La Cremona/La Cremona II (or an essay on historically-informed performance practice)

Introduction

These two recordings challenged me. Readers will know—but may not agree with me—that baroque music can be played rewardingly with different philosophical approaches applied. One approach we call historically-informed performance practice (HIPP), another we might call modernist, and when applied to early music, Bruce Haynes called the application of the modernist approach a “strait style.” I’d say in this day and age, we can also identify other approaches, reactionary in one camp, and HIPP-lite, in another.

These recordings by the Berliner Barock Solisten, under the direction of Reinhard Goebel, are, to some degree, historically informed, insofar as an expert at period performance is guiding the ensemble’s performance. But to what degree? The HIPP influence on these recordings is recognizable through (some of) the phrasing, the tempos, and the overall compliment of performers, including a harpsichordist. But unlike ensembles dedicated to historical practices, this one isn’t concerned with all aspects of historical performance, using instruments with “modern” setups (i.e., steel strings, angled fingerboards, and bows developed after the baroque period). They also use more vibrato than we typically hear under string players who have studied period performance styles, although vibarto alone isn't something many HIPP ensembles eradicate wholesale, as they once did.

The BBS under Goebel follow in the footsteps of other HIPP-lite ensembles, one of the better-known is I Musici di Roma, which formed in the 1950s and in its heyday, released a number of recordings of baroque repertoire in the 1970s and 1980s on Philips. Like the BBS, they used a chamber-sized ensemble, included a harpsichord, but otherwise used modern instruments.

You can witness their approach in this recording of Vivaldi from 2020, which I'd argue has evolved since their recordings on Philips.

For those unfamiliar, HIPP is a multi-faceted approach toward playing music, with an aim at approaching the performance with the tools and knowledge germane to musicians of the period. While we can apply HIPP principles to Mozart, and even Brahms and Wagner, the movement has been most influential in how musicians approach so-called early music, including that of the baroque period. While it developed as a type of fringe or alternative movement aligned with the work of musicologists, it today is far more mainstream, dominating the marketplace with recordings, and infiltrating music conservatories with specialists in how to interpret earlier music. To be sure, some of the best students will seek out diplomas or certificates from conservatories that specialize in this approach to performance.

Bruce Haynes, who wrote about HIPP and himself was a performer on historical oboe, suggested that the HIPP movement was important because it gave musicians a lens through which to find serendipity in the music; his point (I think) was that learning how to interpret music of the past is a discovery and that by using an historical lens, you can discover some rather beautiful things throughout the process.

Some of this—again for those who aren’t themselves musicians—applies knowledge toward performance that is not contained within a score. As a quick example, Vivaldi did not include metronome markings in his concertos, instead using subjective instructions such as “fast” or “slow.” Treatises of the time give us more insight into how to interpret these directions, based on accounts and instructive guidance. This becomes even more important when baroque composers invoke dances, which at some point would have had some kind of standardized tempi and emphasis on particular beats.

The journey from Wanda Landowska’s performances of Bach on record using what we today call “revival harpsichords,” instruments constructed without reference to historical models, using techniques borrowed from piano making, to the current day, with ensembles using gut strings, period woodwinds or copies, and even sometimes employing language coaches to help with older pronunciations of sung languages, has been one that forced musicians and music lovers to consider a lot of contradictory elements.

(Aside: Herbert von Karajan, the storied conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic, even bought into HIPP when he sat himself, directing from a revival harpsichord to record not only Bach but also Vivaldi.)

Why perform with an HIPP? Does embracing the authenticity of the past make the music better? Or is it somehow more enjoyable, for reasons separate from the ones that are historical?

I’d posit that it doesn’t, by default, make all performances superior. And while we do tend to get caught up in the authenticity of things—from old watches, to contemporary luxury handbags, to “French” champagne compared to other types of sparkling wine, Peter Kivy argued well many years ago that authenticity when it comes to performing music or making art is really only attributable to the performers themselves, not the long-dead creators.

The recent recording I reviewed of Bach’s English Suites by Francesco Tristano-Schlimé is an example of what I’d call a “reactionary performance practice.” It’s post-modernist, but it’s also personal. There’s influence to be heard from HIPP. But for me, it’s one of the more authentic styles of performance, one that uses modern instruments to the taste and style not born of a collective movement, but to the sensibility of the individual artist. And in capitalist society where putting out familiar music can be dangerous financially, it’s a philosophical approach that inspires artists to be unique and to push established boundaries.

My Experiences

Things were not always this way. For many years, recordings of music aligned with modernist approaches toward performance. It was the codified style taught in music conservatories, and it represented a standards for how one performed the “classics.”

But I grew up discovering baroque music listening to the rise of HIPP ensembles such as the English Concert and the Academy of Ancient Music. Included in that company, among the best to my own musical sensibilities, was Reinhard Goebel’s Musica Antiqua Köln. Goebel represented, maybe best among HIPP ensembles, a director who not only played on older instruments, at lower pitches, with older-style bows and strings, but also came to understand the music and ultimately interpret it through the historical evidence that came to light through treatises, historical accounts, and a deep examination of the text of the preserved music.

On the surface, I understood the HIPP aims and enjoyed the resulting sound. One of these aspects was the increased clarity and transparency to the music, when you reduce the number of people playing each part.

The conceit, however, was that record companies were promising us something they really couldn’t, that, say, an HIPP recording of the Vivaldi’s Seasons or Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos were “as the composers themselves heard it.”

Which means, if we want to believe in historical authenticity, we should well know that we’ll never be able to confirm for ourselves what that authenticity really is. Only a time machine could help us with that.

I have to say that HIPP hasn’t been a one-and-done deal. The landscape of HIPP performances have changed over time, in part influenced by recordings and continual research and conjecture. All performance practices likely change while in use. We have no reason these practices didn’t change during Vivaldi’s or Bach’s lifetimes either.

For me, good HIPP recordings represent a high bar. Not because the instruments are old or that the approach is olden. But I find that musicians who are using the instruments, techniques—echoing the sound world of the past—are adding something to the performance that engages me. The score alone does not contain all this context, but it’s the discovery through this lens that I often find makes the music resonate with me.

HIPP-Lite

I can’t speak for the rationale for adopting an HIPP-Lite approach, but one might first think about the economic impact of not only changing the way you play, but also which instruments you use.

I should point out that singing is another matter entirely. It was frustrating hearing singers who were paired with HIPP ensembles that did not themselves have adequate exposure to this style. And yes—musicologists openly fought with one another over the size of choirs in baroque music.

Goebel—once famous for his violin playing on period instruments using the HIPP philosophy—suffered injury to his hand and no longer plays. He tried—for a period, he learned how to play the violin and viola backwards—held on his right side, bowing with his left hand. When his condition improved, he switched back, before finally having to disband his orchestra, Musica Antiqua.

Today he concertizes as a conductor, working with groups like the BBS.

In the liner notes, he’s quoted, and I very much dislike this quote and what it represents:

I see the future of Baroque orchestral music in the hands of modern ensembles – the fetish of the ‘original instrument’ has had its day, but not the profoundly trained professional who guides an orchestra into the deeper dimensions of the composition. For it isn’t the instrument that makes the music, but the head!

My dictionary offers words such as “fixation, fancy, taste, fascination, craze, compulsion, and obsession” as descriptions of a fetish.

While some might think of fetishes as bad things, I personally do not, as far as one’s obsession doesn’t cause the person or those around them harm. I recently watched two videos on YouTube of a professional musician pontificating about the Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos, someone who had studied the original scores and the history of them to a high degree. You might go so far to say that he has a fetish for all the details we can glean from the score about the music’s history and purpose for being preserved, as it was, in a dedication copy to the Margrave of Brandenburg.

Yes, that musician was none other than Reinhard Goebel. Between two videos, he lectures for nearly five hours about the historical performance of Bach’s Brandenburgs.

The questions we might come up with include:

• Does he hear the difference between using period instruments or “modernist” ones?
• Does he think audiences cannot hear the differences?
• Does he think these differences lack any value toward our enjoyment?
• If they do impart value, is it because of a specific music quality, or our value in the chase for historic authenticity?
• What is to be gained by applying some HIPP principles, such as phrasing, orchestra size, or use of a harpsichord, while throwing others away, such as the tuning pitch, use of vibrato, or the application of a different type of bow upon the strings?

These two albums feature Italian music (alongside works by Telemann) that focus on strings. Obviously, the sound difference with winds is more pronounced, although BBS have released a Brandenburg Concerto recording with Goebel’s leadership.

Something feels off when we apply application a philosophical ideology in parts, although I’m fully aware that examples abound in society. As an example, as an American, if I embrace the concept of freedom, I can only really get behind it when it applies to everyone, and not to a select few (men, say, over women).

——

As an aside, I enjoyed Nigel Kennedy’s performance of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons in my high school days. He played with the English Chamber Orchestra, with what I’d call “HIPP-lite” mode, complete with a harpsichord. It wasn’t the orchestra, however, that made the album special, it was Kennedy’s own creative ideas on how to play the concertos. He went beyond the score like any HIPP group would, but not to the aims of historical authenticity, but in a reactionary expression, to make that music his own.

While I cannot prove anything—his album I feel influenced others that came after him in recording the same concertos, including HIPP groups. What’s sad is that ensembles only feel the ability to be so creative with an over-recorded warhorse like the seasons, and not also apply this artistic freedom to the lesser-enjoyed works.

——

Second, what Goebel hears or his concert goers hear doesn’t matter. I can hear the difference. It’s easy—as Goebel has already recorded some of these works with his MAK ensemble. And yes, I prefer the performances on historical instruments and copies—or put another way—the full-fledged HIPP recordings.

Third, I can’t help but think Goebel’s position on using old instruments and positing it as a type of fetish—something controversial or “crazy”—has more do with his own situation, knowing that he can’t perform with an ensemble in the way leaders did in Bach’s time. In other words, if he can’t lead from an instrument, he can no longer claim membership in the HIPP world.

But then we’re left with that indictment around HIPP performance. That it’s a fetish—not all of it—but the insistence to play the old instruments (or their facsimiles).

You could argue that Goebel’s position can be proven through a performance. That if the performance moves us, that maybe he has a point.

La Cremona ⭐️⭐️⭐️½

Durante: Concerto #2

This album starts with a concerto by Francesco Durante that has also been recorded by Il Giardino Armonico, Concerto Köln, and Concerto Italiano (all HIPP ensembles).

The opening slow movement eschews vibrato in the strings. The segue into the faster contrapuntal section for me works well, except that some the ornaments feel a bit mannered.

It’s when the first violin breaks from the orchestral texture that things turn a bit sour: it’s obvious to my ears that we’re listening to a steel-strung violin, and the soloist, applying his strait style, injects a little vibrato to sweeten his sound.

Another thing to notice is the sound of the violins as they approach the higher registers in the final movement; this sound is far more intense than what we typically get from violins using gut strings. I can’t help but to think that I’m listening once again to I Musici; especially so when the vibrato comes out again in the one-per-part texture.

Among the performances mentioned, I’ve always preferred the one by Il Giardino Armonico, who play the piece one-per-part. The phrasing is very different, as is the treatment of dynamics. The ensemble is bolstered by a lute, giving a different textural element alongside the harpsichord. The recording is very expressive, without using the modernist-application of vibrato.

Rinaldo Alessandrini’s Concerto Italiano takes the final movement faster, but listen how they layer the line by leaning into it, applying mini-crescendi throughout. This isn’t in the score, it’s an instinct derived from emphasizing the harmonic tension written into the music.

Do I find these two performances superior? I do. For me, they’ve unearthed more detail tied to both phrasing and dynamics. Even though one is one-per-part, and the other adds a few more instruments to support the sound, both are more transparent compared to BBS.

Leo: Concerto à 4

The concerto for four violins by Leonardo Leo is presented by BBS with an opening featuring a big, full sound. As with the Durante, I appreciate the bass support from the double bass in this ensemble. The ensemble again manages to get through things without vibrato.

But it comes out in the second movement, marked Fuga. The violinists all seem to be on equal-footing, with no one player sounding inferior to the other. Transparency among the instruments isn’t particularly strong, but that’s more a fault to the recording engineers.

I compared this fugue with Enrico Gatti’s Ensemble Aurora. The first and immediate difference (aside from the overly generous reverb in their recording from the album titled The Fiery Genius) is the lack of vibrato from the violins. The articulation is a bit different, with some harder down-bows in the theme, some emphasis with slight crescendo applied as well.

My final comparison is the recording led by Goebel himself with Musica Antiqua Köln on DG Archiv. The tempo kicks butt. The sound is thinner, with far more emphasis on the violins themselves. The individuality of the soloists, for me, is a bit more forward in the MAK recording. The BBS recording, by comparison, feels cleaner and a bit more realistic, props to Hänssler Classics. But after hearing the faster tempo, I want it it to “kick” like the MAK recording proves it can.

The third movement, marked Moderato is played in 2:34 by BBS. After an opening by the full ensemble in a minor key, the violins get some alone time. While vibrato does creep-in, there’s a spot where the higher violin applies vibrato in the historical way, as a gradual way to provide ornamentation.

Gatti and his ensemble take the same movement at 3:52. The phrasing, from the start, is very different. The MAK recording takes it at 3:20; vibrato comes out in this recording. The figuration by the violins is a bit more interesting to me in the MAK version.

I think despite the wide tempo variations in the middle movement, each of these recordings provides a reasonable solution that’s musically satisfying. The one by MAK for me would probably be my preference; Goebel pushes through some of it but in the solo sections, some space is given to the solo episodes, which I think is a good compromise. The other aspect that I should note about the MAK recording is the sound of the instruments used. In this recording, Goebel does not play, but his own instruments were used by the soloists, at least a few, to my recollection. This includes his Rogeri which has a distinctive and beautiful sound, now owned by Johannes Pramsohler. Which is to say—if you want to get down the individual character of the instruments used, the MAK recording offers that, while the BBS recording I think offers an overall superior sound quality.

La Cremona II ⭐️⭐️⭐️½

The second album follows the theme set in the first, highlighting a number of concertos from Vivaldi’s opus 3, L’Estro Armonico. The “Italian” theme then is transferred by way of two concertos by Telemann (TWV 54:A1 and TWV 53:F1), and an arrangement of Bach’s concerto for three harpsichords, here, rendered by three violins (C major, BWV 1064, transposed to D major).

Bach Concerto for Three Violins BWV 1065

The opening Allegro adopts a nice bouncing tempo. Again, the upper range of the violin has a sparkling character to it that, along with modern concert pitch, gives the concerto a shrill aspect that is missing in renditions I’ve heard on period instruments. The sound isn’t ugly, it’s just different.

While I detect some vibration, it’s kept in check. Each violin gets their own time in the light with repeated entrances and the longer notes escape having vibrato applied. The BBS are captured cleanly again, with better transparency among the instruments compared to the first Cremona album.

The slow movement opens with vibrato being applied in the cello. Vibrato is also applied to each of the solo violin parts; certainly not in the mainstream way we might expect from, say, Itzhak Perlman or his friend Pinchas Zuckerman. The vibrato applied doesn’t bother me as much as the obvious sound difference from the texture of gut strings.

The Freiburg Barockorchester recorded this same concerto, also transposed to D, in an album from 2013 on Harmonia Mundi. The middle movement benefits from an even drier acoustic than the recording by BBS. The phrasing is different, in parts more declarative, when it comes to the solo parts. The cantabile sections have more in common with the BBS recording; including a bit of vibrato.

The concerto is a “reconstruction” and clearly these ensembles aren’t using the same score; the rendition by FBO uses ripieno strings, where the Goebel reconstruction opens with just the basso continuo. Some of the missing parts are realized by the harpsichord. In total, I felt that the violin parts in the second movement under FBO embraced more of a rhetorical approach to phrasing, wherein the BBS played more in a strait style, phrasing in longer lines.

Both ensembles adopt a similar tempo for the third movement. BBS comes off as polite; the articulation of the FBO violinists offer more energy and attitude. I also prefer the tone, again, of their instruments. The recording by BBS makes it easier to hear the individual parts, but again, they’re not playing exactly the same notes, the arrangements differing. And the presence of the double bass in the BBS recording is far more present than what we get in the balance of the FBO recording.

Vivaldi: B minor concerto RV 580

The BBS perform the B minor concerto that would become Bach's BWV 1065 for four harpsichords, from Vivaldi's third opus. The sound is bright. I can't speak to why, if it's the pitch or the quality of the strings. There’s a brightness and sparkle to the sound that one doesn’t get in HIPP-orchestras using gut strings.

While continual vibrato is not applied, there's enough to give the indication of the training of the musicians involved. The slow movement makes this easier to hear. I compared this reading to the one by Brecon Baroque, an HIPP ensemble led by Rachel Podger. In the opening fast movement the use of gut strings is obvious in both the resonance and attack of the solos. One with reasonable ears can discern the textual difference.

The slow movement reveals contrast in the phrasing. The third, final movement, reveals the superior recording made by Brecon Baroque. The BBS tempo is faster, but it suffers from a lack of transparency. What we get, based in part on the acoustics and the recording setup, is a brash, metallic sound when the ensemble is playing in tandem, either by rhythm or all the notes. It's glare we get and to me it’s less attractive. But pulling the engineers off the hook, it's a string sound that clearly isn't HIPP. They do have a great dynamic application and play in tune and together well.

Brecon Baroque (BB) manage to play this concerto in just under 9 minutes, beating the clock used by BBS by 22 seconds. You can feel this in the opening movement, especially. There are moments of exuberance offered by BB with ornaments to the violin parts. I think the recorded balance sounds realistic to me.

The third movement of the BBS recording lacks enough grip and texture from the harpsichord; all the emphasis is gone. The BB recording, by contrast, feels as if it’s a far smaller ensemble, with more transparency available across the soundstage. No fault to the musicians, but I think the Podger recording on Channel Classics is better recorded. The dynamic contrasts are stronger in the recording by BBS.

Getting to the Same Place but by Different Means

Cellist Nikolaus Harnoncourt, an early influential leader in the HIPP movement (Baroque Music Today: Music as Speech (1988)), said:

The interpretation of old music on historical instruments is not an attempt to copy the past, but rather to make it possible for the past to speak in the present.

Gustav Leonhardt, who often collaborated with Harnoncourt, said (Goldberg Magazine, 2001):

A performance is never authentic, it is only more or less faithful to certain criteria.

And finally, Bruce Haynes (The End of Early Music, 2007) said that:

Early music is about recovering the means by which music once made sense.

The question that Goebel, or others aligned to an HIPP-lite philosophy challenge us with, then, is for how long is our enjoyment of this repertoire dependent upon this period of exploration and discovery that musicians and their audiences have indulged us with?

Or more to the point with these two recordings, can performing on modernist instruments with some application of an historic playing style result in enjoyable concerts and recordings?

To be fair, if you gave me these two recordings blindly to audition, in the same way that some sommeliers train their palates with wine bottles covered in bags to obscure what we may intellectually know about the maker, year, or varietal when assessing wine, I think I would have said the same things about the recorded sound. But what if I’d believed, or you told me, that these were HIPP-ensembles, in the spirit of “full-HIPP” and not “HIPP-lite?”

I’d have complained about the shrill quality of the sound, especially so with the violins’ upper-range. I’d have mentioned the presence of some vibrato. I’d eventually come to tell you that I don’t like that sound. Even if you’d yet to convince me they were modernist-instruments strung with strings of steel.

The foil would have been less circumspect, of course, if you’d played Goebel’s Brandenburg Concerto #2 played by the BBS, with piccolo trumpet and modern oboe. (I might also expect Goebel himself was behind it, for the fast tempo they adopt!)

I will admit, I am clearly biased and have trained myself to appreciate the tenets of HIPP. And full-well knowing about any group taking the HIPP-lite approach makes me feel as if we’re getting cheated by something. For Harnoncourt, it would be the timbre of the instruments. For Leonhardt, the result would be less faithful (to the composer? or the historical genesis of the music and its style?). None of the men I quoted at the start of this section are with us any longer. But as I understood Haynes’ book, he was exploring what might be next in this philosophical journey, interpreting so-called Early Music.

——

In one final departure, I auditioned an album called Tesori d’Italia, a recording featuring oboe concertos played by Albrecht Mayer on a modern oboe, alongside I Musici. It’s worth applying my logic to other HIPP-lite recordings, I think. This particular one include lute in the basso continuo (played by none other than the co-founder of Il Giardino Armonico, Luca Pianca), in addition to harpsichord. The most obvious “lite” aspect is the use of a modern oboe. The oboe is a difficult instrument, but a modern one is easier to play in tune. It’s timbre is smoother (some may say more elegant). Both Albrecht and I Musici play well.

This album is no doubt well-played. Attention to some HIPP-aspects is given, and the oboe soloist even gives credit in the notes to specialists on their support for their knowledge.

Both Viktoria Mullova, a violinist, and Richard Yongjae-O’Neill, a violist, have gotten into baroque repertoire. Mullova has joined HIPP groups, I believe using gut strings and an historical bow; Yongjae-O’Neill did the same in a recording with Alte Musik Köln, adopting his own instrument at baroque pitch.

I’m not here to tell players who want to focus on the mainstream repertoire that they can’t play baroque music. For one, I own an electric piano and not a harpsichord. If I want to play Bach, it’ll be out of the convenience of using the instrument I own.

The BBS made records of baroque repertoire before joining forces with Goebel. At least one of them, to my knowledge, also plays a baroque instrument.

While it’s easy for me to wear a philosophical approach on my sleeve in the same manner that someone might wear an American flag on their shirt to support their strong belief in freedom (the irony of our current situation aside), these entertainers are, after all, trying to make money and live as artists.

Dismissing these these HIPP-lite performances as inferior to those made by HIPP-ensembles not only reeks of elitism, but also ignores the music itself.

In a recording released in 2020 (What’s Next Vivaldi? on Alpha Classics), Giovanni Antonini quotes Nietzsche, and adds to it:

Nietzsche’s text confronts us with the question of the so-called ‘historically informed’ approach to performance, a definition very fashionable in recent years, but which in my opinion is superficial, and which has generally replaced, in the reinterpretation of music of the past, the more strictly ‘philological’ approach that was the starting point, from the early 1960s, of the rediscovery of period instruments and the performing practices associated with them.

Like Goebel, Antonini’s recordings have a signature to them, representing a certain “Italian” style to HIPP performance. These two musicians together, I think, prove that the attraction I’ve had toward their recordings have more to do with their own personalities and musical technique than just their desire to adhere to HIPP-philosophical ideals.

Antonini continues:

One of the results of this Baroque ‘New Wave’ was a style of playing early music, especially Italian, with sharper contrasts of colour, much greater emphasis on the rhythmic aspect and, in general, with a ‘rhetorical’, discursive and ‘dramatic’ approach to the scores of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Paradoxically, therefore, the hypothetical ‘truly historical’ (or almost . . .) mode stigmatised by Nietzsche produced ‘modern’ results and also demonstrated similarities between Baroque music and artistic expressions of the twentieth century—such as jazz, where, as in early music, improvisation is of fundamental importance – and also helped us to review the concept of ‘classical music’ in relation to other genres.

The album from which these notes come combine Patricia Kopatchinskaja’s creative interpretations of Vivaldi alongside works of other composers, including Aureliano Cattaneo and Béla Bartók. The desire was, in short, to hear Vivaldi in the same concert alongside non-baroque music.

——

I therefore see BBS’s recordings of violin music in the same light as Antonini’s Vivaldi album featuring Patricia Kopatchinskaja. They are further experiments representing evolving ideas about music making. And just as is was important for Harnoncourt to advocate for using historical instruments with his group Concentus Musicus, it’s probably also important for us to explore further development of these ideas. Even when the so-called “authentic instruments” are put away.

I believe the I Musici sound has been influenced by HIPP, despite continuing to use contemporary-style instruments. I don’t believe they are as wrapped-up philosophically as Goebel or Antonini are in the philosophical doctrines of performance practice. And even so, I can’t help but think how close the BBS sound to the I Musici sound, coming, perhaps, from different places, but arriving at similar solutions toward making a record.

Final Thoughts

This review, which let’s be honest, is more of an essay, took me a long time to write, with multiple drafts. My initial thought was “How could one of my heroes of the early music scene betray us by going HIPP-lite?”

Are these recordings a step backward, or a step forward? I’m afraid I can’t say at this point.

More importantly, should you buy them? Did I find the music enjoyable to listen to?

The playing is very competent. My choice was to compare these recordings by those made earlier by Goebel and others and to ask myself, “Are they better than what’s already been done?” In most cases I can say, they are not. My criteria, however, is bound up in my own expectations of living within the HIPP universe for a long time.

I recognize that yes, maybe I have a bit of an elitist component in the way I like to think about the performance of baroque music, on period instruments. I like the sound, even though “the sound” isn’t an absolute thing. I like the influence of quicker tempos, of dazzling the audience with ornamentation and cadenzas. The timbre of baroque flutes, oboes, horns, and trumpets all have amazing qualities.

And maybe I’m not ready for the sound of steel strings, or Bartók mixed-in with Vivaldi.

Oddly, however, I was open to Sean Shibe’s recording of Bach’s lute works on his guitar. He made a really moving performance. And maybe I am not ready for a staging of Vivaldi with the singers wrapped in wrestling singlets.

So, I’m putting my cards on the table. I wanted to dislike La Cremona and La Cremona II, for musical reasons separate from their adherence or misalignment to HIPP. They however don't play poorly. But the result doesn't match my expectations, despite having some high points.

And it’s exactly that reason why I won’t listen to them again. Perhaps it’s a fetish, or an elitist mindset. But the HIPP movement has created something I want more of, and for now, I want all of it.

Haynes finished his book (2007) with this:

Could it be that unconsciously we have been using HIP merely as a stratagem—or a mindset—to allow the creation of this new style we’re now using? In our optimism and innocence, we call it “Period style.” The inspiration comes from somewhere else (or somewhen else), but in reality we know it works because we make it work. How could we do differently? We are too modest in ascribing this tradition to our ancestors. What we can be sure of, if we like it so much, is that it must be “our own” (pp. 227-228).

It is conceivable, that over time, as much as I can find my way over to Bach on the piano or upon the guitar, that I will come to embrace the same period of music by non-period ensembles. In the meantime, I don’t think the existence of HIPP ensembles is yet to be tabled. There’s certainly more repertoire and new discoveries to be made. And I like my period style, not what I can easily see is a washed-down version of it, now that I've tasted (experienced/listened/enjoyed) it. For me, the new wave approach is good, but maybe I"m not ready for the divorce of the new wave from the period instruments, wholesale.

That said: My asnwer to my rhetorical questions is an impotant one, especially so if you've made it this far. Listen for yourself. Consider the influence of philogy and philosophy that guides the minds of those making music for us. Listen to these recordings, and listen to the older ones made by Goebel (Telemann, Leo) and compare.