For those unfamiliar with the music of Johann Helmich Roman, the “Swedish Handel”, this album by Canadian (now living in Sweden) Allison Luthmers will be a wonderful discovery. Roman, who lived from 1694 to 1758, spent most of his life in his native country, although he travelled and visited the great musical centres of his time and some of the great composers who reigned there (Geminiani, Handel, Pepusch). He is considered ‘the father of Swedish music’.
Roman composed around twenty of these ‘Assaggi’, which translate as “studies” or ‘essays’. He is apparently the only person to have titled a series of works in this way. On hearing them for the first time, one is immediately struck by their closeness in spirit and formal clarity to Bach’s Partitas, but without the polyphonic thickness. Roman’s melodic narrative is crystalline, constructed with an obvious objective of linearity to which he adds reasonable doses of elaboration and ornamentation. The music is refined and sophisticated, but in no way obtuse. It is full of light and freshness.
Hats off to Allison Luthmers for her impeccably clean, elegant and nuanced playing. The luminous sound of her instrument is bathed in a generous and pleasantly enveloping recording (in a Danish church, the Garnisons Kirke in Copenhagen). I don’t know how often Ms Luthmers returns to this side of the Atlantic, but I certainly hope to hear her in concert, particularly in this repertoire that we never hear and that richly deserves to be discovered.
This is an album that will be remembered for its many qualities: impeccable playing, inspiring and rarely heard music, and superior sound quality.
