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Fanfare Magazine: 37:4 (03-04/2014)
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This is a release I’d ordinarily welcome, as it gives us entry to a musical aspect of the Austrian courts of three successive Holy Roman Emperors (Ferdinand III, Leopold I, Charles VI) that is usually neglected: the sacred music heard both in their chapels, and sometimes on stage, after the operatic Roman fashion of Stefano Landi. But while the selections are chosen to demonstrate a variety of influences, expressive values, and textures, I take issue with the engineering and some aspects of performance.
First and most importantly, eight out of the 12 selections feature countertenor Alex Potter in settings that also give prime exposure to a pair of trombones and a bassoon. Yet the balance favors the instrumentalists over Potter. For example, there is a section of Ziani’s Alma Redemptoris Mater where the bassoon has a prominent role weaving figurations around the countertenor. Carlos Cristóbal is an excellent bassoonist, but the crisp aural focus that helps display his attractive tone is completely missing from Potter’s microphone placement, whose tone in turn sounds colorless and his voice slightly distant.
And even when he isn’t being challenged by those instrumentalists, Potter’s voice here seems less rich in overtones than on other albums of his. I’ve never found him more than moderately attentive to enunciating consonants, and his lower notes are dull, but his voice has repeatedly struck me in the past as firm, clear, rich at the top, and capable of great agility with seeming ease. Only the agility is evident on this release, when compared with the likes of his album of Zelenka motets (Pan Classics PC10274) and performance as Othniel in Handel’s Joshua (MDG 332 1532). And even his agility in Conti’s Fugga d’una in altra serva shows distressing signs of wear in numerous slurs.
It further doesn’t help that, while the rest of the performers are all fine musicians from a technical perspective, almost everything they play here (and this extends to the secular chamber works) is treated with the same air of deliberateness, sobriety, and great restraint. I would except from that a couple of movements from Fux’s Sonata à 3, but the energy isn’t matched by any lightness in phrasing, regardless. Take a pass on this.
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