In short, Pipelare’s striking personality becomes apparent through hearing and analysing his masses rather than from the meagre details of his life. It is as if he redefines polyphonic composition with each work, rather than reverting to the tried and tested as say Jakob Obrecht did. There is nothing immediately recognisable, nothing that sounds even vaguely familiar, nothing can be categorised, rather everything sounds new, fresh, lively – wilfully individual!
If you want a representative sample of Igor Kipnis’ Bach, start with the introductory toccata to the E minor Partita (No. 6). You get little of the music’s introspective undertones, but Kipnis’ subtle registration changes, resourceful ornamentation, and rhythmic extroversion proves quite insidious. Some of Kipnis’ textual emendations will surprise you, such as his duple-meter reading of the Fifth Partita’s Allemanda. Only on the repeats does Kipnis reinstate the middle notes of the right hand triplet groupings.
In what Et’cetera has described as Volume I, Pavlo Beznosiuk couples three of Westhoff’s suites for solo violin from 1696 with six items from Walther’s scherzos from 1676. His program opens with Walther’s Sonata VIII, offering a startling initial barrage of signature chords and double-stops, giving way to flurries of rapid notes and studded with brilliant staccatos, beside which the demands of Corelli’s solos about a generation later pale, and the Sonata closes with fireworks that make a greater cumulative effect than the works of Locatelli, often identified as the precursor of Paganini’s technical demands.
John Beard, Francesco Borosini, Annibale Fabri: these three men helped to revolutionized music in the 18th century. Their voices moved the greatest composers of the time to increasingly write for tenors, a move from the Castrati, which had dominated opera since 1600. Now, three centuries since this trio’s brilliance encouraged a surge of new repertoire for the vocal range, world renowned tenor Ian Bostridge celebrates their legacy with his stunning new release, Three Baroque Tenors.
