“AGOSTINO STEFFANI: Danze e Ouvertures” – I Barocchisti /Coro della Radiotelevisione Sviszzera/ Diego Fasolis – Decca

by John Sunier | Nov 29, 2013 | Classical CD Reviews

“AGOSTINO STEFFANI: Danze e Ouvertures” (TrackList follows) – I Barocchisti /Coro della Radiotelevisione Sviszzera/ Diego Fasolis – Decca B0018948-02, 75:09 [9/10/13] *****:

For students and enthusiasts of the middle Baroque, the name Agostino Steffani (1654–1728) is not new. He’s celebrated for his vocal duets, of which there are a number of available recordings. For many lovers of the Baroque, me included, Steffani came to light only with Cecilia Bartoli’s fabulous recording of music from the operas through which he made his mark at the Hanover Court Theater. (Reviewed here at Audiophile Audition.) Bartoli and I Barocchisti followed up the runaway success of this collection, entitled Mission, with a recording of Steffani’s choral music, including his late Stabat Mater. (Reviewed here.) Recordings of the operas can’t be far behind. (In fact, one has already appeared, on the MD&G label: Orlando generoso.) Till then, we can content ourselves with this equally fabulous sampling of orchestral music from the theater works.

Born in Venice, Steffani worked in Germany, first in Munich and then in Hanover, where he became court Kapellmeister and won his chief fame as an opera composer. His Henrico Leone inaugurated the new Court Theater in 1689. And somewhere along the way, he was ordained a priest. Although Steffani managed to compose after 1700, he devoted himself increasingly to the Church, first on diplomatic missions and then in the important capacities of Prothonotary Apostolic and Apostolic Vicar for North Germany. As a high official of the Church, Steffani could no long sully his name with music for the theater, so his later operas appeared under the name of his copyist.

Like other composers working at the opera theaters in Hanover—Reinhard Keiser, Johann Mattheson, and the young Handel, whom Steffani befriended—Agostino Steffani merged Italian and French musical influences in his operas. It’s probably not surprising that the orchestral music on the present disc sounds a lot like Lully, another transplanted Italian who had perhaps the greatest influence on opera in Germany in the later seventeenth century. Steffani may have studied with Lully during his sojourn in Paris in the late 1670s; at any rate, he certainly studied Lully’s scores. Colin Tims, in his notes to the recording, points out that “Lully exploited the emerging oboe and bassoon, pioneered the French overture and in his ballets, developed an influential repertory of dance music.”

As in France, dance music figures prominently in the operas of Steffani. As well, his overtures are all in the French style, featuring a stately, slow introduction in dotted rhythms followed by a faster contrapuntal section. In some cases, Steffani seems to anticipate Rameau by turning his overtures into mini-tone poems: in the Ouverture to Niobe regina di Tebe (1689), he uses trumpets and drums to lend a martial air to the proceedings, and in the Introduzzione to Amor vien dal destino (1709), a chorus provides dramatic segue into the action of the opera. The music to Niobe also includes a section, Terremoto, where timpani and thunder sheet suggest the sound of an earthquake, giving an idea of the kind of stage business you could expect in the operas of the day.

As Colin Tims mentions, published collections of the orchestral music from Lully’s and Steffani’s operas were forerunners of the orchestral suites of Bach and Telemann. The instrumental music from Orlando generoso (1693) makes up such a proto-orchestral suite, since the French overture is followed by a series of typical dance movements (minuet, gavotte, bourée, gigue). The dances included in the program are sometimes punctuated with colorful contributions from winds and percussion.

This collection certainly adds to Steffani’s luster and if I’m any judge of market forces, will probably result in further resurrections of Steffani operas. If that happens and the works are committed to disc, I hope Diego Fasolis and I Barocchisti are tasked with the accompanimental duties. Their work on the present disc, as on Mission, is thrilling (and they’re captured in pretty thrilling sound as well). Whatever their next project, I’ll be listening.

TrackList:

Orlando Generoso: