GAL / CHAPMAN / HÜNNINGER / MARINČIČ: RI-CERCARE - GLASBA 17. STOLETJA

Classical and Modern Music

Format: CD

Code: 114311

EAN: 3838898114311

Central to this CD are the Bohemian composer Jan Ignác František Vojta’s three violin sonatas. In their virtuoso style they resemble the celebrated Rosary Sonatas by Vojta’s contemporary compatriot Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber; they also demand scordatura tunings. The disc also includes a variety of stylistically related works by Brade, Buxtehude, Viviani and Froberger and a hitherto virtually unknown sonata that has been attributed to Johann Heinrich Schmelzer. The title of the CD is taken from the Ricercare, a solo piece composed in early 17th-century style by the violinist Mojca Gal. The term Ri-Cercare aptly describes the artistic quest of early music performers and of classical musicians in general: searching, researching music and the sound-worlds of our past culture.

Jan Ignác František Vojta was born in Černovice near Tábor and educated in humanities, Latin and music at the Jesuit Seminary in Prague. He studied philosophy and medicine at Prague University, qualifying as a doctor in 1684. While he held a position as house-physician to the Benedictine Monastery of St. Nicholas in Prague, he was also active as a performer, composer and composition-teacher. Only eight of Vojta's works survive; the sonatas heard on this CD come from a manuscript in the Minorite Monastery in Vienna (Codex 726) and are the earliest known violin sonatas by a Bohemian-born composer. The Codex comprises 102 works by composers that include the leading violin virtuosi of the time such as Albertini, Biber, Walther and Schmelzer. All three of Vojta's sonatas require the violinist to tune the instrument differently than usual (b, f#', b', e'' in the first two sonatas and c', g', c'', f'' in the third sonata); this changes the sonority of the instrument and facilitates performance of certain chords and passages. A certain similarity to Biber's cycle of Rosary Sonatas has led experts to believe that Vojta also designed these sonatas of contrasting character to be a cycle, representing the Holy Trinity and scenes from the life of Jesus. The first sonata would thus symbolize the birth of Jesus as God's manifestation of love, the second would be an expression of his suffering and death, and the third would depict the joy of Resurrection.

Johann Jacob Froberger already became acquainted with various national styles of music in his native city of Stuttgart. From age twenty-one he was employed as organist at the court of Ferdinand III in Vienna from where he was granted leave to study in Rome with Frescobaldi and Kircher. He travelled throughout the Netherlands, England, France, Germany and Italy as musician and diplomat. After the death of the emperor he went to Paris and spent his last years as harpsichord teacher to the Duchess Magdalena Sibylla of Württemberg at the castle of Héricourt near Montbéliard in eastern France. The Allemande from Froberger’s Suite in A minor FbWV 610 is reminiscent of the sonorities and musical gestures of French lute music.

The anonymous Sonata 15 in A minor immediately follows Vojta’s sonatas in the Viennese manuscript; it is also found in a source in the British Library (BL Add MS 31500). On the basis of its style, it is attributed here to Johann Heinrich Schmelzer, the first Austrian to be appointed Kapellmeister at the imperial court in Vienna after the post had been occupied by a number of Flemish and Italian musicians He attained fame as one of the leading violin virtuosos in Europe and was the first non-Italian to publish a collection of violin sonatas. Both of the above-mentioned manuscripts contain several his authenticated works.

Girolamo Viviani is listed as the composer of eleven pieces for theorbo in a handwritten tablature dated 1631 held in the State Archive in Modena. The most substantial of these works is the Passacaglia heard on the present recording. Viviani is however otherwise unknown and it is possible that the scribe misspelled the name and that the pieces are in fact by the young Geronimo Valeriani, lutenist at the ducal court in Modena from 1624, who is known to have composed for the theorbo.

William Brade left his native England when he was about thirty in order to earn his living in Germany like several other leading English instrumentalists of the time. He was active chiefly in Berlin, Copenhagen and Hamburg, publishing several collections of ensemble dance music between 1609 and 1621. His virtuoso divisions on a ground bass bear the title Coral but do not appear to be connected with any known chorale melody. This is considered to be the earliest composition for violin by any English composer; it was however later published as the work of Cornelio Van Shmelt who is otherwise unknown. The same theme was also used by the somewhat younger German violinist Johann Schop.

Dieterich Buxtehude was organist in Lübeck for almost four decades but always regarded himself as a native of Denmark. Most of his music has survived in only in manuscript but significantly, two sets each of seven sonatas for violin, bass viol and harpsichord were among the small amount of his music published in his lifetime. The Sonata BuxWV 272 is – like Brade’s divisions – found in the Düben collection of manuscripts in Uppsala and uses the same scoring as the sonatas in the printed collections. It is based almost entirely on two four-bar ostinato patterns: the first of these is repeated 26 times, but Buxtehude’s imaginative variations will undoubtedly make the listener lose count long before the violin concludes the movement with a motif from the beginning. A short modulating Adagio is followed by nineteen variations on a ciaccona-like bass in triple time with concerted passages for the solo instruments.

Domen Marinčič

Mojca Gal graduated with distinctions both at the Academy of Music in Ljubljana, where she studied with Primož Novšak, and at the Hochschule der Künste in Bern, where her teachers included Monika Urbaniak and Monika Baer. She then specialized in early music at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, studying with Amandine Beyer, David Plantier, Leila Schayegh and Rachel Podger. She now lives in Basle and works with the ensembles Arabesque, Ad Fontes (Switzerland), Moments musicaux de Cacharel, Académie Bach d’Aix (France) and musica cubicularis (Slovenia) as well as with chamber orchestras such as Concerto poetico and Allegria musicale. She is also active as a dancer, having studied baroque dance with Barbara Leitherer, Christine Bayle, Bernd Niedecken and Deda Cristina Colonna.

Sam Chapman studied the theorbo and baroque guitar at the Royal Academy of Music in London with Elizabeth Kenny. During his studies he has won a number of competitions including the Julian Bream Prize and the Robert Spencer Award. He continued his education at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis with Hopkinson Smith, followed by a further masters in continuo playing with Jesper Christensen. Having worked at the Schola Cantorum as an accompanist, he is currently a guest teacher at the Universidad Central in Bogota, Columbia. He has performed at many major venues in Europe and has recorded several CDs. Since 2008 he has been directing the mixed consort The Queen's Revels specializing in English music of the Late Renaissance.

Markus Hünninger studied the harpsichord with Rolf Junghanns and Johann Sonnleitner at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis and at Zurich Conservatory. Since 1989 he has been teaching harpsichord and continuo playing at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis and performing as a soloist, chamber musician and ensemble director. Since 2007 he has conducted numerous performances of Bach cantatas in the Predigerkirche in Basle as part of a complete cycle. Since 2003 he has also organised and directed the concerts of the Moments musicaux de Cacharel at his French residence, Rasteau (Haut Vaucluse). He is sought-after as a chamber music partner and regularly performs with Paolo Pandolfo and Christophe Coin.

Domen Marinčič studied the viol with Hartwig Groth in Nuremberg and with Philippe Pierlot at the Musikhochschule Trossingen. He also graduated in harpsichord with Carsten Lohff and completed postgraduate study in continuo playing with Alberto Rinaldi. In 1997 and 2000 he won prizes at the International Bach-Abel Competition in Coethen. He is co-founder of the Slovenian early music ensemble musica cubicularis and collaborates with musicians such as Emma Kirkby, Pino De Vittorio, Dan Laurin, William Dongois and Edoardo Torbianelli. He has participated in some thirty recordings for Accent, Aeolus, BIS, Harmonia Mundi France, Oehms Classics, Ricercar and Sony/DHM.

TRACKS:

Jan Ignác František Vojta (1657-1701)
1       Sonata I in B minor for violin and continuo (listen!)

Johann Jacob Froberger (1616–1667)
2       Allemande from Suite in A minor for harpsichord, FbWV 610

Johann Heinrich Schmelzer (?) (~1620–1680)
3        Sonata 15 in A minor

Girolamo Viviani (?) (~1590-after 1631)
4       Passacaglia in D minor for theorbo

William Brade (1560-1630)
5       Chorale with Variations

Jan Ignác František Vojta
6       Sonata II in B minor for violin and continuo

Mojca Gal (1985)
7       Ricercar per violino solo senza basso, sopra un soggetto di Cipriano de Rore

Dieterich Buxtehude (1637-1707)
8       Sonata in A minor for violin, viol and continuo, BuxWV 272

Jan Ignác František Vojta
9       Sonata III in C major for violin and continuo

Mojca Gal  violin
Sam Chapman  theorbo, baroque guitar
Markus Hünninger  harpsichord, chest organ
Domen Marinčič bass viol