Comments for The Prima la musica! blog

Comment on Sensational end to 2011 Fasch-Festtage’s first week by Tempesta di Mare | Philadelphia Baroque Orchestra & Chamber Players − On the Road: “Der fantastische Herr Fasch” in Germany — our first orchestral tour

Sun, 08 Jul 2012 18:15:05 +0000

[...] the other co-director Gwyn Roberts on 1st flute), there was not a fault in the entire evening.” The Prima la musica! blog, April [...]

Comment on Bach Collegium Japan! by Colin Pearson

Colin Pearson — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 21:23:09 +0000

We, too, motored some distance (from Inverness) to hear this glorious ensemble. Bach would have walked to hear them. Similarly, we despair of the cultural future in Scotland. Generations were missing in Perth – but it should not surprise us. When the subject of classical music was brought up recently, one of H. M. Inspectors (Music) commented ‘No one listens to that any more.’

Comment on About by bc16661

bc16661 — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 11:01:21 +0000

Thanks Inês! I don’t blog as often as I should, but I will try to be more conscientious in future
I’m actually busy completely re-writing the primalamusica website (not through choice! I have *much better* things to do with my time…)
Love your website – and very much love your Fiorenza (and other) sound samples – do you and the group have any plans to record a CD or two, or ten..?

Comment on About by Inês d'Avena

Inês d'Avena — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 10:45:22 +0000

Have just found your blog and will follow it with great interest from now on. Greetings from The Hague!

Comment on Another chance encounter by Judy Linsenberg

Judy Linsenberg — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 16:16:17 +0000

I’d love to get the pdfs. Thanks! do you have my email address? (it’s listed here). My performances are this Friday through Monday!

Comment on Another chance encounter by bc16661

bc16661 — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 15:31:58 +0000

My good friend Kim Clow went along to NYPL the other day and not only looked at but photographed the “Fasch” concerto in the Harrach Collection. Beautiful photos they are, too

As I suspected, they *are* in the same copyist’s handwriting. There are parts for Flute a bec concertato (written – I think rather unusually, but feel free to contradict me – in treble clef), two violins, viola, violoncello and continuo. They are listed in the Finding Aid as a Concerto in D minor by an unknown composer, possibly Rasch. That name is written on five of the parts, possibly in a 19th- or early 20th-century hand. The viola part, however, has an attribution in the same ink as the music “Del Sig. Fasch” – the F is not the clearest I’ve ever seen, but it’s easily decipherable. Before Kim went to see the thing, I’d imagined that the original cataloguer has looked at a recorder part in French violin clef without realizing… It turns out, however, that the parts are slightly oddly bound, the net result being that the first page you see is the 2nd page of the Violin 1 part, at a point in the music where it *is* in D minor. How bizarre, though, that whoever did the cataloguing didn’t investigate further.

Fasch boasts in a letter about his music being known in such places and Prague and Vienna, and there is – apparently – somewhere an Austrian noble’s diary entry about hearing some instrumental music during a soiree there, but this would be the first hard evidence of a direct connection with Vienna.

I can send you PDFs of Kim’s photos of the recorder part if you’d like to play it and let me know what you think?

Comment on Another chance encounter by deborah forest hart

deborah forest hart — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 12:25:03 +0000

Please subscribe.

Comment on Another chance encounter by Judy Linsenberg

Judy Linsenberg — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 23:18:03 +0000

Hi Brian,
Well, working on this piece, I have to say that my gut reactions are that it is definitely not by Telemann. I could be wrong, but it’s not like any Telemann I’ve ever played, in that, it doesn’t lie as easily under the fingers as Telemann usually does, and there are those 2 incredibly long passages–one in the first movement, one in the last–that leave no place for breathing. Telemann would never do this, IMHO. He always writes nice phrases with adequate breathing places. Frankly, I was surprised, when I got the music, that it was being attributed to Telemann. To my ear, it does sound and feel a lot like Fasch, and I think has a lot in common with that NYPL concerto Schneider premiered. Next time I get to NY, I’ll see if I can check it out for you!

By the way, how are those Harrach sonatas you mentioned? Good musically? Flashy? (always looking for new material! . . . )
Nice to be in touch!
Judy

Comment on Another chance encounter by bc16661

bc16661 — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 23:00:24 +0000

Hi Judy: Thanks for your message – how exciting that you’re playing the “Harrach” concerto! I’d love to hear *your* take on the authorship. As for discovering anything else, well… Of the four sonatas in the manuscript (in fact, there may be four and a half, as the running order seems odd), two are by Pepusch (they match his first printed set – Michael Schneider gets credit for identifying one, but it was me who found the other LOL), so that got me thinking about the copyist… There are manuscripts in his hand in Uppsala, one of them a Concerto in D minor for Violin and Oboe by Fasch. The autograph parts in Darmstadt have much the same music, but the solo episodes in the first movement are in a different order and the links are slightly re-written. In the third movement, the ritornello (which, in my mind, already overstayed its dominant minor ninth welcome when I played it from the Uppsala parts at the Edinburgh Festival in 1989) has *an extra measure* in the autograph parts, so again, someone – copyist or composer? – has done some editing.

I’m talking about the whole “Fasch re-inventing his own music” topic at a conference in Zerbst (Where Fasch worked for most of his professional life) in April, but this has me totally perplexed; I wonder if the copyist was selling material under different names to make money?

As for the “Harrach” concerto, I actually think it has quite a lot in common with the Fasch concerto I’m just been discussing… and there are elements of it that sound more Fasch than Telemann. I know the vast majority of Telemann scholars have totally discounted the work. Interestingly, there is more Harrach material in NYPL – including the “Fasch” recorder concerto that Schneider premiered a couple of years ago – and I’d love to know if it’s in the same hand… And whether or not you think it *is* Fasch…

Good luck with the concert – any gut reactions welcome!

Comment on Another chance encounter by Judy Linsenberg

Judy Linsenberg — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 21:28:45 +0000

Hi Brian,
Have you found out anything more about the “Harrach” concerto? I’m going to play it here in California the first weekend in April, and it would be handy to know if there have been any new developments/discoveries since you posted this.
Hope to hear from you about it.
thanks!
Judy Linsenberg