Francesco Cera - D'Anglebert: Complete Harpsichord Music (2014)

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Francesco Cera - D'Anglebert: Complete Harpsichord Music (2014)

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This important release presents the complete music for harpsichord by Henri D’Anglebert. D’Angelbert was a famous keyboard virtuoso and composer at the court of Louis the XIV, the Sun King. His style is typically French, expressed in a rich counterpoint and lavish ornamentation, a free and improvisatory style, in which sometimes the metre indications are missing (“non mesuré”) and a high level of virtuosity.

Francesco Cera is one of the foremost Italian cembalists, having recorded extensively for various labels, and is considered a specialist in the French repertoire. He plays a magnificent instrument, a copy after Tibaut 1691. A valuable addition to the ever growing discography of Baroque keyboard masters on Brilliant Classics (Rameau, Couperin, Duphly, Buxtehude, Reincken, Böhm, Muffat, Gronau, Froberger and many more).

Reviews: Jean-Henri D’Anglebert (1629–1691) wrote some pretty innovative and interesting music. This three-disc set collects his complete music for harpsichord, clearly showing the influence of Chambonnières, who also influenced the music of his older contemporary Couperin. Thus anyone who knows and likes Couperin’s music will almost automatically fall in love with D’Anglebert, although the younger man clearly has his own ideas and was not shy about exploring them.

The liner notes constantly point to the “extremely rich, almost excessive ornamentation” of his music, but I think that is missing the point. There is a lot of heavily ornamented music (I can think, particularly, of a couple of dozen Baroque operas from the early 18th century) that is only that, a string of fancy fiddlybits that only attempts to entertain and accomplishes that feat, but D’Anglebert’s music is more interesting because he only sees the ornamentation as a means to an end, not an end in itself.

Of course, much of the music’s positive impact is due to the warm and imaginative playing of Francesco Cera, who uses an instrument with an especially deep and warm sound. (I found it interesting to note that Cera’s instrument, though ostensibly based on a 1691 model, was actually built in 2006.) Moreover, the recording has just enough room ambience to give a nice sheen to the harpsichord without making it sound distant or tinny. I was absolutely entranced by Cera’s wonderful touch and slightly irregular sense of timing, which gave the music the feeling of running one’s fingers over serrated metal. Within several of these pieces, i.e., the Allemande of the Suite No. 1 in G, there are also some unusual harmonic shifts, certainly not as extreme as one would hear in music a century hence but quite inventive for their time and place, and the “Double de la Courante I” from the same suite absolutely bustles with movement and musical imagination. (A funny aside: The booklet for this set states that he studied with Luigi Fernando Tagliavini and Gustav Leonhardt, but ArkivMusic’s web site claims that he studied with Ferruccio Tagliavini, the famous light tenor of the 1940s and 50s. Yet, I wonder if Luigi and Ferruccio were related to each other?)

Some details of D’Anglebert’s life are mentioned in the brief liner notes. Among the more interesting is the fact that he came from a modest background, but was fortunate enough to “marry up” to Madeleine Champagne, the sister-in-law of François Roberday, who was a court goldsmith and organist. Five years later, D’Anglebert himself became the court harpsichordist of King Louis XIV, taking over the post from the aging Jacques Champion de Chambonnières, “from whom he had literally purchased the right of succession.” Ah, yes, money talks, the rest of us walk! A decade hence, D’Anglebert handed over this position to his son and then went on to become harpsichordist for Duchess Maria Anna of Bavaria.

The third CD contains numerous transcriptions by D’Anglebert of music by Jean-Baptiste Lully. In addition to having played in the performances of Lully’s music under the composer’s own direction, D’Anglebert was continuing a tradition of transcription that would extend into the 19th century with Liszt. Cera writes in the notes that “Though the transcribed pieces were mixed in with the other pieces that make up D’Anglebert’s original four Suites, I felt it made sense to place them together according to key in the third CD, but in the same order. In this way D’Anglebert’s admirable four Suites can be heard ‘intact.’ The two major cycles of variations on the basso ostinato are particularly lovely: for instance the Chaconne de Phaeton (the title of these pieces refers to the opera from which they derive), and the Passacaille d’Armide. ” Personally, I’d rather have heard these pieces in the context of the original suites, but it’s not a bad idea, and my own personal reaction was that D’Anglebert actually made Lully’s somewhat stodgy music sound fresher and more sparkling than the originals. Yet once again, one must credit Cera for his colorful playing and imaginative interpretations as well.

If you are a fancier of French harpsichord music in general, you will certainly want this set. Brilliant Classics’ attractively low price ($16.99 at Amazon) makes it an easy acquisition.