Further Listening

A Highly Personal Playlist

Fanny Hensel – Das Jahr

This solo piano work is perfection from its haunting opening bars, with Hensel taking the listener on a profound, almost cathartic, emotional journey through the months of the year. You can listen to individual movements (such as the joyous month of March) but the work deserves to be heard in its entirety.

Francesca Caccini – Lasciatime qui solo, Dolce Maria and Rendi alle mie speranze

There are endless debates about what constitutes authentic performance for music from this period, but it is hard to spoil music of this quality. I have chosen three songs that show Caccini’s ability to convey both despair and reverence, not to mention her exquisite formal control of the music’s shape and texture. Heard live, these songs have a striking emotional and musical freedom to them, making the comparison to jazz not quite as far-fetched as it might seem.

Marianna von Martines – Overture in C

The bad news is that it is still hard to find recordings of Martines’s music, but the good news is that the one recording I have is superb, with the rich, pure voice of Nuria Rial accompanied by the musicians of La Floridiana and directed by Nicoleta Paraschivescu. Thanks to them, I can turn to Martines’s joyous Overture in C whenever I feel a bit flat. It never fails to make me smile.

Barbara Strozzi – Che si può fare

For a song that will get into your head and stay there for ever (but in a good way) seek out Che si può fare. If you want more, then listen to Strozzi’s Begli occhi (not to be confused with ‘Voi pur begl’ occhi’ mentioned in the main text), informed by the useful guide at http://www.wwnorton.com/college/music/listeninglab/shared/listening_guides/strozzi_begli_occhi.pdf.

Elizabeth Maconchy – String Quartet No. 5

Maconchy’s own favourite, String Quartet No. 5 epitomizes her capacity to be ‘intellectually passionate and passionately intellectual’, providing food for the heart and mind in equal measure. The slow movement is particularly powerful. (An easier way into Maconchy’s music is her lush orchestral work The Land, from 1930, which, for all its pastoral qualities, nevertheless has an eerie quality that gets under my skin in ways I don’t quite understand.)

Lili Boulanger –Du fond de l’abîme (Psalm 130)

This major work reminds me of the best kind of film music. Boulanger forces the listener to strain to hear the suspenseful opening notes and then never lets us go. The ending, with its modal harmonies, is often described as despairing or ominous, the work as a whole viewed as Boulanger’s requiem for herself. I hear the ending as enigmatic in tone, even peaceful. (For an insight into some of Boulanger’s musical techniques, see http://www.musikmph.de/musical_scores/vorworte/1001.html.)

Élisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre – Sonata No. 1 in D minor for violin and basso continuo

From its exquisite, heartbreaking, slow opening bars, this sonata moves effortlessly between moods, always full of life and emotionally charged for all its formal control. This was avant-garde music for its time and in some performances it still has an edge to it.

Clara Schumann – Three Fugues on Themes of J.S. Bach

It is hard not to enjoy anything written by Schumann, and it is therefore hard for me to pick a stand-out work. If pushed, I would choose these short piano works, because they show the composer at her most ambitious, but also her most austere. Easier to find, and perhaps more representative of Schumann as a composer, is her accomplished Piano Trio.

Discography

Shannon Mercer sings Caccini on O Viva Rosa, Analekta, 2010.

Michel Angers and Peggy Bélanger perform Strozzi in Passioni, Vizi & Virtù, Stradivarius, 2010.

Ensemble La Rêveuse play Jacquet de la Guerre’s Sonata No. 1, Mirare, 2010.

Nicholetta Paraschivescu directs La Floridiana in Martines on Il Primo Amore, Deutsche Harmonia Mundi, 2012.

Lauma Skride plays The Year by Fanny Mendelssohn-Hensel, Sony, 2007.

Jozef de Beenhouwer performs Schumann’s Preludes and Fugues in his Complete Piano Works, COP, 2001. Radio 3’s ‘Building a Library’ recommends the recording of the Piano Trio by Antje Weithaas (violin), Tanja Tetzlaff (cello) and Gunilla Sussmann (piano), Avi Music, 2013.

Yan Pascal Tortelier directs Ann Murray, mezzo-soprano, Neil MacKenzie, tenor, the City of Birmingham Symphony Chorus and the BBC Philharmonic in Boulanger’s Psalm 130, Chandos, 1999.

The Bingham Quartet play Maconchy’s String Quartet No. 5, Unicorn Kanchana, 1999 (only available on CD). The Land can be found at www.lorelt.co.uk.