Guardian Angel Works by Biber, Bach, Tartini, Pisendel

CHANNEL CLASSICS CCS SA 35513 Rachel Podger v i o l i n Guardian Angel Works by Biber, Bach, Tartini, Pisendel [ 1 ] 35513PodgerGuardianAngelBooklet.indd 1 19-08-13 19:46 Rachel Podger achel Podger is one of the most creative talents to emerge in the field of period Rperformance. Over the last two decades she has established herself as a leading interpreter of the music of the Baroque and Classical periods. She was educated in Germany and in England at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, where she studied with David Takeno and Micaela Comberti. After beginnings with The Palladian Ensemble and Florilegium, she was leader of The English Concert from 1997 to 2002 and in 2004 began a guest directorship with The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment with whom she appeared in a televised bbc Prom in 2007. As a guest director and soloist she has collaborated with numerous orchestras including Arte dei Suonatori (Poland), Musica Angelica and Santa Fe Pro Musica (usa), The Academy of Ancient Music, The European Union Baroque Orchestra, Holland Baroque Society, the Handel and Haydn Society (usa), Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra (usa). Rachel has toured and recorded extensively with fortepianist Gary Cooper. Rachel records exclusively for Channel Classics and has won numerous prestigious awards including the Baroque Instrumental Gramophone Award for La Stravaganza in 2003 and the Diapason d’Or de l’année in the Baroque Ensemble category for the La Cetra Vivaldi concertos with Holland Baroque Society in 2012. Rachel directs her own ensemble, Brecon Baroque, with whom she has recorded Bach’s Violin Concertos, released in October 2010 to outstanding reviews. She is also Artistic Director of her own festival: the Brecon Baroque Festival. Rachel is an honorary member of both the Royal Academy of Music (where she holds the Michaela Comberti Chair for Baroque Violin) and the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama (where she holds the Jane Hodge Foundation International Chair in Baroque Violin) and teaches at institutions throughout the world. [ 2 ] 35513PodgerGuardianAngelBooklet.indd 2 19-08-13 19:46 [ 3 ] 35513PodgerGuardianAngelBooklet.indd 3 19-08-13 19:46 Introduction his disc of solo violin music is a real mixture of some favourite pieces. Pisendel’s TSonata was probably written in 1716, just before Bach’s unaccompanied Sonatas and Partitas in 1720 – and one wonders whether Bach may have known it before embarking on his own giant compositions for solo violin? The two men had met in 1709, and it would be entirely consistent for Bach to take inspiration from another composer, as he did from his German forebears like Georg Boehm and, a little latter, when he was very taken with Vivaldi’s set of concertos L’Estro Armonico and reworked some of the concertos for solo harpsichord and 4 harpsichords in concerto. Pisendel took his inspiration from his teacher Torelli. His solo sonata shows he was a real virtuoso; the writing is idiomatic and challenging at the same time (he writes a 10th double stop in the last movement!). The first movement is an inspired improvisation during which he uses many different rhetorical devices such as repetition, surprise and sequence, but in a manner which never feels formulaic or predictable; the dramatic landscape is extremely striking for performers and listeners alike. I adore Bach’s Flute Partita and always knew it from afar, the way you know pieces written originally for a different instrument. I would often play it for fun as a warm up (which would disorient the flute player in the room!). When choosing the repertoire for this disc, I was keen to include a piece by Bach, and eventually had the idea of transposing the Flute Partita into G minor (the original key is A minor). It worked beautifully and as a piece is extremely rewarding and fun to play – I recommend it to all violinists. And here we have the chance to extend Bach’s usual habit of grouping in sixes, which was the favourite number in assembling keyboard suites, other sonatas and the Brandenburg concertos – as we reach the magical seven for solo violin! The Tartini Sonatas for solo violin were unknown to me until David Takeno, my former teacher, gave me a copy of the manuscript a few years ago (the original is in Padua). Tartini’s handwriting is pretty clear even if minute, and the pieces are consistently considerable and engaging. He sometimes writes a bass to go with the violin line, but [ 4 ] 35513PodgerGuardianAngelBooklet.indd 4 19-08-13 19:46 states very clearly that his true intention was always to play these pieces without the bass where melodic freedom can reign. The B minor Sonata has a haunting feel to it and is achingly beautiful and transporting, and the A minor Sonata is lithe, full of joie de vivre and candid gestures. Matteis’s short pieces from his Ayres for the violin books are old friends of mine, having got to know them first with the Palladian Ensemble twenty years ago (we spent many an afternoon playing through the 4 books making up suites and sets as Matteis himself suggests). I love the idiosyncrasy and quirkiness in his writing, and his Fantasia and Passagios for solo violin feel utterly conceived in the spur of the moment! I hope you enjoy 'Guardian Angel' – a title taken from the beautiful engraving which precedes Biber's Passacaglia in the composer's Rosary Sonatas but also a fitting emblem for the endless mysteries elsewhere in the volume. Rachel Podger The Guardian Angel: Music for Violin senza basso owering masterpieces though they self-sufficiency of the medium, and by the Tundoubtedly are, Bach’s Six Sonatas spread of a new taste in music which and Partitas for solo violin are not isolated prized the ability of instrumental music to peaks. Music for violin senza basso had a imitate the ideal of vocal expression. And distinguished history before Bach and was it continued well into the next century, widely cultivated by his contemporaries. A proving itself adaptable to significant sty- large repertoire of very high quality devel- lis tic changes over the course of the cen- oped over the course of the later seven- tury. This phenomenon was Europe-wide, teenth century, driven by the spe cu lative with successive waves of Italian expats virtuosity of performers, the prag matic taking new, vigorous playing styles to Ger- [ 5 ] 35513PodgerGuardianAngelBooklet.indd 5 19-08-13 19:46 many, France and England, as well as traf- notated without lavish ornamentation or fic in the other direction with young vir- expressive instructions. tuosi travelling to Italy to learn with re- The music on this recording demon- vered masters like Tartini. strates how composers in Germany, Italy, The connection between this repertoire Austria and England responded to the and virtuoso performance has many im- challenges of writing for violin senza basso. plications for the music itself and for the Johann Georg Pisendel (1687-1755) was the way in which it has been transmitted to us. foremost German violinist of his era. As a Violinistic virtuosity was extraordinarily youth he studied with Torelli, and in his experimental in the late seventeenth cen- 20s he travelled extensively in France and tury, with novelties in the tuning of the Italy, taking lessons from Vivaldi among strings (scordaura), bowing techniques, others. From January 1712 he was a mem- chordal playing and contrapuntal textures ber of the prestigious court orchestra at (with the development of sophisticated Dresden, becoming its Konzertmeister in double-, triple- and quadruple-stopping 1728. Pisendel’s preeminent qualities as a techniques) and playing in high positions. performer were fully matched by his com- But this performative dimension of the positional skills. His Sonata à Violino Solo music was not merely acrobatic; rather, Senza Basso was written before 1728 (when these new techniques were put at the serv- its concluding Gigue was published by ice of the widest possible range of expres- Telemann in Der getreue Musikmeister). It sive and rhetorical possibilities. The power has sometimes been claimed that the piece to move listeners was the trump card of the had a formative influence on Bach’s Solo virtuoso, and their ability to harness their Sonatas and Partitas, but it is by no means impressive techniques was a valuable com- clear that it predates them. Nevertheless, modity. So it was not in their interest fully there are many interesting points of con- to notate their own music, nor to allow it to tact between the two works. Like Bach’s circulate widely, either in manuscript or in works Pisendel’s Sonata is remar k able for engraved editions. For this reason, much of the detail of its expressive notation, for the the surviving reper toire is in unique manu- finesse of the relationship between its in- script sources and most of these pieces are dividual figures and their contrapuntal [ 6 ] 35513PodgerGuardianAngelBooklet.indd 6 19-08-13 19:46 ground, and for the density of its musical the motto ‘La mia Filli’), and in the theme thought. of the last movement which forms the ba- Giuseppe Tartini (1692-1770) was not sis of five variations. The second move- only the most influential violin teacher of ment and the fourth movement (a Gigue) the eighteenth century. Throughout his exemplify in contrast the more ‘spo ken’ long life his composing went hand-in- qualities of suonabile. The B minor Sonata hand with theoretical speculation, and in (B: h1) begins with an aria-like Andante time his interest in theory curtailed his ac- with the motto ‘Quanto mai felici siete’ tivity as a composer.

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