MusicWeb International One of the most grown-up review sites around 2024
60,000 reviews
... and still writing ...

Search MusicWeb Here Acte Prealable Polish CDs
 

Presto Music CD retailer
 
Founder: Len Mullenger                                    Editor in Chief:John Quinn             


Some items
to consider

new MWI
Current reviews

old MWI
pre-2023 reviews

paid for
advertisements

Acte Prealable Polish recordings

Forgotten Recordings
Forgotten Recordings
All Forgotten Records Reviews

TROUBADISC
Troubadisc Weinberg- TROCD01450

All Troubadisc reviews


FOGHORN Classics

Alexandra-Quartet
Brahms String Quartets

All Foghorn Reviews


All HDTT reviews


Songs to Harp from
the Old and New World


all Nimbus reviews



all tudor reviews


Follow us on Twitter


Editorial Board
MusicWeb International
Founding Editor
   
Rob Barnett
Editor in Chief
John Quinn
Contributing Editor
Ralph Moore
Webmaster
   David Barker
Postmaster
Jonathan Woolf
MusicWeb Founder
   Len Mullenger

REVIEW


Advertising on
Musicweb


Donate and keep us afloat

 

New Releases

Naxos Classical
All Naxos reviews

Chandos recordings
All Chandos reviews

Hyperion recordings
All Hyperion reviews

Foghorn recordings
All Foghorn reviews

Troubadisc recordings
All Troubadisc reviews



all Bridge reviews


all cpo reviews

Divine Art recordings
Click to see New Releases
Get 10% off using code musicweb10
All Divine Art reviews


All Eloquence reviews

Lyrita recordings
All Lyrita Reviews

 

Wyastone New Releases
Obtain 10% discount

Subscribe to our free weekly review listing

 

 

Buy through MusicWeb
for £13.50 postage paid World-wide.

Musicweb Purchase button

La Musique de la Chasse Royale: Muzyka Królewskich Lowów
Jean Joseph MOURET (1682-1738) Iere Suite de Symphonies - Gavotte (part 4) [3:23]
Luigi CHERUBINI (1760-1842) Iere Sonate [2:05]
Henry PURCELL (1659-1695) Trumpet Tune [2:42]
Jean Joseph MOURET Iere Suite de Symphonies - Menuet (part 6) [2:29]; Iere Suite de Symphonies - Allegro (part 2) [2:37]
Carl Maria von WEBER (1786-1826) Der Freischütz: Huntsmen’s Chorus [1:50]
George Frideric HANDEL (1685-1759) Water Music – Overture [1:58]; Water Music - Alla Hornpipe [3:30]
? Carillon [3:02]
Georg Philipp TELEMANN (1681-1767) Horn Concerto in D [5:33]
Joseph HAYDN (1732-1809) Horn concerto in D major – first movement (?)* [5:55]
Jacek Smoczynski (hunting horn)
Quartetto da caccia (Anna Kaczmarek, Helena Matuszewska (violins), Julia Hanasz (viola), Cecylia Stanecka (cello); Jan Bokszczanin (organ)*
rec. Church of St Rosalie, near Szelków, Poland, October/November 2010 and Church of St Anna, Warsaw, Poland, 2004*. DDD.
Booklet in Polish, English, French and German
ACTE PRÉALABLE AP0218 [35:11]

Experience Classicsonline



 
Everything about the presentation of this CD breathes luxury with a glossy and informative 28-page booklet concerning which my only grumble initially concerns the very small print. Or so I thought until it came to identifying exactly what is on this CD – as you’ll see below I can’t say exactly what parts of which Telemann Trumpet Concerto in D, arranged for horn, or of which Horn Concerto in D by Józef Haydn are on offer. Whilst I’m being critical of the English section of the booklet, Purcell’s Trumpet Tune also appears as his ‘Trumpet Tone’ and ‘chapel master’ is hardly an idiomatic translation of Kapellmeister (p.12).
 
Look more closely at the small print on the rear tray insert and you’ll be amazed to see that the playing time is just 35:09. Actually, my CD deck says that Acte Préalable are underselling themselves to the tune of two seconds and that’s the timing that I’ve given in the heading, but that hardly prevents this being the shortest CD that I’ve ever seen, apart from a handful of jazz reissues of short LPs.
 
Nevertheless, the recording is valuable in at least two important respects: it offers a selection of the music of Jean Joseph Mouret and it allows us to hear it and other works performed on the hunting horn, the grandfather of the modern instrument.
 
Mouret was a prolific composer for the French court and a CD wholly or largely dedicated to his music is long overdue. There’s very little of his music in the UK catalogue, mostly in elderly performances, so I’m grateful for the three selections from his Première Suite included here. They are, however, all brief, amounting to less than nine minutes in all, and serve only to whet the appetite, so I can’t help feeling that an opportunity was missed to have brought us more, perhaps even a whole CD, or at least enough to extend the playing time to a respectable length.
 
I’d have loved to have had much more of Handel’s Water Music, too. These are lively performances of the Overture and Alla Hornpipe from the Suite in D/G and I enjoyed them almost as much of those of the period-instrument King’s Consort (Hyperion Helios CDH55375) except that Hyperion give us the whole Fireworks Music and Water Music on a budget-price CD running to 68 minutes. One horn and a string quartet cannot, of course, match the sizeable wind and string ensemble (two horns alone) which Robert King assembled for Hyperion, but the result is surprisingly effective.
 
The Telemann and Haydn concertos also exist in a number of other recordings. Penalty points for not telling us which Telemann work this is – ‘a horn concerto in D’, as the booklet describes it won’t do: a TWV catalogue number would have helped. What we are offered are a slow movement and finale – why not at least add a couple of minutes playing time and include the first movement? My exasperation is only increased by trying to work it out, deciding that it doesn’t seem to be the best known horn concerto, TWV51:D8, then discovering from the booklet that my search was in vain; this is actually a transcription of a trumpet concerto. Which one, please?
 
I thought that there would be no problem identifying the Haydn Horn Concerto in D but, again, I’m not quite sure what we are offered – it’s certainly not the opening movement of either the Horn Concerto in D, Hob.VII:D3 or of the second concerto Hob.VII:D4, as implied by ‘part 1’ in the track list and the explicit statement in the booklet that it’s the first movement. Nor does it appear to be the adagio slow movement of either.
 
The booklet is silent, too, about the provenance of the Carillon on track 9; presumably it’s by that prolific composer Anonymous, but it sounds like a modern confection borrowed from or in the style of earlier music in the manner of ‘Albinoni’s’ (actually Giazotto’s) Adagio. I have to admit to a very soft spot for that work, despite its slurpiness and its almost certainly bogus provenance, and I very much enjoyed the Carillon, too.
 
An earlier Acte Préalable recording that I reviewed, Cantos de la España Antiqua (AP0060 - review) was also somewhat deficient in terms of information and I made a number of assumptions that earned me a bit of a rocket from an expert on late medieval Iberian repertoire, so you will understand why I’m being chary about filling in the booklet’s gaps this time.
 
As for the performances, the booklet describes the sound of the valveless hunting horn in combination with a string quartet – or with the organ on the final track – as almost magical and that’s a description which I wholly endorse. Not only is the actual sound beautiful but the solo performer’s ability to stay more or less in tune is a bit of a miracle, too. This recording allows Jacek Smoczynski to indulge his love of the horn and of falconry simultaneously; presumably that’s his photo with horn and falcon to hand on the inside front cover.
 
The recording balance very much favours the horn, but that’s almost inevitable and certainly not inappropriate.
 
For all my reservations, and they are too serious to allow me to make a positive reservation, the final impression with which I came away from listening can be summed up as haunting. I’m sorry that that’s as positive as I can be, especially as MusicWeb International sell Acte Préalable recordings; at least you know that when I do (frequently) recommend something that we sell, my appraisals are unbiased.
 
Brian Wilson
 

 

 

 

 


EXPLORE MUSICWEB INTERNATIONAL

Making a Donation to MusicWeb

Writing CD reviews for MWI

About MWI
Who we are, where we have come from and how we do it.

Site Map

How to find a review

How to find articles on MusicWeb
Listed in date order

Review Indexes
   By Label
      Select a label and all reviews are listed in Catalogue order
   By Masterwork
            Links from composer names (eg Sibelius) are to resource pages with links to the review indexes for the individual works as well as other resources.

Themed Review pages

Jazz reviews

 

Discographies
   Composer
      Composer surveys
   National
      Unique to MusicWeb -
a comprehensive listing of all LP and CD recordings of given works
.
Prepared by Michael Herman

The Collector’s Guide to Gramophone Company Record Labels 1898 - 1925
Howard Friedman

Book Reviews

Complete Books
We have a number of out of print complete books on-line

Interviews
With Composers, Conductors, Singers, Instumentalists and others
Includes those on the Seen and Heard site

Nostalgia

Nostalgia CD reviews

Records Of The Year
Each reviewer is given the opportunity to select the best of the releases

Monthly Best Buys
Recordings of the Month and Bargains of the Month

Comment
Arthur Butterworth Writes

An occasional column

Phil Scowcroft's Garlands
British Light Music articles

Classical blogs
A listing of Classical Music Blogs external to MusicWeb International

Reviewers Logs
What they have been listening to for pleasure

Announcements

 

Community
Bulletin Board

Give your opinions or seek answers

Reviewers
Past and present

Helpers invited!

Resources
How Did I Miss That?

Currently suspended but there are a lot there with sound clips


Composer Resources

British Composers

British Light Music Composers

Other composers

Film Music (Archive)
Film Music on the Web (Closed in December 2006)

Programme Notes
For concert organizers

External sites
British Music Society
The BBC Proms
Orchestra Sites
Recording Companies & Retailers
Online Music
Agents & Marketing
Publishers
Other links
Newsgroups
Web News sites etc

PotPourri
A pot-pourri of articles

MW Listening Room
MW Office

Advice to Windows Vista users  
Questionnaire    
Site History  
What they say about us
What we say about us!
Where to get help on the Internet
CD orders By Special Request
Graphics archive
Currency Converter
Dictionary
Magazines
Newsfeed  
Web Ring
Translation Service

Rules for potential reviewers :-)
Do Not Go Here!
April Fools






Error processing SSI file