Jiri Antonin Benda.

Jiri Antonin Benda Concerto in G major, Concerto in D major, Concerto in F major, Concerto in C major

Edita Keglerova--harpsichord, Jan Hadek, Jana Chytilova--violin, Michal Dusek--viola, Ondrej Michal-cello, Michal Novak--double bass. Production: 2HP Production. Text: Cz., Eng. Recorded in November "2006, Waldorf School in Pribram. Released: 2007. TF: 60:33. DDD. 1 CD Arta F10153.

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Few composers has been as acclaimed in their time as Jiri Antonin Benda (1722-1795). Christian Friedrich Daniel Schubart in his book Ideen zu einer Asthetik der Tonkunst of 1784 praised Benda as one of the best composers who had ever lived--as one of the creators of his epoch. He is thorough without pedantic precision, high and low, serious and witty. Benda wrote a series of sonatas, sonatinas and concertos for keyboard instruments, seven of which were printed. His musical idiom was influenced in significant ways by two partially overlapping movements that played a major role above all in the German literature of the time, but also found expression in music--Empfindsamkeit and Sturm und Drang. After the outstanding 2005 recording of Benda's four harpsichord concertos performed by Vaclav Luks and the ensemble Collegium 1704, we now have an album containing other musical treasures from Benda's pen. These are another four harpsichord concertos, but this time the major key dominates (concertos in G major, D major, F major and C major). They are performed by the harpsichord player Edita Keglerova and the Ensemble Hipocondria in chamber setup (two violins, viola and cello doubled with double bass). The major key con. text means that these concerts do not gravitate towards the dark chaos of Sturm und Drang, but move on the borders between the gallant style and Empfindsamkeit. The empfindsamer Stil (literally the "sensitive style"), distinguished above all for seriousness, intimacy, profundity and melancholy, was brought to its high point by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach (his fantasia without bar lines is a textbook example). Benda knew his work very well, since for a time both composers had been working in Berlin at the court of the King of Prussia Frederick II. It is in Benda's Concerto in F major (e.g. the similar mode of sequencing in the 3rd movement) that we find the most points of similarity with Bach. In fact all the slow movements of the recorded works are characteristically in the Empfindsamkeit style, and it was these second movements of Benda's concertos--and his sonatas too--that won him most praise in his day. They are characterised by sudden changes of emotion, which the composer achieved for example by formal subdivision or through contrasts in the dynamics or rhythm. Benda knew how to compose both for amateurs and very virtuoso music (often for his own needs). Clearly the most virtuoso, but also the simplest of the concertos in terms of expression, is the second Concerto in D major, in which Benda shows a fondness for broken chords (especially in the first movement). Edita Keglerova copes with all the pitfalls of Benda's music and emerges with more than honour. She brings off the virtuoso element of the harpsichord part with excellence. A few passages seem just a little flat in expression, but they are rare. She holds the concertos together as a whole very well, which, given the marked degree of subdivision and variation in the musical text, is not always easy. The other players are considerate and very sensitive partners for the soloist. The new recording of Benda's concertos can then be fully recommended--apart from its undoubted qualities (which also derive from an authentic approach to the musical material), because the listener deserves finally to be able to get to know in greater breadth the creative legacy of a composer of Jiff Antonin Benda's indubitable quality.