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'J.S. Bach Flute Sonatas'

Joshua Smith, flute, Jory Vinikour, harpsichord

by Daniel Hathaway

A year ago December, Cleveland Orchestra principal flutist Joshua Smith and harpsichordist Jory Vinikour recorded three of J.S. Bach's sonatas for flute and obbligato continuo, as well as the famous 'Partita' for flute solo, in First Baptist Church in Shaker Heights, in sessions locally produced by Erica Brenner, engineered by Tom Knab, and using a harpsichord provided by Shaker Heights builder and restorer Philip M. Cucchiara. "J.S. Bach Flute Sonatas" was released late last fall.

Johann Sebastian Bach heard the French virtuoso Pierre Gabriel Buffardin play in Dresden (perhaps in 1717) which seems to have inspired the Partita. The rest of the repertory for this disc appears to date from the 1730's, when Bach had perfected the art of invertible counterpoint which uniquely allowed him to create rich polyphonic and harmonic structures out of three independent lines with no need for a separate continuo instrument.

As fascinating as these works sound from the audience's point of view, they're immensely difficult for performers to pull off. The flutist often has little opportunity to breathe, and though respiration is only a secondary necessity for the keyboard player, getting through the b minor sonata is like playing an immense two part invention. Add to this the mental challenge of shaping Bach's hundreds of notes into plausible and expressive musical phrases and you have something of a musical marathon on your hands.

Happily, Smith and Vinikour are highly trained musical athletes who show themselves to be in top shape in this excellent recording. Their collaboration is inspiring down to the smallest and most instantaneous bending of time for expressive purposes, and they manage to negotiate their way through quick tempos without mishap or appearing to be in a hurry (the outer movements of the b minor sonata come immediately to mind). Where Joshua Smith does breathe is something of a mystery, but unlike many flutists who attempt this repertory, he never takes time away from the progress of the music to inhale and never interrupts Bach's long (some say impossible) melodic lines. Beautiful tone is simply a given.

Recording music written before 1800 always forces artists to cross a conceptual and stylistic minefield, especially when one of the players is principal in a major symphony orchestra and not primarily known as a period instrument specialist. Smith notes that "my respect for the music compels me to seek the most authentic historical perspective I can find. Picking up a baroque flute is a good way to begin, but I find the challenge of projecting historical style on my own instrument at least as rewarding".

In this case, Joshua Smith reached a compromise provided by his discovery of a Romantic period wooden flute in the Marais district of Paris. Refurbished by Tim Burdick in Cleveland and fitted out with a wooden head joint, his instrument comes from a later period, but "allows me to project my experiments with reproducing earlier performance styles much more easily than my metal instruments".

The harpsichord also hails from Paris, from the workshop of William Dowd (1978), but has been restrung, requilled and had a new stop added to its registers in the local workshop of Philip Cucchiara. The temperament was devised by Bradley Lehman based on what turns out to be not a calligraphic symbol but a tuning chart that appears on the title page of the manuscript of the 'Well Tempered Clavier'.

In this case, all the historical compromises work together quite well. Smith's 19th century flute certainly carries better in the lower register than a baroque instrument would, and if anything, the recording slightly favors the flute over its equal partner, the harpsichord. First Baptist's resonant acoustics are preserved, giving more of an acoustic halo to the flute sound than one would hear if the ambiance were conceived to be more along the lines of a drawing room (on the other hand, the reverberation helps create virtual harmonies in the unaccompanied 'Partita'). The harpsichord sounds radiant.

The album comes with an informative, three-page discussion about Bach's works for the instrument by fellow flutist and Boston University professor James A. Winn, who goes into some depth about scholarly controversies and attributions surrounding the repertory. Joshua Smith contributes a little essay about his rhetorical approach to performing baroque music, Jory Vinikour writes a bit about the process of partnering, and Smith and Cucchiara have written a paragraph each about the flute and the harpsichord tuning issue.

Joshua Smith's hip-looking cover photograph (leaning against a graffiti wall) gets further explanation in his YouTube video, Bach in the Moment, where he also has more to say about the musical context of this fine and attractive recording, which will be an inspiration to fellow flutists and an excellent addition to anyone's CD collection.

On Wednesday, January 13 at 8 at CIM, Joshua Smith plays unaccompanied Fantasias by Telemann interspersed with Shakespeare's sonnets read by actress Laura Perrotta, and on March 12, the flutist contributes the Allemande from the Flute Partita to the opening nights festival in Gartner Auditorium at the Cleveland Museum of Art.

"J.S. Bach Flute Sonatas" is issued on the Delos label (DE 3402).

Download a printable pdf version of this article here.

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'Ciaramella: Music from the Court of Burgundy'

Ciaramella Renaissance Wind Band, Adam Knight Gilbert & Roten Gilbert, directors

by Daniel Hathaway

Perhaps you were looking critically through your CD collection during the holiday hiatus and suddenly realized that you're a bit thin in your holdings of fifteenth century shawm and sackbut music (is there even a Grammy niche for that?) Or maybe you're just a general fan of Renaissance music looking for something new and different. Ciaramella's excellent CD "Music for the Court of Burgundy" serves both purposes beautifully, entertaining and informing you on whatever level you care to become engaged.

Ciaramella Wind Band, which takes its name from one of the historical names for the shawm, originated at Case Western Reserve University in 2003, though some of its original members were poached from other area universities. The group reunited locally last October 17 for a much admired program in Harkness Chapel called 'The Germanic Orpheus and His Student: Henricus Isaac and Ludwig Senfl", but is officially resident on the west coast, where directors Adam and Rotem Gilbert are on the faculty at the University of Southern California.

In the hands of skilled players who have committed their careers to perfecting modern versions of Renaissance instruments, shawms have become quite well behaved, shedding their previous reputation as crude, outdoor instruments. Ciaramella's players, Adam Knight Gilbert, Rotem Gilbert, Doug Milliken and Debra Nagy (better known as a baroque oboist in the Cleveland area) display a remarkable sense of intonation, ensemble and tonal control. On this recording, they're ably assisted by Greg Ingles and Erik Schmalz on sackbut and Sidney Hopson on percussion. All the shawm players double on chop-saving recorders and most of them on bagpipes, and Susan Judy, N. Lincoln Hanks and Temmo Korisheli join Nagy as singers. Ingles also plays slide trumpet.

Accompanied by informative producer's notes and Adam Gilbert's witty and disarming discussions about the music, "Music for the Court of Burgundy" takes the listener on a well-organized and comprehensive tour of the musical world of the itinerant, warring, art collecting and wine drinking Dukes of Burgundy, who "forged and lost a powerful kingdom (in all but name)" stretching from the Low Countries to parts of modern France. They also supported a rich musical tradition, acting as patrons to such composers featured in this album as Dufay, Ciconia, Binchois, Agricola, Josquin, Isaac & Busnois.

Lest you think that ensembles of shawms and sackbuts, the town bands of Renaissance Europe, are functionally extinct in modern life, producer Bob Attiyeh notes that Ciaramella has brought its pungent sonorities to dignify city ceremonies at Los Angeles City Hall on several recent occasions. Similarly, on this recording Adam Gilbert contributes some of his own 21st century written-down improvisations to repertory composed half a millenium ago.

The twenty-three tracks on Ciarmella's latest recording skillfully group selections by individual composers (Johannes Ciconia), pieces based on the same tune ('J'ay pris amours' or 'Fortuna desperata'), or pieces written or improvised over stock bass lines ('La Spagna'). The repertoire  is characterized by frisky rhythms, startling dissonances and complicated polyphony (which grew from the standard of three voices at the beginning of the century to four at the end), and its ordering on the recording is intelligently chosen to keep the ear fresh by varying the music's instrumentation. Just when a bit of shawm fatigue sets in (probably also for the players), silky Renaissance recorders or the clear voices of singers take over. The drum appears infrequently and only toward the middle of the program, and late in the playlist, solo bagpipe then three bagpipes playing together provide a new sonic adventure.

In an interesting parallel to the purity of aesthetics of the early music movement, the CD was recorded with an early microphone ("a legendary Austrian AKG C-24 stereo microphone with the original brass surround CK12 tube"), short cables, vacuum tube amplifiers and no mixer, up close in an intimate environment. All of this works well until the final track, when singers, shawms and sackbuts come together in a mixed reprise of Agricola's setting of 'Fortuna desperata' and voices get a bit lost in the texture.

The singing and instrumental playing is magnificent, but what we particularly admire about "Music from the Court of Burgundy" is the way that its scrupulous scholarship is presented in such an accessible and engaging way. People are people in every age, and as Adam Gilbert notes, "The themes of Burgundian poetry and music live on today: love, death, and desire, simultaneously sacred and erotic". Later, talking about the last track featuring settings of 'Fortuna Desperata' by four composers, Gilbert writes,  "Anyone who doubts the persistent mythic power of the goddess Fortune, need only watch Vanna White on television, take a trip to Las Vegas or Monte Carlo, or listen to Frank Sinatra sing "Luck be a Lady Tonight."

Now that's relevance!

"Ciaramella: Music from the Court of Burgundy" is available from Yarlung Records.

Download a printable pdf version of this article here. 

To learn more about shawms, read Mike Telin's interview with Adam Gilbert on the blog.

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