Frescobaldi, G.: Affetti cantabile (Girolamo Alessandro Frescobaldi)

Album review

One can understand how the keyboard music of early Baroque composer Girolamo Frescobaldi anticipates Bach in its systematic exploitation of available resources, and still be left cold by the experience of listening to it. This little disc by Montreal harpsichordist Hank Knox, a student of Kenneth Gilbert, does unusually well at the task of bringing Frescobaldi alive. Knox chooses a diverse set of works, more desirable and more true to what a Renaissance keyboardist would have done in a concert in a noble household than recordings that plow though one or more of Frescobaldi's published sets. Knox brings out contrasts in the longer toccatas and hexachord pieces (pieces based on the subject ut re mi fa sol la), settling into an alternation of contrapuntal canzonas and dances in the middle of the program. He saves for last a work that is virtuosic both technically and intellectually, the Cento Partie sopra passacagli of 1637, a large ground-bass piece with elements of both the passacaglia and the chaconne. This piece has some striking harmonic clashes that are intensified in the quarter-comma meantone tuning Knox employs. One wonders whether the equal temperament he suggests as an alternative might have been what was actually intended, but the work as he plays it stretches the ears and then lets them return partway to normal. The harpsichord itself has an interesting story. Built in 1677, the instrument somehow crossed the Atlantic, apparently came into the possession of James McNeill Whistler (it appears in several of his paintings), and ended up in a Cambridge, MA, antique shop in the 1950s. Rescued by harpsichord builder Frank Hubbard, it was acquired by Gilbert, sent back to Europe for a time, and finally returned to Montreal. It seems beautifully suited to the explosive style Knox brings to this music, which can easily be recommended as a basic Frescobaldi disc.
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