Facco: Pensieri Adriarmonici. L'Arte Dell'Arco/Federico Guglielmo (Deutsche Harmonia Mundi)
Giacomo Facco (1676-1753) is such an obscure composer that you'll find him discussed at greater length in the booklet accompanying L'Arte Dell'Arte's new CD than in the 20 soon-to-be-superseded volumes of The New Grove. Facco was a Venetian who spent most of his working life in royal service in Spain and who is represented here by the first part of his Op. 1, six concertos published under the fanciful title Pensieri Adriarmonici in Amsterdam in 1716. The style won't seem in the least alien to anyone at all familiar with Vivaldi, and the CD includes a concerto by Vivaldi (RV157) to point up the strength with which Facco survives the comparison. The performances are in the vigorous, thrusting, highly-coloured style which does so much to bring this strand of baroque music vividly to life.
Great Violinists: Kreisler Vol 1 (Naxos)
Fritz Kreisler was such a master of the musical miniature that the 11 CDs of his complete RCA recordings contain only a handful of substantial works. His major concerto recordings were made in Europe, the Beethoven and Mendelssohn concertos which launch this new series on Naxos dating from 1926. The partnership with the Berlin State Opera Orchestra under Leo Blech doesn't produce results that a modern record producer would be likely to tolerate - the variability of intonation and ensemble alone would ensure that. But Kreisler had a winning musical personality, which he expressed freely through playing renowned for its sweetness of tone. The vibrato is astonishingly light by modern standards, the interpretative approach surprisingly chaste, and the magic of the music-making remains as inescapable as ever.
Songs by Beethoven, Haydn, Mozart. Wolfgang Holzmair (baritone), Imogen Cooper (piano). (Philips)
One of the consistent delights provided by the Austrian baritone Wolfgang Holzmair has been his natural-sounding, unmannered approach to 19th-century German song. On the evidence of his latest CD, the simpler manners of the 18th century, oriented towards domestic singing markets, are altogether less amenable to his approach. In Schubert and Schumann, Holzmair's success is based on the very transparency he achieves in communicating the messages of both composer and poet. Here, in Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven (even in the later An die ferne Geliebte), he's a very clear manipulative presence, a personality rather too strong for the material he's presenting. The fact that most performers try too conspicuously hard in this repertoire doesn't dissipate a sense of disappointment at Holzmair conforming to the norm.
