Christina Pluhar’s Latest II

NOTE: All of the music on this program comes from recordings featuring L'Arpeggiata directed by Christina Pluhar. For complete information:

https://arpeggiata.com/

I. Terra Mater. Warner/Erato 502617325334753.

A hymn to nature envisioned by the unparalleled Christina Pluhar, featuring the extraordinary Swedish mezzo-soprano Malena Ernman, in a program that embraces the four winds! This is a unique blend that L'Arpeggiata, under Pluhar's direction, masterfully creates—drawing from the rumblings of the sea, sunny canarios, cuckoos and nightingales, whispers and tempests. With a fusion of baroque repertoire, traditional music, and improvisations, it promises a vibrant celebration of vocal and instrumental artistry, all under the banner of the nourishing earth.

From Stereophile: The liner notes to L'Arpeggiata's marvelous Terra Mater (Mother Earth) begin by summarizing a sobering speech delivered by Thomas Stocker, Professor Emeritus at the Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research, in 2022: "One of the greatest problems of the age is the climate crisis." That's an unusual lede for liner notes. But this maximally colorful recording, which until the final track, Eden Ahbez's "Nature Boy," plants its roots in 17th century Europe, sprouts from the endlessly inventive imagination of multi-instrumentalist Christina Pluhar. A dry treatise on climate change is the farthest thing from Pluhar's mind. This is, after all, the woman who fills Carnegie Hall with ecstatically cheering fans who frequently jump for joy.

Terra Mater's nature-related repertoire mixes works by Biber, Monteverdi, Arne, and others with traditional English ballads and dance tunes. Some pieces are named for animals, while others center on nature and the seasons. One huge feather in Pluhar's cap is her choice of mezzo Malena Ernman as soloist in 10 of the 20 selections. Ernman, who is the mother of climate activist Greta Thunberg and the author of a book on climate change, has a remarkably androgynous, endlessly fascinating voice of the type Pluhar favors. In some tracks, including Handel's "'Twas When the Seas Were Roaring," she sounds more like a countertenor than a mezzo-soprano.

The baroque instrument–sourced nature sounds L'Arpeggiata liberally adds to some tracks are equally delightful and hilarious. They go hog wild in Georg Caspar Schürmann's Sinfonia pour la tempête (Symphony for the Tempest) before eventually grounding with "Nature Boy," which Ernman sings in a bluesy style reminiscent of Cécile McLorin Salvant. Terra Mater is a wonder-filled delight.—Jason Victor Serinus

II. La Torre del Oro. Warner/Erato 5026854302492.

Named after the 12-sided ‘golden’ tower that dominates the River Guadalquivir in Seville, La Torre del Oro is the latest album from Christina Pluhar’s ensemble L’Arpeggiata. Pluhar is renowned for her ability to create innovative programmes that combine composed music with folk music – this album focuses on music from Spain, Central America and South America. La Torre del Oro features performances by singers Céline Scheen, Luciana Mancini and Vincenzo Capezzuto, with a variety of featured instruments including the baroque guitar and harp, Venezuelan cuatro and harp, cornetto, harpsichord, accordion and maracas. 

La Torre del Oro includes pieces by Spanish composers Alonso Mudarra, Diego Pisador, Lucas Ruiz de Ribayas and Santiago de Murcia, heard in context with the jácara, fandango, folía, canario and ciaccona and the Venezuelan joropo and pájarillo. The programme also features works by South American composers – namely, Reynaldo Armas, Simón Díaz, Ignacio « Indio » Figueredo, Agustín Rivas, Hilda Herrera and Violeta Para.

From Gramophone: Christina Pluhar continues to be one of the most persuasive and, frankly, funky musical chameleons of the current moment. While she may not be the first to take a voyage from Spain through South America, the level of fluency in this release is quite breathtaking. Named after a 12-sided watchtower (a regular dodecagon if you prefer) near Seville that once overlooked the Spanish galleons as they set sail for the New World and returned with plundered treasures, musical or otherwise, this is the same musical exchange that once captivated David Munrow who, travelling to Peru in the early 1960s, was entranced by similarities between instruments of the European Renaissance and modern folk instruments. Like Munrow, Andrew Lawrence-King (especially on ‘La púrpura de la rosa’ –DHM, 7/99) and many others, Pluhar has created an album infused with a range of sounds from bright harpists and brushed percussion to the urgency of the maracas, and the dazzling fluency of the guitarists that feeds directly back into her Baroque specialism. All work together to create the crowd-pleasing musical mischief that we have come to love from L’Arpeggiata.

Spanish composer Alonso Mudarra (c1510-1580) looms large in this programme, his early dates always somewhat surprising considering his three publications from the mid-1540s show a notably humanistic approach to text-setting with refined contrapuntal accompaniment – an early Spanish Dowland, if you like. Here Claros e fresco ríos inspires the clear and gentle sounds of Doron Sherwin’s cornett as it flows into Céline Scheen’s voice with such unfussy synchronicity that Michael Praetorius’s comment in Syntagma musicum (1619) springs to mind.

Of the following generation, the guitar music of Madrid-based Santiago de Murcia (1673-1739) rubs shoulders with New World influences. His Fandango – presented here in a modern arrangement – is outrageously good, quite the vehicle for Manuel A Sánchez, whose playing and singing feature strongly throughout this programme. In particular his opening to the Venezuelan Cumaná 500 años is irresistibly fluent, and when Pluhar splices in a romanesca by Mudarra it’s ingenious, if not a touch contrived. The connection might have been more subtle had the two pieces simply occupied adjacent tracks: I’m not always in favour of early music mash-ups. But the place to start with this album is perhaps Yo vengo regando flores by the extraordinarily named Agustin ‘Chupa Caña’ Rivas, who, one assumes, was fond of sucking sugar canes. I digress. Anyway, it is a merengue, a Venezuelan song in mixed metres that demands movement, and Luciana Mancini’s vocals are slickly engaging, the clarity of her rolled Rs never impeding the joyful tumble of words as she scatters the song’s metaphorical flowers.

I have sometimes lost track of Pluhar’s own voice in her fusion projects but not with this one. Just as the torrent of joyful music-making rests on the extraordinary skills of the musicians, Pluhar herself modestly stays under the radar by design since her programming is the key to success here. I could write earnestly about musical structures crossing the ages, but this sequence of pieces makes that clear without drawing undue attention to its musicological underpinnings. A delight, through and through.