Vincenzo Albrici (1631-1687)
Sacred Cantatas
Ulrike Hofbauer (soprano), Magdalena Podkoscielna (soprano), David Erler (alto), Georg Poplutz (tenor), Martin Schicketanz (bass)
Weser-Renaissance Bremen/Manfred Cordes
rec. 2022, Stiftskirche, Bassum, Germany
Texts and translations included
Reviewed as a download
cpo 555599-2 [72]

The great German musician Manfred Cordes, who turns seventy-three years of age this year, has been on a musical Baltic cruise of late. I hugely enjoyed their three-disc series from CPO: Music from Old Hanseatic Cities, in which he directed a group called the Europäisches Hanse-Ensemble. With his usual forces, Weser-Renaissance, he has made further stops in Denmark and now he comes to Sweden. In this new record, the familiar North German musicians play the music of Vincenzo Albrici, some of which dates from his time at the court of Queen Christina in the mid-1650s.

Christina of Sweden, daughter of the King Gustav II Adolf, succeeded to the throne at the age of five in 1632. A decade later the four-year-old Louis XIV found himself in a similar position in France. The two children although sharing the same love of music, dancing and drama, would follow different paths, however. A period of Regency ended when Christina reached the age of eighteen. By then she was an accomplished reader, linguist and connoisseur of all things enlightened. From this time a range of great minds and skilled fingers would come to Sweden and the court which had bases in Stockholm and Uppsala benefitted from it, even if the coffers did not. The great mathematician Descartes even came as a personal tutor to the Queen, although the cold winter air and the 5 am lesson starts did for him and he passed away in the freezing February of 1650, aged only fifty-three.

In the wider European picture, these years saw an end to the protracted religious wars that had raged for thirty years. Citizens of all nations could now (in theory) choose to practice the religion of their choice (so long as it was Catholicism, Lutheranism or Calvinism). Sweden was well and truly Lutheran. Christina’s coronation took a long time to arrange and finally happened in 1650 with all the pomp and ceremony (and impressive music) one would expect.

Queen Christina began to make overtures to Rome in the very early 1650s. She wanted the composer and teacher Giacomo Carissimi to come to Sweden. This never happened (I don’t believe Carissimi ever left Italy, actually) but her enquires led to a desire to know more about the Catholic tradition as well as the Roman musical scene. The Jesuits became involved and gradually began to take steps to instruct her in the true faith. Although Veronika Greuel does not say as much in her comprehensive liner notes, I believe the Society of Jesus (Jesuit Order) had a hand in arranging for our composer Vincenzo Albrici to assemble a troupe who made their way up North in 1652.

Albrici was a pupil of Carissimi and from 1644 he had been in the employ of the Chiesa del Gésu in Rome (the Mother Church of the Jesuits). From this decade Rome had been growing as an important centre of music in Italy. For over thirty years prior to this it had been Venice that had been supreme. The great Barbara Strozzi was still Venetian-based, but I believe most of the up-and-coming Italian composers were now based in Rome. Post-Monteverdi, I suppose the music of the period is moving from the polyphonic madrigal to the more developed cantata/oratorio style. Carissimi himself is indeed now remembered best for his oratorios. Elsewhere Heinrich Schütz, although by then in his mid-sixties, was writing splendid music in Dresden.

Albrici arrived in Sweden in late 1652 with over twenty musicians including his father and his younger brother. There were at least six castrati in the group. They must have played chamber music at the secular court gatherings and sacred music in church. There were theatrical presentations at the Tre Kronor castle, but I doubt opera would have been staged as the Roman musicians would not have been schooled in that art form at that time. Albrici’s vocal music on this CD is all sung in Latin although I gather from the notes he did set some Swedish texts too. The music is all from the Düben collection held in Uppsala at the University there. I cannot be sure, however, how much of it dates from Albrici’s time in Sweden or from later tours he made to Dresden and other musical environs. We hear seven scared cantatas ranging in duration from 5 to 12 minutes. There are a couple of solo voice works for alto and tenor respectively (as usual I enjoyed the countertenor of David Erler) and pieces for three, four and five parts. The programme is topped and tailed by the anchors of the 5vv Dixit Dominus and the 5vv Laetatus Sum (both SSATB). If I remember rightly, these are both used at vespers.

For a little variety there are a couple of instrumental works too, in the form of Sinfonias. The booklet tells us the Düben collection contains but three of these pieces in total. Tutti sections alternate with shorter solo pages. I have not seen any sources, but it is likely that in these pieces, solos are left to be improvised above a notated bass line. The performances are very fine and the sound captured by Olaf Mielke in the group’s usual venue in Bassum, just South of Bremen, is clear and resonant.

The soloists are all experienced singers, steeped in this tradition and all have been singing this repertory for years. I think they are all in their forties and still sound sweet and fresh to my ears. The two sopranos blend particularly well when they sing together, having quite distinctive yet complementing timbres and colours. Georg Poplutz, singing the tenor line, is satisfying as usual and I enjoyed the shading of baritone Martin Schicketanz too (he is listed as a bass in the booklet and above). The melodic modernity of Albrici’s fluid music is wonderful to experience. The new concerto con voce style he was working with is clearly yielding fruits, as is audible in the exuberance to his composition of tune and harmony. The structure, especially in the larger works, allows him to push boundaries and achieve a clarity in which I hear the first flowerings of the baroque style that will emerge from this period in music. Supporting the singers throughout are the wonderful band led by fiddle player Veronika Skuplik. In this particular review, I would like to highlight the fantastic musicianship of Eva Maria Horn on the dulcian (the predecessor of the modern bassoon).

Albrici and the Italians did not stay too long in Sweden. Queen Christina was welcomed into the Catholic Church in 1654 and with that they were away. Albrici went to Dresden to work (and, eventually, to succeed Schütz). He even visited the court of Charles II in England in the 1660s and is mentioned in Samuel Pepys diaries, I understand. Not yet thirty years of age, Christina, an anointed Queen until the day she died, left Sweden. She made a good abdication and went to live in Rome. It was there that she did finally get to employ Carissimi as her “Maestro di cappella del concerto di camera”. She later enjoyed being the patron of both Stradella and Corelli too. This Queen without a realm would live a complicated and not always happy life. To this day, her remains lie in the Vatican.

I very much enjoyed listening to the music of Vincenzo Albrici for the first time in these splendid new recordings. The group Weser-Renaissance is Bremen-based; that old Hanseatic city (well technically, the Prince-Archbishopric thereof) was a Duchy controlled by Christina as part of the negotiations that ended the wars in 1648. As you can tell, I enjoyed exploring the inter-connections and the history that goes alongside this music in these performances. Very nicely done, cpo. More please.

Philip Harrison

Contents
Dixit Dominus Domino meo for SSATB, 2 violins & basso continuo
Misericordias Domini for ATB, 2 violins, bassoon & basso continuo
Iesu nostra redemptio for SATB, 2 violins, bassoon & basso continuo
Sinfonia à sei
Ave Iesu Christe, rex benedicte for SSB, 3 violins, viola da gamba, bassoon & basso continuo
In te Domine speravi for alto solo, 2 violins, bassoon & basso continuo
Sinfonia à 2
Mihi autem bonum est for tenor solo, 2 violins, bassoon & basso continuo
Laetatus sum for SSATB, 2 violins, 2 viola da gamba, bassoon & basso continuo

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