In his writing and talking about baroque music, Andrew Manze has always
shown a knack for evoking the musical goings-on of the distant past with an
immediacy that makes them seem refreshingly familiar today. With this
recording, perhaps more than any other he has made so far, he achieves the
same thing in performance. Eighteenth-century English music lovers, it
seems, were obsessed with the music of Corelli, in particular his Concerti
Grossi; Manze’s notes quote a lovely account of how, when the Op.6
concertos were first published in 1714, one London orchestra of gentlemen
amateurs, led by a Mr Needler, could not stop themselves from playing
through all 12 at one sitting. They remained Corelli’s only published
concertos, however, so it is not hard to see what a welcome sight the works
presented on this disc must have been when they first appeared in the
mid-1720s; immensely skilful arrangements by
Corelli’s London-based pupil Francesco Geminiani of the master’s 12 violin
sonatas, Op.5, they were to all intents a new set of Corelli concertos.
Well, what held for Londoners back then should hold equally well for
baroque enthusiasts today; these ingeniously crafted concerti grossi are
true delight, their musical effectiveness in no way compromised by their
origins. Listeners familiar with Corelli’s Op.5 will doubtless have fun
spotting what Geminiani has done with them (which goes well beyond
straightforward orchestration, while keeping the results utterly true to
Corelli’s spirit); those who do not know the originals can just sit back
and enjoy the music for what it is, which is to say bright, tuneful and
invigorating.
Where Manze’s particular success lies is in conjuring the atmosphere of the
past and in the sheer joyousness and freshness which these performances
convey. It is as if Mr Needler and his friends were before us, revelling in
an unexpected Corellian bonus. Listen to The Academy of Ancient Music
lustily laying into the thick chords in the final movement of Concerto
No.4, dragging back the tempo and then charging off again, and you can
almost see the complicit grins on their faces; or the way in which the
ending of the well-known ‘La Follia’ (Concerto No.12) sweeps them up into a
fit of orchestral scrubbing, to be capped by an excited ornamental whinny
from Manze’s violin.
Manze is as free with his embellishments elsewhere in the set, throwing in
double-stops, blue notes and all manner of flourishes with an abandon which
will not be to everyone’s taste (recalling more than ever the oft-quoted
description of him as ‘the Gidon Kremer of the baroque violin’), but which
one cannot help feeling contributes hugely to the enthusiastic tenor of the
music-making as a whole. The orchestra itself is in fine form, offering up
a full sound whose occasional slight rawness is no bad thing in
performances of such strength, directness and honesty.
Some of these concertos have been recorded before (most commonly ‘La
Follia’), but this may well be the first time the whole set has been done.
But as if that were not enough, we also get Manze and David Watkin tenderly
playing through Corelli’s Op.5 No.9 sonata with Geminiani’s elaborate
embellishments, and Watkin himself giving a well-turned account of one of
Geminiani’s cello sonatas. It is quite an achievement when a recording
stirs anticipation of three different things at once, but this one does.
So, let’s hope for Corelli’s Op.5 from Manze, Corelli’s Op.6 from The
Academy, and more music by Geminiani by either or both. When do they start?
Lindsay Kemp, Gramophone, September 2000