The reputation of Johann Jacob Froberger—a much-respected composer who studied with Frescobaldi but absorbed a variety of influences on his extensive travels—rightly rests on his 30 harpsichord suites (which are among the earliest to feature regularly allemandes, courantes, sarabandes and gigues), and on the somewhat fanciful titles he gave to some of his pieces, many of which betray a distinctly romantic streak. ''Plainte faite a Londres pour passer la Melancholie'' and ''Lamentation sur ce que j'ay ete vole'' are typical examples, but even in the pieces with more conventional names Froberger frequently uses his sure command of rhetoric and keyboard sonority to produce music of considerable emotional intensity.
Surprisingly only one piece—a Tombeau written for the death of Monsieur Blancrocher, a lutenist friend who reputedly died in Froberger's arms—appears on both these new recordings. Mortensen concentrates on the suites and toccatas while Leonhardt offers a wider selection, including at least one example of each of the forms Froberger espoused. To my mind Mortensen's approach makes for a more attractive hour-or-so's listening, as the contrapuntal capriccios, ricercares, canzonas and fantasias of Leonhardt's disc are frankly less interesting than the suites, and in any case sound better on the organ (the instrument on which Leonhardt recorded some time back for Telefunken, 2/71—nla).
Both harpsichordists, however, succeed in getting to the heart of the music that even in the composer's day was acknowledged as being difficult to bring off unless you happened to be Froberger. Leonhardt is typically clean-textured and poised; his touch is unfailingly controlled, his tone sweet, and the placement and articulation of every note sounds as if it has been thought out with the utmost care. His performances aim above all for clarity, both of form and texture, and to this end the contrapuntal pieces are played with exemplary transparency and the contours of the suitemovements mapped out knowingly. In the Tombeau and the equally sorrowful Lamentation sur la mort de Ferdinand III, Leonhardt is calculatedly dramatic, with well-timed and sometimes startling changes of tempo or register giving the effect of passionate outbursts of grief.
Mortensen is a harpsichordist of a more recent generation than Leonhardt, and his approach is perhaps more instinctive. His interpretations show more of a desire to keep the music flowing, and one of the ways in which he achieves this is by introducing ornamentation that is at times so florid (especially in the toccatas) that the music is transformed quite considerably from what appears on the page. What is lost in lucidity, however (though it should be said that Mortensen's agrements are always convincing), is made up for in sheer grandeur and weight of sound; just listen to the way the repeated bass notes at the end of the Tombeau acquire the oppressive quality of a death knell. The result is that these performances have an immediacy of effect missing from Leonhardt's.
Leonhardt plays on a copy of a mellow German instrument and is quite closely recorded (grunts and sniffs included), while Mortensen's harpsichord is a copy of a slightly more brash Ruckers, recorded in a more resonant acoustic and tuned to a meantone temperament that may cause discomfort to some. Choosing between these two equally recommendable recordings may depend on such matters, I suppose, but if I had to pick one it would be Mortensen's for the more consistently high level of the pieces he selects.'