September 11th, 2010
Back with a new recording! I’ve been getting back to some of my favourite music – obscure Restoration English! This has to be some of the least-known harpsichord repertoire there is, and yet, I love it! Some of it’s pretty terrible, of course, but there are so many fantastically quirky and fun pieces hidden away!
This composer seems even more obscure than most – not many published composers don’t even have a wikipedia article, but Francis Pigott is one! His ‘set’ (i.e. suite) in C was published in A Choice Collection of Ayres for the Harpsichord or Spinett alongside pieces by Blow, Croft, and Clarke, (and John Barrett, but he’s another unknown, at least to me!)
There are 7 movements: Prelude, Almand, Corant, Sarabrand, Jigg, March and Minuet, but since they’re so short, I collected them together into one mp3 file.
I also positioned the microphone a little bit differently this time – right up at the ceiling, so about 3 metres away from the bentside and maybe 2.5 metres up. (good thing my ceiling is high!) I think it’s a bit more natural sounding, but it’s tough to get a really good sound in a relatively small space. I’ll keep working at it!
[audio:https://jono.redowl.ca/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/2010-09-11-pigott.mp3]MP3 Download
Posted in recordings | Comments Off on Francis Pigott… uh, who?
August 14th, 2010
It’s been a while! I haven’t been recording like I had planned because I was working too much on the music for the Bruges competition. This is now finished, so I’m coming back to the blog!
I haven’t actually left Europe yet, so haven’t had a chance to record anything new. However, I have some recordings of concerts on this computer, and found a nice little clip of some Froberger from the 2009 Fredericton Baroque Music Festival. Here’s the Lamentation sur ce que j’ay été volé with accompanying Courante, Gigue and Sarabande.
- Lamentation
[audio:https://jono.redowl.ca/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/2009-06-06-froberger1.mp3]
- Courante
[audio:https://jono.redowl.ca/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/2009-06-06-froberger2.mp3]
- Gigue
[audio:https://jono.redowl.ca/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/2009-06-06-froberger3.mp3]
- Sarabande
[audio:https://jono.redowl.ca/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/2009-06-06-froberger4.mp3]
April 3rd, 2010
And here, finally, is the fugue to accompany the prelude I recorded a while ago!
And about this, I just have to say that Bach is hard. So many little notes… even a short piece like this is exhausting to play! There’s really no chance to catch your breath once you get started! It’s really getting to be fun to play this though.
[audio:https://jono.redowl.ca/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/2010-04-03-bach-cmaj-fugue-wtc2.mp3]
MP3 Download
February 27th, 2010
It’s been a while since the last recording – I spent a week in Winnipeg, another week in Fredericton, accompanied a pile of auditions at McGill, and have been learning Scarlatti, and Rameau both of which take me forever.
But now I’m back with a bit of Bach! I always have a bit of a love-hate relationship with Bach. The music’s fantastic, of course, but it tends to be so dense with counterpoint that it never sits still – most pieces are essentially saturated with moving 16th notes! This in contrast to the D’Anglebert I recorded earlier, where, even though there are a lot of notes, and plenty going on, you still get cadences where you can catch your breath. Not so much in Bach! My goal with this music is always to let it flow as smoothly as if it were a ‘normal’
piece despite all that clutter. (Bach fans, don’t hate me!)
Here’s the C major prelude from the Well-Tempered Clavier, book II. I’ll try to get the fugue recorded in another week or two, though I’m spending some time in Quebec city, so can’t guarantee anything.
[audio:https://jono.redowl.ca/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/2010-02-27-bach-cmaj-prel-wtc2.mp3]
MP3 Download
January 23rd, 2010
So, my clavichord started getting lonely with all the attention given to the harpsichord lately, and so I decided I should spend some time with it! Clavichord technique does not take kindly to neglect, I have found. It took quite a while before I could do more than butcher anything I tried to play.
I finally did get something recorded though: Attaingnant‘s setting of Sermisy‘s Tant Que Vivray. It’s curious writing for the keyboard – there isn’t a lot of French repertoire before the clavecinistes come in a hundred years later, and what 16th century music is out there is rarely played these days. But I think it has a certain charm, especially on the clavichord.
After uploading this, I realized that my computer speakers completely massacre this recording, even more than usual. I can barely even discern the melody at the beginning! Give it a chance with headphones or half-decent speakers, if you can.
[audio:https://jono.redowl.ca/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/2010-01-23-tant_que_vivray.mp3]
MP3 download
Don’t worry – no more recordings today. I have other work to do!
January 23rd, 2010
As a followup to last week’s allemande, I’ve recorded the prelude from the same suite. I adore unmeasured preludes! If ever there was something that was purely harpsichord music, it would be these. They make the instrument ring in a way that nothing else can! And I love having the freedom to do almost whatever I want with it.
Unfortunately, this makes it almost impossible to play it the same way twice – I considered editing a few sections together for this recording (some parts are not easy!), but decided that would really be a last resort. Finding two takes that fit together technically and musically would be a bigger challenge than just playing the whole thing through!
Speaking of the recording, I have an almost identical setup as I did last week: two Oktava MK-012s, angled at about 90°, four feet or so off the floor, maybe 8 feet away from the harpsichord. Is this the best arrangement? Probably not – suggestions are welcome! I plug it all into a Tascam US-122 which connects to my laptop, and then record and edit everything using Ardour running on Ubuntu linux. Yay for free software!
The only thing I changed for this recording is to tweak the equalizer settings a little bit – the harpsichord’s mighty bass doesn’t really come through on the recording, so I nudged it up just a little.
[audio:https://jono.redowl.ca/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/2010-01-23-danglebert-d-prelude.mp3]
MP3 Download
January 14th, 2010
Merry post-Christmas! This is an attempt at a new way of posting pictures. I think it’s working well, but let me know if you find broken links or anything else out of sorts. If it works well, I’ll convert all the old albums to this system.
(more…)
January 13th, 2010
Time to start posting some real content! I’ve been wanting for a while to start really using this web page, and also to try recording and performing more music. So the logical thing to do is to start regularly posting sound files! I don’t pretend that these are professional recordings by any stretch – they certainly won’t be professionally recorded! And my living room is far from an ideal acoustic. Any suggestions about microphone placement are welcome. (and yes, the clock is loud – you can hear it clicking away in the background)
I’m also thinking of all these recordings as ‘Works in Progress’. Just because I’ve recorded it doesn’t mean I feel it’s perfect, or even that it’s necessarily ready to perform. Sometimes I might post something just to spark discussion or to illustrate a point, or just because I think it’s neat!
So feel free to comment and to criticize,
To start with, here’s the Allemande from D’Anglebert’s suite in D-. It’s not note-perfect, and I’d really like to do a little more to vary the repeats, but the recording process has been really helpful in learning the piece.
[audio:https://jono.redowl.ca/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/danglebert-allemande.mp3]
Download the mp3 here, in case the flash player doesn’t work, or you just don’t like it!
January 1st, 2010
These recordings are from before this blog really existed. They used to exist on a separate page but the old must make way for the new! This post-dated blog entry is a better place for them.
Solo Harpsichord
François Couperin, from ‘L’art de toucher le clavecin’. Recorded at a solo recital in Saint John, NB, March 10, 2007.
- Prelude in Bb (2.3M)[audio:https://jono.redowl.ca/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/2007-03-10-fcouperin-prelude.mp3]
Suite in A- by Louis Couperin. Recorded during the same concert.
- Prelude à l’imitation de M. Froberger (6.49M)[audio:https://jono.redowl.ca/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/2007-03-10-lcouperin-prelude.mp3]
- Courante (2.43M)[audio:https://jono.redowl.ca/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/2007-03-10-lcouperin-courante.mp3]
Suite in A- by J.J. Froberger. Recorded in a concert given by La Fiorenza, March 29, 2007.
- Toccata (4.97M)[audio:https://jono.redowl.ca/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/2007-03-29-froberger-toccata.mp3]
- Allemande (3.73M)[audio:https://jono.redowl.ca/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/2007-03-29-froberger-allemande.mp3]
- Gigue (1.87M)[audio:https://jono.redowl.ca/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/2007-03-29-froberger-gigue.mp3]
- Courante (1.38M)[audio:https://jono.redowl.ca/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/2007-03-29-froberger-courante.mp3]
- Sarabande (2.71M)[audio:https://jono.redowl.ca/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/2007-03-29-froberger-sarabande.mp3]
Saxophone
Saxophone quartet by Alfred Desenclos. Featuring Chantale Dodier on soprano, Hélène Raymond on alto, Matt Dacso on tenor, and I’m playing baritone. this is the first movement.
- Allegro Non Troppo (6.66M)[audio:https://jono.redowl.ca/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/1.Desenclos_1st_mvt.mp3]
Posted in recordings | Comments Off on Old Recordings