Luogo e data di registrazione		Chiesa dell'Annunciazione B.V.M., Casatico di Marcaria, Mantova (Italia) - 5-6 luglio 2009
	Registrazione: live / studio		studio
	Sound Engineers		Matteo Costa, Gabriele Robotti
	Artistic direction		GianMichele Costantin
	Prima Edizione CD		BRILLIANT CLASSICS - 94049 - (1 CD - durata 65' 00") - (p) 2011 - DDD
	Cover		-
	Note		With the patronage of PROVINCIA DI PADOVA.

 

The ten Recercari recorded here were first published in 1615 and dedicated to Frescobaldi’s patron, Cardinal Pietro Aldobrandini, who had taken possession of the composer’s native Ferrara on behalf of the pope in 1598 and to whose patronage the composer gravitated when he moved to Rome. In that same year he also published his First Book of Toccatas, in this case dedicated to a hoped-for new employer, the Duke of Mantua. Musically, too, the two publications looked in different directions: the Toccatas might be said to represent the future and the Recercars the past. In the latter Frescobaldi shows his abilities in contrapuntal artifice, continuing a tradition which went back to Franco-Flemish composers of the fifteenth century. The word ‘recercare’ means to search or tease out and describes a piece in which short abstract musical motives are manipulated through imitation, inversion, and combined in an impressive variety of ways, sometimes with self-imposed restrictions known as obblighi. The musical arguments are always clear, using the long note-values of the sixteenth-century motet and avoiding distracting time-changes or excessive ornamentation. Smooth and singable, Recercars are ideally suited to the organ, with Frescobaldi’s inventiveness ensuring continued interest. On this recording each of the first nine Recercars is preceded by a Toccata taken from a manuscript thought to have been copied for the rich Fugger family of Augsburg. While not having the authority of Frescobaldi’s carefully-prepared printed Toccatas, they nevertheless show some unmistakeable Frescobaldi fingerprints. A Toccata was originally an improvised piece in which the player touched (Italian toccare) the keys of the instrument to try it out and establish a particular mode. In the forewords to his printed Toccatas Frescobaldi gave the player licence to vary the tempo and the expression, in line with the affekt or emotion which a particular passage was trying to represent. Like the madrigals of the time, a succession of emotional states is portrayed by quick changes of mood, ranging from the contemplative to the virtuoso, the former expressed by slow-moving harmonies and inward-looking figures moving between the hands, the latter by bravura passagework, often in contrary motion. The pairing of Toccatas with Recercars on this recording demonstrates both sides of Frescobaldi’s genius, somewhat in the manner of J.S. Bach’s Prelude and Fugue pairings – though the pairings here owe nothing to Frescobaldi himself. Where possible Toccata and Recercar are matched according to mode. The first Toccata is a short written-out improvisation whose purpose is simply to establish D Dorian modality. This leads nicely into the first Recercar which starts on D, though moving quickly up a fourth into G Dorian, rather like our modern G minor. It is based on three short themes which are played in the first four bars and thereafter developed, together and separately, in a single tightly-constructed unit. The more extended second Toccata in that same mode shows some quirky harmonic and rhythmic shifts as well as opportunities for virtuoso playing. Recercar Secondo is in three sections, each having two complementary themes – a subject and a countersubject – both of which are also inverted, the ensuing four musical ideas then developed. The opening theme is like a standard litany refrain of the time, reminding us of Frescobaldi’s main employment as organist at St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. The next Toccata (Track 5) exploits the different areas of the keyboard, imitating different voices in dialogue, a common technique used by the composer. This breaks off briefly for a section of what were called ligature, suspension dissonances which were especially associated with Toccatas played during the Elevation of the Mass and were intended to depict the suffering of Christ’s Passion. The virtuoso ending uses contrary motion between the hands. Recercar Terzo, again in three sections, uses a peculiar additive technique where the subject of the first section is added on at the end of the second and both to the third; all three themes are combined at the end. The Toccata which follows, the longest of the set, displays the whole range of Frescobaldi’s techniques, including another short section with ligature. Towards the end a long series of figurative solos for the left hand leads to another virtuoso flourish in contrary motion. Recercar Quarto, in the Phrygian mode, is the first of the set to be expressly based on a pattern of solmisation syllables, mi fa fa mi, which starts on either A or E. It is played first in semibreves, then in breves and finally in double breves. Each section uses a different countersubject (the second is chromatic), imitated in all the parts, and also inverted in the second and third sections. The Toccata on track 9 starts like an Elevation Toccata, here played on the voce humana stop with its characteristic vibrato caused by two sets of pipes tuned very slightly apart. Recercar Quinto is again based on three themes, announced at the opening and developed individually before being combined at the end. The next Toccata is short and may be incomplete; having established the F Lydian mode in a lively manner it leads easily into the sixth Recercar, based on a five note theme called Fra Jacopino in Italian or Frère Jacques in French (the first note is repeated here). The following Toccata/Ricercar pair works in a similar way, this time in G Mixolydian mode. The G Dorian toccata on track 15 is particularly effective and leads to the eighth Recercar with the unusual obbligo of avoiding any stepwise movement. This shifts the focus onto thirds and fourths in a piece of pointilistic clockwork, played here on high organ pipes. The final Toccata is played over long held pedal notes, making for static harmony but nevertheless building up tension ahead of each change of pedal note. The ninth Recercar again works four different themes which are combined only at the end, while Recercar Decimo uses a five-note ostinato or recurring theme based on solmization syllables, presented in a variety of note values and accompanied by various countersubjects worked imitatively. While these Recercars might look back to a long contrapuntal tradition they certainly did not represent the end of a road: Frescobaldi’s ingenuity and championing of the idiom ensured that, as fugue, this style of writing would continue to occupy composers for centuries afterwards. © Noel O’Regan, 2011