J.M. Sperger : Concerto Nr. 4, 1st Mvt. (World Premiere) - THE SPERGER PROJECT
At last, after lying dormant for almost 250 years, this wonderful concerto has come to life again. For the first time since Sperger himself composed and played it, we can hear it performed on the type of bass for which it was originally composed. We recorded the other two movements recently, they can be found elsewhere on YouTube (Viennese Tuning Channel). All of these recordings are preparatory work for the "SPERGER PROJECT" : an ambitious plan to present all 18 of Sperger's bass concertos. A bunch of very nice people and great musicians will bring you these unknown treasures of the bass repertoire : Michał Bylina, Frank Wittich, Darija Andzakovic, Benedict Ziervogel, Isaline Leloup, Jose-Andres Reyes, Jose Vilaplana, and Gustavo d'Ippolito will present you these works on the Viennese Violone or on the modern bass, with piano or ensemble accompaniment - or with a Viola d'Amore, in our case. Better recordings (both musically and technically) will come as soon as all the lockdowns take an end, but we wanted to share this concerto as soon as possible. Who knows when we will get a chance to work with recording professionals... Sperger wrote this piece in the key of F, which means he had to tune his bass a minor third higher. We will probably never know whether he simply tuned up his regular strings, or if he used a thinner string gauge. On his four-string bass, the tuning for this concerto was (from low to high) C-F-A-C. There is only a full manuscript score of the piece, no separate parts. For some of Sperger's concertos there is a score and parts, and sometimes there are (more or less significant) differences between the Solo part as marked in the score, and the one in the separate part. Here, we didn't need to make any choices between different versions. As always in Classical concertos, the soloist plays the Tutti passages as well. It's a habit most modern players aren't aware of, but which makes the whole piece much more alive. In this specific case, i tuned my fifth string to low F, so as to be able to play the 16ft Tutti bass part all the way down. I'm using four plain gut strings: three by the great string maker Nicholas Baldock who so sadly passed away earlier this year, and a top C by Efrano (special order). The bottom F is a modern steel string (Solo Tuning 4th string). Playing the Tutti passages is an undiluted pleasure. In this concerto, the Tutti bass lines are very rhythmical and make you feel like dancing. The Introduction is quite long, and the rebounding bass line really drives the piece forward. The Amore replaces the whole rest of the orchestra. We feel privileged to have a combined orchestra and opera experience of over 70 years, which we think enables us to bring out the colors and dynamics of a much bigger ensemble than just the two of us. The Tutti passages are almost more fun to play than the solos. The Solo part is very interesting too, though. Double stops, harmonics, lyricism, lots of syncopations : Sperger uses a large vocabulary of expression. This is not your simple Dittersdorf anymore, but a richer, more varied composition. The same applies to the other two movements. As in the 3rd movement, the cadenza contains some Beethoven snippets - this is "his" year, after all. Next year i'll have to find something else. Pitch, in this recording, is 415Hz. In fact, the nowadays commonly accepted standard of 430Hz for Classical music never really existed in the 18th century. We don't know for sure exactly what pitch was used where: just like clock time, pitch could be very different from one place to the next. We like the lower 415Hz pitch because it tends to sound a bit warmer and more relaxed. The bass i'm using was built for me by the wonderful luthier and great friend Patrick Charton, who left us so suddenly last month. We still can't quite believe it... This fabulous instrument is his famous "B21" bass, but in a baroque version. The bows are by Jérôme Gastaldo, the Viola d'Amore was made by Pierre Vanengeland. More information about the Viennese bass can be found on viennese-tuning.com (chapter "Method" has a 500-page book called "Meta Hodos" which can be downloaded for free). https://viennese-tuning.com/method/ Many thanks to the Landesbibliothek Mecklenburg-Vorpommern for the Sperger scores and for their support. Thanks to Wilmer Fawcett, true pioneer of the Viennese Bass, for his friendship and his support of the Sperger Project. Thanks to Tobias Le Compte of the "Slippery Slippers" and "Duo SweeT" (check them out on YouTube) for valuable help with logistics. https://youtu.be/ayQX9rD1NGM https://youtube.com/user/DuoSweeT And many, many thanks to all of you who watch our videos. Without an audience, there is no music. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGqyMt4APKulC1zs1klmW9w Korneel Le Compte Haruko Tanabe
At last, after lying dormant for almost 250 years, this wonderful concerto has come to life again. For the first time since Sperger himself composed and played it, we can hear it performed on the type of bass for which it was originally composed. We recorded the other two movements recently, they can be found elsewhere on YouTube (Viennese Tuning Channel). All of these recordings are preparatory work for the "SPERGER PROJECT" : an ambitious plan to present all 18 of Sperger's bass concertos. A bunch of very nice people and great musicians will bring you these unknown treasures of the bass repertoire : Michał Bylina, Frank Wittich, Darija Andzakovic, Benedict Ziervogel, Isaline Leloup, Jose-Andres Reyes, Jose Vilaplana, and Gustavo d'Ippolito will present you these works on the Viennese Violone or on the modern bass, with piano or ensemble accompaniment - or with a Viola d'Amore, in our case. Better recordings (both musically and technically) will come as soon as all the lockdowns take an end, but we wanted to share this concerto as soon as possible. Who knows when we will get a chance to work with recording professionals... Sperger wrote this piece in the key of F, which means he had to tune his bass a minor third higher. We will probably never know whether he simply tuned up his regular strings, or if he used a thinner string gauge. On his four-string bass, the tuning for this concerto was (from low to high) C-F-A-C. There is only a full manuscript score of the piece, no separate parts. For some of Sperger's concertos there is a score and parts, and sometimes there are (more or less significant) differences between the Solo part as marked in the score, and the one in the separate part. Here, we didn't need to make any choices between different versions. As always in Classical concertos, the soloist plays the Tutti passages as well. It's a habit most modern players aren't aware of, but which makes the whole piece much more alive. In this specific case, i tuned my fifth string to low F, so as to be able to play the 16ft Tutti bass part all the way down. I'm using four plain gut strings: three by the great string maker Nicholas Baldock who so sadly passed away earlier this year, and a top C by Efrano (special order). The bottom F is a modern steel string (Solo Tuning 4th string). Playing the Tutti passages is an undiluted pleasure. In this concerto, the Tutti bass lines are very rhythmical and make you feel like dancing. The Introduction is quite long, and the rebounding bass line really drives the piece forward. The Amore replaces the whole rest of the orchestra. We feel privileged to have a combined orchestra and opera experience of over 70 years, which we think enables us to bring out the colors and dynamics of a much bigger ensemble than just the two of us. The Tutti passages are almost more fun to play than the solos. The Solo part is very interesting too, though. Double stops, harmonics, lyricism, lots of syncopations : Sperger uses a large vocabulary of expression. This is not your simple Dittersdorf anymore, but a richer, more varied composition. The same applies to the other two movements. As in the 3rd movement, the cadenza contains some Beethoven snippets - this is "his" year, after all. Next year i'll have to find something else. Pitch, in this recording, is 415Hz. In fact, the nowadays commonly accepted standard of 430Hz for Classical music never really existed in the 18th century. We don't know for sure exactly what pitch was used where: just like clock time, pitch could be very different from one place to the next. We like the lower 415Hz pitch because it tends to sound a bit warmer and more relaxed. The bass i'm using was built for me by the wonderful luthier and great friend Patrick Charton, who left us so suddenly last month. We still can't quite believe it... This fabulous instrument is his famous "B21" bass, but in a baroque version. The bows are by Jérôme Gastaldo, the Viola d'Amore was made by Pierre Vanengeland. More information about the Viennese bass can be found on viennese-tuning.com (chapter "Method" has a 500-page book called "Meta Hodos" which can be downloaded for free). https://viennese-tuning.com/method/ Many thanks to the Landesbibliothek Mecklenburg-Vorpommern for the Sperger scores and for their support. Thanks to Wilmer Fawcett, true pioneer of the Viennese Bass, for his friendship and his support of the Sperger Project. Thanks to Tobias Le Compte of the "Slippery Slippers" and "Duo SweeT" (check them out on YouTube) for valuable help with logistics. https://youtu.be/ayQX9rD1NGM https://youtube.com/user/DuoSweeT And many, many thanks to all of you who watch our videos. Without an audience, there is no music. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGqyMt4APKulC1zs1klmW9w Korneel Le Compte Haruko Tanabe