ROYAL BRASS MUSIC - MAURICE ANDRE, THURSTON DART

Two L’Oiseau-Lyre albums of English brass music from the 17th and 18th centuries – The Royal Brass Music of King James I and English Baroque Trumpet Concertos – newly compiled and remastered and issued on CD for the first time.

With this and several other albums issued in 2019, Eloquence celebrates the art of Thurston Dart, the harpsichordist, conductor and editor who played a leading role in the early-music revival in postwar Britain. After his death in 1971 at the age of just 49, his fellow harpsichordist Igor Kipnis paid fulsome tribute to ‘a man of many parts’, whose 1954 volume on The Interpretation of Music had attained testamentary authority among his fellow musicians, matched by the skill, style and flourish of his many recordings: ‘He was the ideal musicologist-performer.’

In 1960 Dart convened and directed a six-strong ensemble of trumpets and trombones to record a sequence of music written for performance at the court of King James I by a twenty-piece band of sackbuts and cornetts known as the Royal Wind Music. Part-books of their repertoire were edited and in some cases reconstructed by Dart and his colleague Trevor Jones, and the result is a splendid compilation of dances and fanfares by members of the king’s musical retinue including the violist and lutenist ‘Giovanni Coprario’ who, born in London in 1570 as John Cooper, changed his name in the early seventeenth century, doubtless to add foreign lustre to his reputation.

Dart’s ad hoc ensemble was led by the legendary French trumpeter Maurice André who, four years previously, had taken centre-stage to record one of the first concerto albums in his long and distinguished career. The headline name in this trio of ‘English Baroque Trumpet Concertos’ is Jeremiah Clarke, whose successful career came to an abrupt and tragic end in his early 30s with his suicide in 1707. The nine movements of his Suite in D major for trumpet, strings and winds were also reconstructed for this recording, and they include the Trumpet Voluntary (sometimes known as the Prince of Denmark’s March) to which countless brides have walked down the aisle. The names of Richard Mudge and Capel Bond are far less known than they deserve to be: musicians of the English Midlands, they each left hardly more than a single collection of six concertos. In these examples edited by Gerald Finzi, they nonetheless demonstrate high craftsmanship in the Italian style and a fine awareness of the then-modern, ‘galant’ mode.

THE ROYAL BRASS MUSIC OF KING JAMES I

1 SIMPSON Intrada                                                                                                                                                                        

2 HARDING Almande                                                                                                                                                    

3 HOLBORNE Coranto: The Faerie Round                                                                                                             

4 LEETHERLAND Pavan                                                                                                                                                                  

5 GUY Almande No. 13                                                                                                                                 

6 HOLBORNE The Choice                                                                                                                             

7 BASSANO Fantasia                                                                                                                                                      

8 FARNABY Almande                                                                                                                                                     

9 HOLBORNE Galliard                                                                                                                                                    

10 JOHNSON Almande No. 7                                                                                                                      

11 HOLBORNE Coranto: As it Fell on Holie Eve

12 COPRARIO Fantasia No. 76                                                                                                                    

13 FERRABOSCO Almande No. 5                                                                                                               

14 DERING Fantasia                                                                                                                                                       

15 LUPO Almande                                                                                                                                                          

16 BASSANO Pavan No. 16                                                                                                                          

17 HOLBORNE The Fruit of Love                                                                                                         

18 FERRABOSCO Pavan                                                                                                                           

19 FERRABOSCO Alman

Maurice André, Jean Pirot, trumpets

Maurice Suzan, Henri Arqué, Camille Verdier, Bernard Gallot, trombones

Thurston Dart

ENGLISH BAROQUE TRUMPET MUSIC

20–22 MUDGE Trumpet Concerto No. 1 in D major

23–31 CLARKE Suite in D major

32–34 BOND Trumpet Concerto No. 1 in D major

Maurice André, trumpet

Ensemble Orchestral de L’Oiseau-Lyre

Pierre Colombo 

FIRST CD RELEASE ON DECCA