CANTAR DE AMOR
Juan Hidalgo and 17th-century in Spain

01 Andrea Falconieri: Passacalle a tre
02 José Marín: No piense Menguilla ya
03 Andrea Falconieri: Ciaccona a tre
04 Juan Hidalgo: Trompicávalas Amor
05 Juan Hidalgo: La noche tenebrosa
06 Francisco Guerau: Marionas
07 Mateo Romero: Ay, que me muero de zelos
08 Juan Hidalgo: Esperar, sentir, morir
09 Gaspar Sanz / Fahmi Alqhai: Pavana
10 Juan Hidalgo: Ay, que me río de Amor
11 Juan Hidalgo: Ay amor, ay ausencia
12 Gaspar Sanz: Passacalle sobre la D
13 Juan Hidalgo: Rompa el aire en suspiros
14 Mateo Romero: Romerico florido

For Cantar de Amor, Fahmi Alqhai and Accademia del Piacere are joined by their fellow Andalusian, the tenor Juan Sancho (well-received for his operatic roles), in an impressive new survey of seventeenth-century Spanish dramatic songs depicting the trials of love. Many of the tonos on this new disc from Glossa (home to a growing number of recorded programmes from Alqhai and his striking sound world) were composed by Juan Hidalgo, the foremost musical figure of the time – the quatercentenary of his birth fell late last year – one who worked with Pedro Calderón de la Barca in producing a wide variety of works of musical theatre. If many of such works as these were lost in a disastrous fire in Madrid in 1734, Sancho and Accademia del Piacere have been able to gather together an excellent array of surviving canciones to express the vibrancy and character of the torments of love in the Spanish theatrical manner.

Fahmi Alqhai and his instrumental colleagues also provide vital renditions of marionas, chaconas and passacalles in order further to go to the heart of the musical spirit of a Spain when limited cultural influences were entering the country from elsewhere in Europe. Juan Ramón Lara pens a contemporary view of the importance in the era of Hidalgo and fellow composers such as Mateo Romero and José Marín; a golden artistic age at a time of impending financial crisis.

CANTAR DE AMOR (Juan SANCHO & Fahmi ALQHAI)

The libretto of Handel’s penultimate opera Imeneo is based loosely on the legend of Hymen, the Greek god of marriage: the Athenian maiden Rosmene has to choose between marrying for love (Tirinto) or for duty to the nation (Imeneo, who rescued her and other Spartan girls from pirates – admittedly because he was dressed up as one of the girls in order to stalk Rosmene).

Handel took two years to finish Imeneo and by the time it was eventually produced at Lincoln’s Inn Fields on November 22, 1740, many of its scenes had been substantially rewritten several times over. Instead, Fabio Biondi presents the drastically altered version performed twice at the culmination of Handel’s Dublin subscription concert series in March 1742 – the last occasions on which the composer directed an Italian operatic work. Biondi’s unreliable booklet-note unwisely disparages the 1740 London original in order to exaggerate the significance of the Dublin revision.

In fact, the essential role of Clomiri was obliterated and in numerous ways the plot was rendered with more holes than a colander. Tirinto’s enraged ‘Sorge nell’alma mia’ (written for a castrato) did not suit the technically limited alto voice of Susannah Cibber, so it was transferred expediently to Imeneo (now a low tenor rather than bass) to sing in a slightly later position; Magnus Staveland makes an brawny fist of it, and Europa Galante support with effervescent energy. Happily, the marvellous Ann Hallenberg retains Tirinto’s other outstanding aria, ‘Se potessero i sospir miei’ (based on David’s ‘O Lord, whose mercies numberless’), and gains a lovely aria lifted from Deidamia (‘Un guardo solo’). Monica Piccinini’s limpid singing aptly captures the superb accompanied recitative in which Rosmene feigns madness at the moment she is forced to choose between the two suitors. Handel’s interpolation of ‘Per le porte del tormento’ from Sosarme, a gorgeous love duet about reaching new bliss after having passed through torments, was given implausibly to Rosmene and Tirinto in the final scene of the Dublin serenata, where it makes no dramatic sense whatsoever (Rosmene has just settled in favour of Imeneo, not Tirinto). Perhaps dramatic coherence does not matter when such sublime music is sung and played so rapturously.

Europa Galante perform the Overture’s playful Allegro expertly, although Biondi’s anachronistic reduction to solo strings in the Minuet (led by florid solo violin) says more about his directorial priorities than Handel’s own practices; there’s some sly pizzicato invented for strings where Handel indicated none (eg towards the end of Rosmene’s ‘Semplicetta’), but his elegant obbligato playing in Rosmene’s ‘Ingrata mai non fui’ is irresistible. Fabrizio Beggi has a little bit of fun with Argenio’s simile aria ‘Su l’arena di barbara scena’, which mentions a savage lion who pauses from pouncing when recognising its victim had once pulled a thorn from its paw (Handel uses unison violas and violins, without harpsichord, to humorous effect).

Biondi’s accomplished performance, recorded at the Halle festival last June, permits a valuable insight into Handel’s pragmatism and reconstructs a historic event. Next we might hope for a comparatively excellent advocacy of the 1740 original version to supplant Andreas Spering’s abrasive and soulless 2003 account (CPO, 5/04). Mind you, both Spering and Biondi boast Hallenberg on top form as differing incarnations of Tirinto, so our glass is hardly half-empty.

CANTAR DE AMOR (Juan SANCHO & Fahmi ALQHAI)

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