(2008
Avie Records AV 2152)
REVIEWS
"This is
a very fine
debut solo recording from Perkins who has been increasingly prominent
as a harpsichord player in recent times. He displays great panache in
the opening bravura
prelude and keeps
this high standard throughout,
helped by a very secure technique and a real sensibility for this
music... The booklet is beautifully presented and the whole project
introducing Nares’ music is a very worthwhile one."
- Early Music
Review, No. 125, June 2008, pp. 39-40
“Julian
Perkins deserves nothing but praise for this
undertaking. There
is much complaining about the demise of the classical recording
industry. One of the main reasons is the continuous release of the same
repertoire. With enterprising musicians like Julian Perkins one need
not fear: it is this kind of creativity which keeps the recording
industry alive. It shows there is still a lot to be (re)discovered, and
it also shows one shouldn't always believe those musicologists who tell
us that what has been buried under the dust of history should stay
there because of a lack of quality. In addition Julian Perkins plays
very well: imaginative, with great rhythmic precision and fine and
well-chosen ornaments. Perkins has
done us a great favour by
recording these fine Lessons by
James Nares, by playing them so beautifully and by using these two
splendid harpsichords.”
- MusicWeb International, July 2008
“Perkins uses a 1764 Kirckman harpsichord
from the Royal Academy of
Music, and while it can have a muscly tone, his skilful command of
texture (along with Nares’s) ensures that it never tires the ear, while
his sound stylistic sense makes the best of the music’s robust
eloquence. A suite by Handel, placed halfway through the programme and
played on the lighter-toned “Royal” Shudi harpsichord built for the
Prince of Wales in 1740, provides a subtle gilding to this thoughtful
and well presented tribute.”
- The Gramophone, August 2008
“That
there is more than enough quality and variety of music here to make us
grateful for the chance to hear it is beyond question… [Handel’s suite,
HWV 447] is an eminently worthwhile inclusion on musical grounds, and
the performance is excellent. …Julian Perkins fills his performance
with subtle sources of interest that cannot fail to keep the listener
sympathetically alert and greatly contented – the introduction, for
example, of a degree of inequality only as a six-note motif progresses,
rather than applying it in a simple blanket fashion; or the integration
of a decorative gesture leading back into a repeat. …The Sarabande is
played beautifully – and with a little more extravagance: surely an
exemplary performance. …This whole suite is an example of very graceful
and intelligent playing: if Julian Perkins should decide to make an
all-Handel CD, it could be confidently recommended on the strength of
his playing here. ...there is much here to praise …there is no question
but that this is a disc to recommend warmly …the conclusion should be
obvious – it will be money well spent.”
- British Harpsichord Society, August
2008
"Overshadowed in his day by the towering
presence of Handel, James
Nares here emerges as an exhilaratingly inspired Baroque master in his
own right."
-
Classic FM, September 2008
"The
recording also includes a suite by Handel (HWV447), neatly placed in
the centre between Lessons 1–4 and 5–8. Even though it was written less
than a decade before Nares’s ‘setts’, Handel’s suite sounds distinctly
earlier in style, partly because of its more sophisticated textures
such as are typical of Handel’s keyboard music. The inclusion of this
work in the programme was an excellent idea, for it helps the listener
to place Nares’s lessons in context. The ‘setts’ stand up well against
one of the finest English harpsichord compositions of the time, as well
as sounding more modern.
The instruments used by Julian Perkins are a single-manual
Kirckman harpsichord of 1764 and, even more appropriately, the
double-manual royal harpsichord built by Burkat Shudi for Frederick
Prince of Wales in 1740 (Handel’s suite had been written for the
prince’s sister the previous year, and may have
been played on this instrument). Perkins exploits the latter’s various
possibilities for variation in registration with considerable skill,
and his performances are thoroughly convincing. He includes all the
repeats throughout the collection, often adding tasteful ornamentation
in the repeat (and occasionally in the first hearing). The speeds are
all well judged, with sparkling allegros but sensitive and expressive
playing in movements such as the G minor Largo of Lesson 3.
In the
booklet the trilingual text offers ample information by Perkins about
Nares and his 1747 collection, along with a lucid account of the
instruments by Christopher Nobbs and a brief biography of Perkins.
Finally, the back cover appropriately shows Philip Mercier’s famous
painting from 1733 of the Prince of Wales
making music with his sisters. This first complete recording of these
works would be a worthy addition to any CD collection."
- Eighteenth-Century
Music, September 2009
James
Nares (1715 – 1783) is something quite other and this
is a release of highest importance from several points of view. His
Sets of Harpsichord Lessons as given by Julian Perkins yield nothing to
the harpsichord music of, say, Purcell and Handel (who is represented
by one of his Suites); I dare not mention composers of the period
beginning with B...
Avie has nurtured an extraordinary
project, aptly compared by Perkins
with the support by subscription customary in the eighteenth century.
He lists three columns of generous contributors, plus many
organisations and notabilities who made the recording possible... The
music was recorded in The Queen's Drawing Room at Kew Palace, London
and there is a large array of beautiful illustrations and artwork, with
photos of the contemporary Kirkman and Shudi harpsichords played.
Forget downloading; this is a delectable totality, having a 28 page
booklet produced with such care as to equal the pleasure and delight
brought by the music itself in the idiomatic vivacity and sensibility
of these lovely performances. The sponsors will feel their money was
well spent.
- Musical
Pointers, March 2010
