JARDIN SECRET - AUF WIENER ART: MUSIC FROM THE HABSBURG IMPERIAL CD

SKU/Barcode: 828021607424

The Coro label has issued so many recordings from the vaults of the Sixteen and Hilliard Ensemble that one might think Le Jardin Secret's Auf Wiener Art: Music from the Hapsburg Court is something put out long ago by an art gallery in some tiny quantity and made available for the first time on Coro to general audiences. No, this release was specifically made by Coro, with a first-ever release slated for September 2009. The program focuses on music for the court of Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I, who enjoyed a long reign that lasted from 1658 to 1705. A music lover and composer himself, Leopold employed several of the best musicians of his day, including Cavalli, Schmelzer, Muffat, Kerll, Draghi, and Fux. This disc includes chamber and small vocal works by those mentioned above, a few others perhaps less well known, and a couple by Leopold I himself. Led by soprano Elizabeth Dobbin, Le Jardin Secret consists of a theorbo/Baroque guitarist, harpsichord, viola da gamba, and bass violist who doubles on Baroque cello. There are some genuinely lovely things here; standouts include baroque guitarist Sofie Vanden Eynde's solo turn on Jacques de Saint-Luc's Tombeau de Fran ois Ginter, her Muffat Chaconne, and harpsichordist David Blunden's spin through Froberger's Partita auf Die Ma erin. The star of the show, however, is Dobbin, whose voice has a clean, bright tone and is unerring in pitch and has no shortage of power. However, it is a little too clean at times; the voice doesn't have a lot of character, ornaments are well executed but minimal, and she hardly makes recourse to them at all. The difference between the volume employed in the vocal selections and purely instrumental ones is radically different; instrumental pieces are so faint that you feel obliged to turn them up, so when the vocal tracks come up it's a little like being cast into the sun. This adds a dimension to the program -- lack of comfort -- that Le Jardin Secret probably didn't intend and Leopold himself probably wouldn't have cared for; after all, heavy is the head that wears the crown. Overall, Le Jardin Secret's Auf Wiener Art: Music from the Hapsburg Court isn't a bad selection of early Baroque music and it is instrumentally strong; had the balance been a bit friendlier, perhaps the shortcomings of singing wouldn't have mattered as much as they did.