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Agostino STEFFANI (1654-1728)
Duets of Love and Passion
Su, ferisci, alato arciero [9:03]
Tengo per infallibile [7:19]
E perché non m’uccidete [9:20]
Lilla mia non vuoi ch'io pianga [12:42]
Occhi belli, non più [10:31]
Fulminate, saettate [7:13]
Quanto care al cor [7:13]
Gelosia, che vuoi da me? [7:37]
Emőke Baráth (soprano), Amanda Forsythe (soprano), Colin Balzer (tenor), Christian Immler (baritone)
Boston Early Music Festival Chamber Ensemble / Paul O'Dette & Stephen Stubbs
Full Italian text with English and German translations
rec. 2017, Sendesaal, Bremen, Germany
CPO 555135-2 [71:02]

The career of Agostino Steffani rather foreshadowed that of Handel, upon whom his music exercised some influence, as this disc happens to demonstrate. Both composers, after a precocious early development, settled in a different country from that of their birth for the remainder of their professional lives, having absorbed a cosmopolitan array of musical styles along the way. Steffani’s achievement is perhaps all the more remarkable in that he forged an accomplished compositional voice – in retrospect, more or less bridging the gap between late Monteverdi and early Handel – whilst also working as a government minister and bishop.

Steffani travelled in the opposite direction from Handel, having been born in Italy and ending up in several German courts. Some of his Italian operas were performed in Hamburg at the end of the 1690s, where Handel may have encountered them when he worked in the city from 1703 to 1706. More certainly, he encountered Steffani after his apprenticeship years in Italy when he assumed the post of kapellmeister at the court in Hanover, and studied some of Steffani’s celebrated duetti da camera. Handel’s own vocal duets from that time are relatively well-known, not least as he recycled some of them in Messiah, but he was inspired to compose in this genre by Steffani’s examples, as well as imitating his vocal style. Not only are they of interest as models for Handel, therefore, they ought to be more widely appreciated as they contain some attractive music in their own right.

This recording comprises a judicious selection, in showcasing a variety of forms and textures, and utilising different combinations of voices; the results across the eight duets selected here are notably consistent, however. Over well-sprung and alert accompaniment from the Boston Early Music Festival Chamber Ensemble under the direction of Stephen Stubbs and Paul O’Dette, the performances from the singers are, in general, carefully reined-in to express the duets’ moods of jealousy, amorous torment and desire, and unrequited love. The intense sentiments of the texts are rather like those of madrigals, but in musical form these duets are like small-scale cantatas, and relate to the more developed structure of the arias of opera seria. Hence the singers in this release focus on sustained, elegant vocalism in their interpretations rather than localised expressive details at every twist and turn of the words.

‘E perché non m’uccidete’ and ‘Occhi belli, non più’ both begin with yearning, seamlessly spun lines from Emőke Baráth and Colin Balzer, and Amanda Forsythe and Balzer respectively, that intertwine and collide in exquisite dissonances, delineating the frustrated passion of the lover’s feelings. The central sections of these pieces invite more vigorous contrast, but that comes more from the heavier, percussive attack of the accompanying harpsichord and harp which impels the music than the singer themselves, who remain restrained and clear-toned. The close rhythmic interaction between the two voices in ‘Gelosia’ is more overtly erotic, as is the sighing and panting implied in the long dotted melismas towards its end. Again Forsythe and Balzer reveal the knack of expressing that through the music without overdoing it, leaving it to the imagination to feel the disjunction between inchoate reality as expressed in the text, and the hoped-for fulfilment to which the music alone gives elusive voice.

Vocal contrast comes about, to some extent, from the variously more radiant or mournful timbres evinced by the singers according to the dictates of the music or, more often, its tempo and metre. A marked distinction is made halfway through this programme, between the fourth and fifth duets on this disc: after the plangent urgency of some sections of ‘Lilla mia non vuoi ch'io pianga’, ‘Occhi belli, non più’ then opens with a cooler emotional temper, suited to the crisp but still expressive suspensions of its intertwined vocal lines, and ending in a mood of quiet, but moving introspection. Forsythe and Christian Immler bring out a teasing lilt in the opening section of ‘Tengo per infallibile’, whilst Baráth and Forsythe astutely mark the gavotte rhythm of the central aria sections of ‘Su, ferisci, alato arciero’, but in general the virtue of this disc is the composure and clarity of the vocal interpretations. Inexact intonation slightly mars Baráth’s performance on occasion when she is a little underneath the note, and Forsythe can be a constricted and a touch shrill in the upper register. The two male singers exude more consistent lyricism, although Immler, with the lowest voice of all, convinces more in finding emotional depth and pain in the music.

The impulse of the continuo accompaniment generally follows that of the vocal music above, with some lively and colourful embellishments from Luca Guglielmi on the harpsichord offering flashes of colour and moments of heightened emotion. Playing by O’Dette on the theorbo in particular, and Maxine Eilander on the harp is similarly vivacious and enthusiastic, though sometimes it obscures the contribution of the bowed instruments, which would otherwise help to integrate the overall texture better.

Alan Curtis’s selection of duets on the Archiv label probably has the edge over this release with the more consistently impressive singing of his vocalists. But this latest collection is very fine on its own terms, and there is only one duet in common with that earlier disc. CPO’s set is as good a way to start with this enticing music as any, and for collectors of this sort of repertoire it is self-recommending as it adds recordings of duets not already featured in the catalogue, either through Curtis’s recording, or those directed by Francesco Baroni on Brilliant Classics and Attilio Cremonesi on the Glossa label.

Curtis Rogers



 

 



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