Perhaps it's right that sleeve notes concern themselves with the music rather than the composer but in these two cases I'd like to have known something about Charles-Valentin Alkan becoming a recluse and any available speculation about why Stradella might have been murdered but we get nothing of the sort. I like a good recluse but no mention is made of Alkan's social withdrawal and it is left that Stradella was murdered at the age of 42,
for reasons that are still unclear.
The authors of such notes are more circumspect about what they say than some intrusive types might like them to be.
The piece I heard by Alkan that led me to order this disc was immediately identifiable as related to Chopin and so I was gratified to find out that they were friends. I don't know if I've bought the wrong disc- I thought I'd get a recent recording- but it hasn't quite delivered the same rapture and sumptuous melodic invention that I was expecting. It opens with a Cappriccio alla soldatesca from 1859 that is understandably military in style, brisk and marchable. The rest is minuets, nocturnes and a sonatina, the most memorable being the Menuet no.3 tempo nobile in G, which is instantly appealing and returns to its main theme often enough to make itself known. The rest is either more subtle and needs more time to state its case or it is the reason why Alkan is not remembered as well as Chopin but had I not been following my sometimes wayward instinct in search of lesser known composers, I could have availed myself of some extra Chopin and I would probably have been better off.
The disc will get a couple more chances yet but will need to impress soon or it might find itself filed for longer than it wants to be.
Stradella was born just before Monteverdi died and died just before Bach was born. This serenata for 7 voices and 2 concertino ensembles sounds fittingly somewhere between the two but, being Italian, is closer to a less decorous Monteverdi than a thoroughly contrapuntal, Protestant Bach.Cristina, daughter of the King of Sweden, was being educated as heir to the war-like and scholarly king but took more to music than she was intended to, took herself off to Rome and converted to Catholicism, where she wrote the scenario for this piece.
Stradella set the text by the poet, Baldini, and here it is recorded for the first time.
Damone and Clori take some time expressing, relishing and even overdoing the joys of their love. We might nowadays think they lacked a sense of irony that might give their self-indulgence some perspective but they are undoubtedly devoted to each other. They hear some passersby talking of the power of the stars, 'la forza delle stelle', to decide the fate of love and so they put their faith in invocations to the heavens.
The translation into English inevitably might not quite capture the 'poetry' of the writing in,
Even insensate objects can arouse passions;
both stone and iron wield their attractions.
But in loving man suffers both pain and grief!
ah, Cupid's empire is a dire labyrinth.
But the piece is a vehicle for the elegant performance of the singers, best enjoyed in the ensemble passages from duets, trios and four-parts until all seven singers are together for the finale. It is very much art for art's sake, and none the worse for that, where nothing at all is allowed to hinder the pursuit of the sublimely beautiful. It's just that its ambition stops there and one might think there could be more to it than that. On this occasion, there isn't. Fair enough.