Warner on the one hand, with Michel Corboz, and Universal, for Reinhard Goebel, published large box sets at the end of 2022. The first comes from the choral world, the other is a baroque violinist, but all two are united by an overflowing interpretive flame.
Difficult and long to go around and summarize two boxes as impressive as those devoted to Michel Corboz, 74 CDs, and Reinhard Goebel, 75 CDs. These are two worlds we wanted to dive back into, something that didn’t even cross our minds in the case of Roger Norrington, whose EMI recordings Warner has grouped together under the title The Complete Erato Recordings (45 CDs), while the conductor has never recorded for Erato!
Rediscover Monteverdi
The same title is well suited to Michel Corboz, who was, along with Jean-François Paillard, Alain Lombard and a few others, one of the headliners of the French label. The career of Michel Corboz is inseparable from that of Michel Garcin, the artistic director of Erato, who hired him in 1964. In the very remarkable notice that accompanies the box, the lecturer at the University of Toulouse II-Le Mirail Jean-Philippe Grosperrin recounts this meeting on the sidelines of the Europa Cantat Festival in Tours in August of that year. The first disc recorded in Lausanne in October 1964, the Mass for 4 voices SV 190 by Monteverdi, still has a bit of that cautious expressive compunction of the 1960s. Everything will be refined, affirmed and rounded off very quickly.
The two Michels get along like thieves at fairs and invest in a repertoire that is arousing growing interest: Monteverdi. Grosperrin rightly notes that Corboz engraves the Vespers in 1966, that is to say before Jürgen Jürgens’ version on the emblematic Das Alte Werk label. What is most aged in it is the brass playing. By embarking on a complete eight-volume (6 CDs now) of Selva moral e spirituale, Monteverdi’s collection of sacred music, Corboz marks its territory. Her Orfeo will then fascinate because of the presence of the radiant tenor Éric Tappy.
Michel Corboz is a magnet who will gradually attract musicians who will be faithful to him. He is a pioneer in the idea that the interpretation of baroque music does not require voices that have failed to do anything else in life, but excellent singers who put themselves at the service of this repertoire. It was by bringing together Jennifer Smith and Philippe Huttenlocher in the early 1970s that he embarked on recordings of madrigals by Monteverdi or dared this magnificent Jepht by Carissimi.
Lots of new
With the notoriety acquired, Michel Garcin will launch Corboz and his band into the big guns of the baroque vocal repertoire: Mass in B, Magnificat, Christmas Oratorio And Passions of Bach. But Garcin’s editorial work at Erato is also a work of discovery, in particular of the old French repertoire and the Italian Baroque. Corboz and his singers lend their support. These “sharp” discs, deemed unpopular for single CD releases, are sometimes reissued here for the first time. We find with happiness Song and dance in Paris around 1540, The song of Lausanne, Psalms And Masses by Goudimel, two discs Venice before MonteverdiTHE Sacrae symphoniae by Gabrieli, Renaissance madrigals with their ornate double by Bassano or the seven psalms of The Estro poetico-armonico by Benedetto Marcello.
One of the things that sets this set apart is the number of totally forgotten records that resurface, such as these cantatas by Bach under the title funeral ode recorded in 1976. If these are still very marked by this pre-baroque solemnity, it is because Michel Corboz did not think about the music; he lived it with his heart. A luminous man, of great intelligence and lively humour, he had the gift of transcending the singers he directed, with a word in rehearsal, a look or a smile in concert. Jean-Philippe Grosperrin is right to recall some of his words in rehearsal. It wasn’t the traditional louder, softer; faster, slower”, but, for example in Vespers by Monteverdi: “Don’t treat the voice like a goal, say ‘Gloria!’ ; we need your desire. »
This desire to share passed through incarnation. This is why he did not hesitate to admit this: “The precision of certain conductors — in particular John Eliot Gardiner — slaps me in the face. “I admire them, I could be jealous of them, he said, but they don’t make me dream. »
The course from 1964 to 1992, for the time being reduced to the Renaissance and the Baroque (therefore not the Mozarts, Rossini, Fauré, Duruflé…), is punctuated by three versions of the Mass in B of Bach, thus making it possible to note that Michel Corboz had his ears open to the upheavals of time. In this sense, this box is also sometimes a rare witness to the evolution of aesthetics in the pivotal period (1960-1990) of the interpretation of Baroque music.
Fall in time
If we consider that Michel Corboz (1934-2021) is the witness, and sometimes the actor-follower, of an aesthetic transition, the violinist Reinhard Goebel (born in 1952) shows very exactly what can entail in a destiny music the leap of a generation. The parallel is therefore fascinating. From his studies, Reinhard Goebel focused his passion on early music and on the knowledge of its practice. As he says in an interview in a bonus CD (in German, alas): “During my studies, there was no program, there were only desires. I wanted to clear old repertoires and their magnificent sounds. »
Goebel founded, at the end of his studies, the Musica Antiqua Köln ensemble and burst into the Archiv catalog in 1977. He recorded flute concertos by Mancini, Sarri and Barbella, a recording that can be found on CD 57. He then became interested in “French Parnassus” and pre-Vivaldi violin music, then, in 1979, in cantatas Medea And Orpheus of Clerambault. A major recording of The musical offering the same year gives him a status as an important interpreter of Bach. This chronological journey must be reconstructed, because this box is organized alphabetically.
Reinhard Goebel’s entry into the Archiv catalog was meteoric in three respects. On the one hand, he brought with the excellent Musica Antiqua Köln much appreciated oxygen to a German label, because in the 1970s, English baroque orchestras were multiplying and Germany was lagging behind, with the sluggish Collegium Aureum which looked like a fragile traveling sound museum. On the other hand, he arrived at the time of the rise of digital technology and could feed the CD catalog in high doses from 1982. Finally, he did so as a conductor and as a violinist.
At Archiv, Goebel shares the baroque niche with Gardiner and Pinnock. As he seeks to devote himself only to the XVIIe and XVIIIe centuries, it poses no competition problem to Gardiner in Beethoven and Schumann. And, just like Michel Corboz, Reinhard Goebel generally stays away from opera.
His mark, the performer made it in the instrumental music of Bach and the Bach family, but also, and above all, in the music of Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber (1644-1704). Who says Biber says Goebel, especially in instrumental works (Rosary Sonatas, Harmonia Artificioso-Ariosa, Mensa sonora). Another singularity of Reinhard Goebel’s legacy: the rediscovery of Johann David Heinichen (1683-1729), an important musician at the court of Saxony, sold by Universal’s marketing as the “German Vivaldi”. Finally, a very important part of Goebel’s Archiv discography is devolved to Georg Philipp Telemann (1681-1767), with the reference complete table music and numerous recordings of concertos and overtures.
His secret garden is probably French music. We owe him, from 1981, a superb version of the precious Requiem by Jean-Gilles. His 1994 recording is one of those that popularized The Elements by Jean-Féry Rebel. The one who defines himself as a “musician of tension” will complete his career at Archiv in 1999 with the music for the film by Gérard Corbiau The king dances. He now records for Sony albums that are only available in North America as imports.