Pastorale • Ensemble 1700, Oberlinger

Likely because of the Christmas theme, I came across this release from November 2022 by Ensemble 1700, directed from the recorder by Dorothee Oberlinger. I auditioned the extended album that includes tracks played by Li Piffari e le Muse and spoken by Matthias Brandt in German.

The major works from this recital include:

• Corelli’s Christmas Concerto (op. 6, no. 8)
• Alessandro Marcello’s concerto, S. Z799 in D minor
• Alessandro Scarlatti’s Oh di Betlemme altera povertà, a cantata
• Handel’s organ concerto in F, HWB 293 (arranged for recorder)
• Guido’s “L’Hyver”, from a collection depicting the four seasons
• Vivaldi’s Concerto in C, RV 443
• Pez’s Passacaglia from his F-major Concerto Pastorale

The Scarlatti piece features the other big Dorothee in the HIPP world, Dorothee Mields. She kindly signed a number of CD covers my friend brought when we heard her at the Boston Early Music Festival. The cantata is a pastoral and devotional meditation on the birth of Christ. The text contrasts the poverty and humility of Bethlehem with the glory of divine incarnation. It invites shepherds and the listener to witness and celebrate the miraculous event.

Mields offers a sympathetic interpretation, one that indulges vibrato. She can sing both with and without; I’m guessing the later date of this work compared to a lot of what she sings and it’s Italian language offered an invitation to vibrate.

Guido’s programmatic work depicting winter is guided by poetry which is included in the booklet. As a composer, I don’t know a lot about him, but his dates make him contemporaneous with Vivaldi. Each of the seven movements are quick. The piece is string-based until Oberlinger appears in the third movement, which helps with the album’s theme of “pastorale.”

Performance of the Vivaldi “piccolo” concerto is joined by the Piffari ensemble, lending a far more pastoral flavor to the concerto. Oberlinger appears here with Bremer Barockorchester performing the same piece. As with her other contributions on this recording, her playing is rife with ornaments and surprises, presenting a technically-polished portrait.

This includes her presence in the organ concerto by Handel. The organ is present in the final movement, which is a surprise, all before Oberlinger appears with a sopranino instrument.

Corelli’s famous Christmas Concerto is augmented not only by recorder, but by the renaissance winds. It’s a colorful addition that some listeners may well like for its color and surprise.

The Pez piece is a well-wrought, fast-paced ostinato, lasting nearly six minutes. I’m not sure all groups would take it this fast, but I appreciate the technical abilities inherent in her ensemble to play it this way, which comes across as a refreshing end to the recital.

The provided booklet via Qobuz does not offer English translations. The album succeeds in marrying familiar works (Corelli, Vivaldi, and Handel) with the less familiar (Scarlatti, Guido, Pez), within a unified winter-Christmas theme. These aren’t “Christmas” pieces, in the tradition of the big choral works, but instead speak to the season and are peppered, as such with extra color, a bonus if you already have the concertos within your collection.

Notes

The readings by Matthias Brandt are lost on me, with no translations provided. There’s a 5-track shorter version, also available at high resolution (33 tracks total), without these spoken tracks. Within this booklet, English translations are provided. My advice for English speakers is to seek out the shorter production, which features all the pieces described above.