to reprise the concluding
paragraph of my last review, that you could do much worse
than to encounter music in this form, however sometimes imperfect;
at its best this disc and the set from which it derives (all
available singly) reveals tantalising things about a whole
strata of (particularly) Viennese composition and in doing
so broadens and deepens our awareness, and admiration, of
it.
Jonathan
Woolf
I Suoni Assaggiati
