IBERIAN HARPSICHORD CONCERTOS

PALOMINO, NARRO, PERGOLESI

• LA TEMPESTAD | SILVIA MÁRQUEZ & ALFONSO SEBASTIÁN, harpsichords

• IBS CLASSICAL IBS122017 | DL GR 1159-2017

Iberian Harpsichord Concertos pays tribute to the eighteenth-century phenomenon of the keyboard concerto, which found in Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, Manuel Narro and José Palomino three prodigious representatives of this musical development in southern Europe. “From the brilliance of early Italian virtuosity, which forged so many ties with Spain and Portugal, to the popular dance of the eighteenth century, the colour of the south, the echoes of the strummed guitar and the influence of Scarlatti’s writing lead us to fresh, carefree, crisp concertos.”

This recording is the world premiere recording on CD of the concertos by Narro (the first Spanish concerto for harpsichord and orchestra) and Pergolesi, as well as the first on harpsichord of Palomino’s Concerto.

José Palomino (1755-1810), Concerto o sia Quintetto per Cembalo o Piano Forte Con due Violini, Violetta e Basso de Giuseppe Palomino, anno 1785

1. Allegro

2. Andante

3. Rondó. Allº. poco

Silvia Márquez Chulilla, harpsichord

Manuel Narro (1729-1776), Concierto De Clave Con Violines, Viola y Violón Obligados, De Don Manuel Narro. Año 1767

4. Allegro presto

5. Andante giusto

6. [Allegro]

Silvia Márquez Chulilla, harpsichord

Giovanni Battista Pergolesi (1710-1736), Concerto à Cembalo Concertato 1mo., Cembalo Concertato 2o., 2 Violini, Viola e Basso, Del Sigr. Pergolesi

7. Allegro non assai

8. Adagio Tardissimo

9. Allegro

Silvia Márquez Chulilla & Alfonso Sebastián, harpsichords CD

World Premiere Recording

"In a journey backwards through the eighteenth century, La Tempestad brings us the world premiere recording of these three brilliant, fresh and surprising concertos, in delightful performances, on an essential album for lovers of the harpsichord."

Pablo F. Cantalapiedra | MELÓMANO

"Silvia Márquez Chulilla shines throughout in a performance of great precision and clarity. With the collaboration of Alfonso Sebastián in Pergolesi’s double concerto, of fully baroque aesthetic, alongside a solid string quintet, this attractive and well-presented new release comes to a close."

Andrés Moreno Mengíbar | SCHERZO

BETWEEN JÁCARAS AND BOLEROS

On one occasion there was at his house, towards the end of August, a little father of the spruce sort, with a bit of a quiff on the frontispiece, stiff-necked, fair-bearded, in a clean and pleated habit, a jaunty shoe, buckskin breeches, and a great singer of jácaras to the guitarrilla, from whom our Gerundico would not budge an inch, because he gave him sweets. The good father was, half and half, as much conceited as empty-headed.

José Francisco de Isla (Historia del famoso predicador fray Gerundio de Campazas, alias Zotes, 1758)

Cathedral archives, powerful guardians of the musical art of each age, have allowed us to discover an enormous quantity of sacred music from eighteenth-century Spain, and they also treasure the instrumental music of the most renowned European composers of the time. But the picture remains incomplete and faded if we cannot imagine the role of music in everyday life, the relationship of the clergy with the earthly world, and its coexistence with popular dances and customs. Literature is, very often, the path that carries us to those worlds. And the “little father” who sings jácaras, as presented by José Francisco de Isla, is nothing other than a stark critique of the clergy based on satire and irony, yet clinging to the modern novel and its commitment to reality; so much so that the Inquisition censored the book twenty days after its appearance and in 1762 a decree forbade Isla to publish any new work.

Such swift and categorical censorship, which as an isolated event might be understandable in the case of a direct attack, is surprising when we consider the sociocultural context and the tremendous changes taking place: against the traditionalists, Enlightenment thought and reason had a great champion in the figure of Carlos III; education and knowledge were championed as tools for achieving progress and happiness; in 1759 the Encyclopedie began to be published; numerous Academies were founded and a curious cultural phenomenon arose: in opposition to the group of the enlightened – cultivated men with a taste for all things French – there appeared “majismo”, represented by the majority of the people and clinging to all that was authentically Spanish; they called everything foreign petimetre and currutaco and accompanied their dances – fandangos, boleros and seguidillas – with guitars, lutes and castanets. The boundaries between the two groups began to blur when the aristocracy itself started to adopt plebeian customs or to show visitors the charm of popular dances. Under the reign of Carlos III, Francisco de Goya worked for the Real Fábrica de Tapices: the Enlightenment spirit encouraged quality industry, but the subject matter portrayed the picturesque, popular dances and entertainments. Towards the end of the century, the enlightened writer and politician Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos portrays in his Diario the coexistence of all these elements in an ordinary day:

Sunday, 23 [July] (1797). Up at five. Bright sun. Mass, and on horseback at half past six. Clouds. To Caldones, invited by the indiano don Alonso Acebal to his feast of the Carmen; there, a reader in theology from Salamanca, a Cistercian, and the Fano family of Quintana; several priests from round about, and the relatives of the house; from Gijón, don Eduardo and the notary Misericordia. To the church; the romería, in a lovely oak grove beside it, without any field; the soil removed by Rato for an estate, from which the trees suffer greatly, for they are beautiful but sad and poorly nourished; few people; the meal, in a meadow; eighty persons; as is customary, without excess in quantity or manner. Afternoon, to the church; bad road, and a long one; the sun troubles us; two bagpipers, a drum from Gijón, four marksmen; more romería; some dances. Saw Marica Ramírez morning and afternoon. Quite something!

Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos (Diario, 1790-1801)

It is this rich mosaic of the last third of the century, described by Isla and Jovellanos, that frames the composition of the concertos of Manuel Narro and José Palomino, a genre which, despite its considerable development in Europe, was scarcely represented here, amid so much sacred music, jácara and bolero.

CONCERTOS FOR HARPSICHORD, ORGAN OR FORTE E PIANO

The keyboard concerto is a fortunate eighteenth-century development, a century in which composers gradually discovered the astonishing harmonic and polyphonic potential of these instruments beyond their supporting role in the basso continuo. J. S. Bach’s fifth Brandenburg Concerto (1720s), the later BWV 1052-1065, George Frideric Handel’s Organ Concertos (1738) and those of Thomas Arne for harpsichord, organ or forte e piano (1751) are representative examples of a genre that reached its height in the second half of the century. For Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach the keyboard concerto was a constant throughout his life, from the time he began writing the first ones in 1733 until the Concerto in E flat Wq. 47 for harpsichord and fortepiano of 1788. In the Iberian sphere, the Concerto in A major by the Portuguese Carlos Seixas (1704-1742) and another in G minor attributed to the same composer are early, isolated cases. Later, the Quintetti Op. 56 and 57 by Luigi Boccherini – who arrived in Spain in 1768 – and the Seis quintetos para instrumentos de arco y Órgano o clave obligado by Antonio Soler, dated 1776, stand out.

Attributed to Giovanni Battista Pergolesi (1710-1736) and preserved in a manuscript at the Universidad de Michigan, the Concerto à Cembalo Concertato 1mo., Cembalo Concertato 2o., 2 Violini, Viola e Basso P 240 III is the first known example of this type – a concerto for two harpsichords with orchestra – in southern Europe. Naples, a territory under Spanish rule from 1504 to 1707, was in the eighteenth century the most populous city in Italy. Opera production in the hands of composers such as Alessandro Scarlatti made it a cosmopolitan centre, and it would be the birthplace or point of departure of many of the musicians who later worked at the courts of Madrid and Lisbon (Domenico Scarlatti, to name but one).

In that populous Naples, thronged with merchants, innkeepers, aristocrats, beggars, spinners… – characters so well represented in the famous Neapolitan nativity scenes – Giovanni Battista Pergolesi worked from 1725 in the circle of the Court, in the service of various aristocrats. With a substantial output of operas – as could hardly be otherwise – he soon became famous as a representative of opera buffa (La Serva Padrona), although he also wrote sacred works (Stabat Mater) and instrumental ones (among them a violin concerto). The Concerto for two harpsichords, of fully baroque writing and clearly built upon a basso continuo line, conveys in its three movements the image of a rich, cheerful, bustling environment hungry for leisure. If we take its authorship as certain, and bearing in mind that Pergolesi died very young in 1736, the concerto would be strictly contemporary with J. S. Bach’s Concertos for two harpsichords – BWV 1060 and 1061 – if not earlier.

But… for whom were these concertos intended? Where were they performed? From the Central European sphere a multitude of facts reach us: Bach, director of the Collegium Musicum in Leipzig between 1729 and 1741, wrote many of his concertos for the sessions at the Café Zimmermann, where they were premiered by his sons (C. P. E. Bach or W. Friedemann) or by gifted pupils. In London, a new concerto written and performed in the interval by Handel or Arne served as a draw for various oratorios. C. P. E. Bach’s last compositions in the genre fed the concert series he directed in Hamburg. Little is yet known, however, about such paying concerts in Spain, and the repertoires that enlivened the musical soirées of the houses of Benavente and Osuna seem to have leaned towards opera and string music. Soler – a pupil in Madrid of Domenico Scarlatti and José de Nebra – wrote the Quintets for his pupil the Infante D. Gabriel, son of Carlos III.

In that enlightened Spain of Carlos III, the same Spain that in 1760 banned the publication of Fray Gerundio…, a Valencian priest who devoted his daily work to the liturgical service wrote in 1767 what is perhaps his most authentically Spanish, daring, entertaining and costumbrista work; an instrumental piece for which neither dedicatee nor occasion of premiere is known: the “Concierto De Clave Con Violines, Viola y Violón Obligados”. It is, if we review the precedents set out above, the first known Spanish concerto for harpsichord to date.

Born in Valencia in 1729, Manuel Narro was ordained a priest at the Colegiata de Játiva and was organist there between 1752 and 1771, with a brief interval during which he held the same post at the Catedral de Valencia. In 1768, after the death of José de Nebra, he competed for the fourth organist’s post at the Real Capilla de Madrid. Although the panel rated him the best, the vacancy was awarded to the young José Lidón. Nevertheless, in 1771 Narro gave up his post in Játiva and appeared as organist of the Descalzas Reales in Madrid. He remained there until 1775, when he returned to Valencia, where he died in 1776. The circulation his music achieved (with copies in places as diverse as Cuenca, Madrid, Salamanca, Valencia, Mexico…) bears witness to the recognition he enjoyed as a composer. Against his more than 60 sacred vocal works (masses, motets, villancicos, hymns, etc.), his known instrumental output is extremely slight: three works for keyboard and the Concierto de Clave, of which a copy is preserved at the Colegiata de Roncesvalles. It seems that, after the competition for the Catedral de Valencia, the examiners considered that Narro played “with more propriety and more in keeping with the Church” than the other winner, Rafael Anglés, who was more “modern”. Despite the scant biographical data, it is not hard to imagine that Narro may have known the keyboard works of Domenico Scarlatti, whether in his Madrid circle or through one of his Valencian friends at Court. What is clear, however, is the influence of the latter on the Concierto, which is of galant aesthetic, far from the ecclesiastical style and brimming with brilliance through its rhythmic chords, acciaccaturas, melodic dissonances, ornamental turns and crossed hands.

Only a few months before Narro moved to Madrid, the young José Palomino – son of Francisco Mariano, a violinist from Zaragoza who worked in the Madrid theatres – obtained a post as violinist in the Real Capilla. The two must have lived very close by and known the same musical circle for some years, until in 1773 Palomino left for Lisbon. The Portuguese capital was a hugely important cultural centre, with a music library famous worldwide since the mid-seventeenth century and a great flourishing of keyboard music, under Italian influence, throughout the eighteenth century. Alongside music for the royal court, chamber and salon music abounded, and European novelties, especially the music of Haydn, kept arriving.

José Palomino enjoyed a comfortable position as a musician of the Portuguese Real Capilla, in an atmosphere of modernity and elegance, and frequented the city’s private academies. In 1785 Count Fernán Núñez, Spanish ambassador to Portugal, commissioned from him Il retorno di Astrea in terra to celebrate the double marriage of the infantes of Portugal and Spain. That same year he wrote the “Concerto o sia Quintetto per Cembalo o Piano Forte con due Violini, Violetta e Basso”, preserved in the Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal. Almost two decades later than Narro’s Concierto, and whereas in that work the interaction between keyboard and strings was limited to alternating dialogue, Palomino’s Concerto rests on a chamber-music conception in which the strings, each line taking on an independent role, are more integrated with the keyboard and play with an interwoven motivic construction. Clearly classical in structure (allegro-andante-rondo) and language (Alberti bass, simple phrases, abundant appoggiaturas and scales, element of surprise), the concerto exudes an elegance, grace and nonchalance reminiscent of W. A. Mozart’s early Viennese concertos, with no greater pretension, perhaps, than to entertain.

The events of the closing years of the eighteenth century turned this cultural and musical bubble upside down. The death of Carlos III in 1788, which preceded the French Revolution, meant the end of enlightened reformism, and the departure of the Portuguese royal house after the Napoleonic invasion, the end of absolutism. In 1808, when João VI and the court fled to Brazil, José Palomino accepted the post of maestro de capilla in Las Palmas, where he devoted himself to reorganising the cathedral chapter’s small orchestra and to composing sacred music until his death in 1810.

ON THE (PRESENT) RECORDING

In February 2015 La Tempestad presented, in the “Universo Barroco” series at the Auditorio Nacional de Madrid, the modern-day revival, on historically informed principles, of M. Narro’s Concerto for harpsichord and G. B. Pergolesi’s Concerto for two harpsichords. The programme was completed by some of the Sonatas de Oposiciones a la Capilla Real de Madrid edited by Judith Ortega, who at that moment reminded us of the existence of another Hispanic harpsichord concerto: that of José Palomino. If Narro’s concerto received warm praise, Pergolesi’s turned out to be the real surprise of the evening, and so audience and critics conveyed.

Aware of the quality of the music, we also saw the need to show and give value to a language very different from the one represented until then by the keyboard concertos of Bach, Handel or their contemporaries. From the brilliance of early Italian virtuosity – which forged so many ties with Spain and Portugal – to the popular dance of the eighteenth century, the colour of the south, the echoes of the strummed guitar or the influence of Scarlatti’s writing lead us to fresh, carefree, crisp concertos. We therefore decided to record them. As far as we know, this recording is the world premiere recording on CD of the concertos by Narro and Pergolesi, as well as the first on harpsichord of Palomino’s concerto.

For it is at this point that the first interpretative decisions had to be considered: for which keyboard instrument was Palomino’s concerto written? Pergolesi leaves no room for doubt with the term “cembalo concertato”; nor does Narro in his “Concierto de Clave”, beyond the characteristic harpsichord writing and the absence of dynamic markings in the keyboard part, even though he probably had the opportunity to become acquainted with the new instruments – perhaps, admittedly, after the composition of his work. Although the publication in 1578 of Antonio de Cabezón’s “Obras de música para tecla, arpa o vihuela” illustrated a long-standing common practice and music less tied to the instrument itself, Palomino’s Concerto (we reverse the order of the digits and leap to 1785) belongs to a moment in the evolution of keyboard instruments in pursuit, precisely, of greater expressiveness. The truth is that the arrival of the fortepiano was not sudden – among other reasons because of its high cost – so the harpsichord often remained the instrument available. In the circle of J. S. Bach’s sons and pupils, for example, the indication “für das Clavier” left the door open to the various keyboard instruments that coexisted; C. P. E. Bach composed his Concerto in E flat Wq. 47 (1788) for harpsichord and fortepiano; and in these last decades of the eighteenth century and the early years of the nineteenth, publishers, aware of the risk, issued numerous keyboard works by Boccherini, Haydn or Beethoven marked “for harpsichord or fortepiano”. Those very words appear in Palomino’s manuscript – so in this case it is not a publishing tactic. His writing certainly suits the sonority of the fortepiano perfectly; the Portuguese court was one of the first places where the new instrument began to be heard; and King João V financed its construction while sending Portuguese apprentices abroad. In short, practicality – it is probably harder to find fortepianos today than it was in Palomino’s circle – and the fact that a recording on fortepiano already existed led us to opt for the harpsichord version.

It is surprising at first sight that Narro dispenses with the harpsichord part in his second movement. There is no trace of figures either, and it does not seem likely that the composer left the performer free to improvise over the movement in the baroque manner: in contrast to the harmonic construction we may find in the slow movements of a Handel organ concerto, for example, Narro looks ahead in this classical-style Andante: the thematic material, perfectly drawn in the violin lines, finds elegantly spun responses in the bass. The galant idiom thus displays a fragile and beautiful balance of bowed strings that would quickly have been shattered by the entry of a plectrum. Not so in Pergolesi, where the lyricism and cantabile of the two harpsichords take on a prominence somewhat cloying for the first third of the century (and which, in our view, feeds the doubt over its authorship).

Other aspects to be decided included the use of a second keyboard instrument in the role of basso continuo and whether or not to realise cadenzas. We chose to add the basso continuo to Narro’s concerto in order to create a second plane, with the harpsichord accompaniment integrated into the orchestra, against the solo harpsichord; and we thought that in Palomino, further removed from baroque sonority, it was preferable to sacrifice the accompaniment to offer a more chamber-like and crystalline colour. The practice of improvising cadenzas – as the musicologist María Gembero points out – was not universal: in contrast to the Germanic custom (C. P. E. Bach left a great number of them written down), cadenzas were almost always absent from Parisian concertos of the Classical period and the practice remains undocumented in the Iberian Peninsula: Narro does not indicate where they should be performed, and the fermatas in Palomino (besides being too many) do not correspond to the usual harmonic places for a cadenza, but rather suggest a brief pause before resuming the rondo.

Finally, María Gembero’s edition of the score of Narro’s Concierto includes an interesting and thorough study and was essential to our preparatory work. Nevertheless, we thought it advisable to produce a practical edition of score and parts for both Narro’s work and Palomino’s concerto. This we did on the basis of the manuscript provided by the Real Colegiata de Roncesvalles – in the first case – and of the autograph manuscript preserved in the Biblioteca Nacional de Lisboa – in the case of Palomino.

Full stop. We are sure that these first Iberian concertos fulfilled their purpose of entertaining an audience that was probably small, perhaps while horses’ hooves clattered on the flagstones of the courtyard and the echo of castanets sounded in the background. Returning to our starting point, and making Isla’s words our own, let us leave the judging now to the public, “most mighty sir:”

Let us be undeceived: only you have this great power, because only you in this respect (I speak of things here below) can do all that you wish. Let the public wish that no one should hiss against a work; no one will hiss. Let the public wish that everyone should celebrate it inwardly and outwardly; everyone will celebrate it. Let the public wish that it be reprinted a thousand times; a thousand times it will be reprinted. And this power is not limited to these or those dominions; it extends as far as the vast bounds of the world extend. Wherever there are men there is a public, for the public is all men.

Silvia Márquez Chulilla