Recordings

The Art of Hansjörg Angerer

Recording Review by Matthew C. Haislip, D.M.A.

Offered in an attractive slim box set of nine Compact Discs, The Art of Hansjörg Angerer is a fabulous collection of recordings spanning the career of Historic Brass Society Lifetime Member Hansjörg Angerer as a performer on the natural horn, single F horn, and modern double horn, as well as in the role of conductor of the Salzburg Wind Philharmonic. This set is one of the most exciting anthologies from a hornist that I have heard. As a collection of familiar and less well-known compositions from across horn history, I highly recommend this set for historic brass enthusiasts everywhere. While many of the recordings are available for streaming online, the entire set appears to be only available currently as a Compact Disc set on the Gramola record label through such websites as arkivmusic.com (listed for $59.99 USD).

The brass playing universe is populated with countless virtuosos today, and I have prided myself in my knowledge of players across the globe. I was, however, somehow unaware of the incredible artist that Hansjörg Angerer is on the horn, my own instrument. Angerer’s varied career includes posts with the Innsbruck Symphony Orchestra and as horn professor at the Mozarteum University in Salzburg and the University of Music at Nuremburg, among others. He has additionally served as principal conductor of the Salzburg Wind Philharmonic since its founding in 2002. He recorded several albums of horn repertoire on the natural and valved horn, and this box set is neatly organized by repertoire, style, and, at times, by instrument. Each collection presents a different artistic experience that I will examine below.

Diego Ortiz: Caleidoscopio

Comet Musicke

Son an ero 18 (2021)

If you are a member of this Society, or at least of that portion of the Society that touches on Renaissance music, you surely know the name of Diego Ortiz (c1510–c1570), particularly for the music of his Trattado de glosas of 1553, an ornamentography manual that in­cludes a number of sample improvisations, some on a tune, some over a bass, and so forth, that have been staples in the solo repertory of early wind and string players for years. A num­ber of these appear on this two-CD set, and they are as good as always. A lot less well known is his Musices liber primus of 1565, a conventional book of Latin sacred music. Eight motets from that book are here, and they are a most wel­come addition to the recorded body of Span­ish Renaissance music. And there are a number of thematically related works not by Ortiz included too. 

Ex tenebris ad lucem: Venetian Penitential Music from a Time of Plague, 1575–77

Concerto Palatino, dir. Bruce Dickey

Passacaille PAS 1135 (2023)

I bet a lot of us who run early-music ensembles have lately had at least a fleeting idea about a show or a recording devoted to music for plague. I doubt that anyone has done it better than Bruce Dickey and Con­certo Palatino. 

            The plague in question was in Venice between 1575 and 1577, killing, as Dickey ex­plains in lucid and absorbing liner notes, somewhere between a quarter and a third of the city’s population. It inspired a considerable religious upheaval, including the construction of Palladio’s Church of the Redeemer, Il Redentore, and, one presumes, performances of a good deal of sacred music in an effort to ward off the pestilence and, later, to say thanks for their deliverance. 

American trumpeter Josh Cohen, already established as one of the leading period trumpeters in North America, has catapulted himself into the enviable position of exemplary historical recording artist with his debut compact disc, Altissima, Works for High Baroque Trumpet. Manifesting challenging repertoire from the late seventeenth through mid-eighteenth centuries, the disc is a vehicle for Cohen to showcase his extraordinary musical artistry on the valveless Baroque trumpet.