Arcadian Dreams. Les Délices, led by Debra Nagy; Hannah De Priest, soprano. AVIE Records. AV2831. Total time: 69:55
DIGITAL REVIEW – Named in honor of the idyllic mythological region ruled over by the Greek god Pan, the Arcadian Academy in Rome was founded in 1690 as a creative center for musicians, artists, writers, and scientists. Among its musical denizens were the influential likes of Arcangelo Corelli, Alessandro Scarlatti, and Alessandro Stradella. Arcadian Dreams, the new album by early-music ensemble Les Délices, contains works from younger contemporaries of those giants, reflecting their style and adding their own voices to the mix.
Les Délices artistic director and oboist Debra Nagy has put together an engaging collection of secular cantatas by Rameau, Handel, Thomas-Louis Bourgeois, and Louis Antoine Lefebvre, as well as sonatas by Tomaso Albinoni and Domenico Scarlatti (Alessandro’s son). The cantatas are sung with grace and dramatic verve by soprano Hannah De Priest.
It is not just the stylistic connection to the school but also the traditional use of the word “Arcadian” to mean “pastoral” that informs the program selections. All of these pieces are about love, whether happy or heartbreaking (mostly the latter). Imagine Rococo paintings of flowery hillsides where shepherds flirt with blushing maids in wide-hooped dresses.
The Rameau cantata Le Berger Fidèle, dating from about 1728, deals with the troubled love affair of Myrtil and Amaryllis (the same mythological woman whom Monteverdi so famously vilified in his madrigal “Cruda Amarilli”). As was common for the genre of secular cantata, a single voice sings an oscillating pattern of recitatives and arias, sometimes as a character and sometimes as a narrator.
An achingly sad violin plays a short introduction before De Priest enters to express Myrtil’s lovesickness. The soprano has an effective technique of approaching long notes from just a hair below, too subtle to call a swoop but enough to darken the sound. The second Rameau aria is in a contrasting mood — the composer had to keep the listeners interested, after all — as the narrator asks Cupid to notice how much Myrtil longs to participate in the joys of love. The ensemble supports De Priest with sparkling energy.
There are two other French canatas. Thomas-Louis Bourgeois’ Diane et Endimion begins like the Rameau, with a man in love with a woman who isn’t interested. But this time Cupid does not intervene, and Diane flies away on her chariot. The first aria, “Des plus doux plaisirs” (From the sweetest pleasures), stands out for its interplay between the voice and Nagy’s gentle oboe obbligato. Le Lever de l’Aurore by Louis Antoine Lefebvre focuses on the allegorical figure of Aurora, goddess of the dawn, who allows two lovers to be together by starting a new day.
Handel set an Italian libretto for his cantata Mi Palpita il cor, composed while he was living in Italy (1706-10) when he was in his twenties. The three arias by turns complain about the pain of love and try to convince the gods to make the object of the narrator’s affection love him back. Even in this early example, one can hear the characteristic phrase shapes, cadential motions, and melismatic vocal writing that would become Handel’s calling cards. De Priest is certainly up to the significant technical challenge. As for pathos, the aria “Ho tanti affani in petto” (I have so much suffering in my breast) wrenches at the heartstrings, both for its plaintive melody and for Nagy’s wistful solo line responding to the voice.
As a very small group — besides Nagy, there’s Shelby Yamin and Kako Boga on violin, Rebecca Landell on cello and viola da gamba, and Mark Edwards on harpsichord — Cleveland-based Les Délices is able to replicate the intimacy that would have been experienced in these privately performed works, which were usually given in someone’s home.
The instrumental works are played as finely as the canatas. The Albinoni is a four-movement sonata for oboe and continuo; in its third movement, Bourlesque, the whimsy and buoyancy that Nagy coaxes from her oboe is a reminder that “Baroque” should not be a designation that means “less-flexible” for instruments. Edwards plays Scarlatti’s one-movement Keyboard Sonata in D minor, K. 213, with a patient stateliness and intricate clarity.
Nagy, who is also principal oboist with the Handel and Haydn Society and Apollo’s Fire, takes this group’s role as preservers of history very seriously. The album booklet not only lists the pitch frequency used — the expected Baroque A=415 Hz — but also lists the temperament applied, meaning the exact size of the thirds, sixths, and fifths. Their choice is identified as “Neidhardt Kleine Stadt, 1732.” If you want to dive into this music-theory rabbit hole, you can learn about it here. Meanwhile, producer Elaine Martone and engineer Andrew Tripp did their part to capture the sound of the Baroque instruments and balance them beautifully with De Priest’s voice.
