Search - George Frideric Handel, Marc Minkowski The Concerti Grossi, Ton Koopman The Water Music :: Concerti Grossi / Water Music

Minkowski great, Koopman blah (as usual)

Ghost(Ghost(M)) | 03/06/2010

(4 out of 5 stars)

"This is a two-disk package; the first disk holds Les Musiciens du Louvre under Minkowski playing Handel's Concerti Grossi; this disk is very good. The other disk is Koopman with his band playing Watermusic: this is indistinct, dull, and soulless. Five stars for CD 1, two stars for CD 2. Maybe it's me, but the only good Koopman recording I'm aware of is the Bach Ouvertures video -- something wrong with this guy. Watermusic is recorded a lot; no problem getting a decent version, Pinnock for example. This one above you should only get if the price is good, 'cause you'd only want the first CD.



Added later: all right, I gave it another listen, and maybe I was overly critical of Koopman, so I'll bump it up by a star, just to be on the safe side. I still don't like it (the most of it), but perhaps some of the reasons for my dislike have to do with this performance's being unusual, rather than something objective. The two main problems I see here are: (1) The whole thing is played in a muted, subdued way, whereas I'm used to very open, exuberant performances not lacking in pomp (and I think Water Music _should_ be played like that: it's open-air music, after all -- it was premiered by playing from a boat floating up and down the Thames, for chrissakes; why such reserve? It's not chamber music, yet Koopman plays it as if it were).



Second, there are interpretative nuances that I don't like. Now I'm no one to argue with the maestro here, but still I have ears and preferences (and habits too, of course), and with the exception of one or two pieces, everything feels somewhat mechanical, too measured, if you know what I mean. Combined with aforementioned pervasive quietness overall, this makes for a serious monotony: neither the tempos nor dynamics are sufficiently varied to provide enough contrast -- which by the end of the first suite your ear/brain really start aching for, especially on the last piece, Air, which should (well, imo) be slow and very expansive, yet here it's quite march-like, very measured. I also feel (can't be sure since I don't have the score) that this version sports an unusually high number of appoggiaturas, which kinda feels weird. This sort of thing. Oh yeah, one more nuance: this version has timpani -- which I, actually, liked; the merry rumble they create in the background fits the music quite well (although I remember reading somewhere that no surviving score of Water Music has timpani in it, nor would the drums physically fit on the barge for the first performance).



But that aside, this Watermusik really isn't quite as bad as I initially felt, just takes some getting used to.



PS. About appoggiaturas: I revisited some other recordings to see specifically what takes place in this respect: appoggiaturas are present but are played as trills, which makes them sound quite consonant; iow they don't feel like appoggiaturas (and maybe they shouldn't be called such). Since I've never seen the actual music, I don't know who's right or wrong here, and moreover, perhaps it's marked as one of those squiggly melismatic signs of yesteryear that no one quite knows today how to realise -- thus performing differences. Myself, I didn't like the clean appoggiaturas on this record, but it's probably simply a matter of habit."