Jan Antonin Benda.

Jan Antonin Benda

Concertos for Harpsichord Obligato, Two Violins, Viola and Cello 

Collegium 1704: Vaclav Luks--harpsichord, musical director, Lenka Koubkova, Jan Hadek--violins, Michal Kucharik--viola, Libor Masek--cello. Production: Vitezslav Janda. Text: Czech, Eng. Recorded: 11/2004, 1/2005, Waldorf School, Pribram. TT: 69:49. DDD. 1 CD Arta F10133 (distribution 2HP Production).

The new CD from the Czech company Arta offers listeners four of the concertos by Jiri Antonin Benda. Alhough he was born in Bohemia, all the works presented were written in Germany (very probably in the 1780s), where the Benda family successively emigrated (as was commonplace in musical circles for much of our history). Perhaps it is to this move that we owe the musical content of Benda's concertos for harpsichord obligato, two violins, viola and cello, which are a distinctive synthesis of the musical currents that had an effect on Benda abroad.

As musical director of the Collegium 17004 ensemble, with which he specialises in authentic historical interpretation, Vaclav Luks has approached the works with admirable feeling for more than just the external side of the music, that is to say for differences of tempo, the terraced dynamics and specific features of articulation of the individual parts. In comparison with some older recordings, Benda's concertos are here offered in a more natural, even a more musical form, aspiring to far more than just the rhythmic precision bordering on military severity that one encounters on certain recordings made using modern instruments. On the contrary, Vaclav Luks's Benda shines with deep knowledge and understanding of the customs of the time both in terms of interpretation, and in relation to the inner charge and message of the works of music (Luks is also the author of an interestingly conceived text in the booklet). When listening to the recording I constantly had to stop myself giving precedence to the sound of the harpsichord. The fact that Luks is technically so adept is in my view something to be merely "taken for granted" in the background. What the solo harpsichord shows in particular, however, is that the performer plays his instrument (a French copy made by the firm Tecicka - Huttel - Sell) not just with great musicality, but bringing to bear a great range of erudition "historical authenticity" of the highest degree. The delicate agogics woven into all the solo sections of the harpsichord part result in a kind of pure, genuine communicativeness. This is scarcely to say that the violinists Lenka Koubkova and Jan Hadek, the violist Michal Kucharik and the cellist Libor Masek, all of them also playing on copies of old instruments, do not deserve appreciation. On the contrary, their marvellously integrated play and mutual musical empathy are here once again a kind of mark of professionalism that perhaps needs no further comment. The faithful and sensitive imitative "responses" of the performers, their unerring sense of what is fundamental in the musical tissue of the work, the "unisono", refined rounded off phrases--all these are attributes that enhance the recording (I have the feeling that the ensemble did not use the publication from the MAB edition for the concertos). This year their leader is tackling an ambitious project made up of the supreme sacred works of Johann Sebastian Bach, and so perhaps it would not be out of place here to thank the ensemble for this time offering listeners the music of a Czech composer and so helping to strengthen our national values.

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