Christian Friedrich Ruppe (1753-1826) -Sonata for pianoforte with accompaniment of flute or violin and cello Op.
1. Allegro con spirito. Adante cantabile, 3. Rondo, allegretto mosso
(Pleyel Kwartet: Jolle de Wit dwarsfluit, Willem Noske viool, Herbert van de Velde
altviool, Victor Bouguenon violoncello, Hans Schouwman pianoforte, Willem Noske viool, Carel van Leeuwen Boomkamp
violoncello,.)

Music of the Baroque is recorded on this CD; in a style that musical historians often call “Rococo”. However the Baroque and Rococo times had ended when the final composition on this CD was composed, around 1817 – the period of the Viennese Classics. Even this era had almost passed; Haydn and Mozart were dead, Beethoven was in his middle period of creativity. Yet
the ideas of this piece, which was written in The Netherlands, still fit with the “Viennese” style: The three parts are relatively long; much longer than the other pieces on the CD. The first of the three has a considerable impact in the middle, whilst the two other parts show of a multitude of themes. Nevertheless at the same time the piece has something almost anachronistic. The piece is a sonata for piano to the accompaniment of violin or flute and cello, a beloved genre in the eighteenth century, although in 1817 this
was already obsolete. This explains why the piano (in this recording an Erard – a grand piano from 1808 belonging to the Dutch Royal Family) has such a leading role. The violin only sporadically takes the lead or mimics a transition in the piano. Incidentally this is not something modern by the composer; these attempts of emancipation have always accompanied this genre.
The composer Christian Friedrich Ruppe (Rüppe) (1753-1826) was a German who enrolled into the university of Leiden in 1773 where he discovered that he could make his career in music. Soon becoming known as a ‘musician’, he became chapel master in
1790 at that academy and lecturer in theory of music in 1802. From 1788 onwards he was also the organist of the Lutheran church in Leiden. He also taught and directed amateur choirs. His chamber music is extremely interesting.

Willem Henri Noske (1918-1995)
was one of the most important Dutch violinists of the twentieth century. He started his career as a chills prodigy and performed on many famous stages world-wide. After the Second World War he developed more and more as a player of chamber music and moreover was leader of, among others, the Dutch Chamber Orchestra, Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra and The Hague Residentie Orchestra. Long before the authentic craze broke out Noske discovered unknown old masters and performed their music. Noske formed a number of ensembles to perform the music he rediscovered. With these ensembles countless performances were given in the Netherlands and tours made abroad. The unique sense of style and his powerful, warm tone led Willem Noske to grow into a much-loved violinist. Noske was not only a unique talent on the violin, but also an inspired and enthusiastic patriot. He felt that the quality of Dutch composers was seriously underestimated.

Because of Willem Noske many names, amongst whom Willem de Fesch and Jan Brandts Buys, became well-known. He came to the conclusion that at least 800 works of Dutch origin had wrongfully disappeared under layers of dust. Noske considered the widely heard statement; “During the three centuries between Sweelinck and Diepenbrock in our country there wasn’t any music of any significance” to be a false cry based on a lack of knowledge of and, even worse, a lack of interest in the world of Dutch music. Noske could base his views solely on an exhaustive travel through the unknown.

Noske began to form collections around a number of themes of which Dutch music ‘Musica Neerlandica’ and the violin library ‘Casa del Violino’ are the most important. All these collections are housed in the Dutch Musical Institute (NMI) in The Hague and comprise more than 80.000 titles of sheet music, first editions, letters and autographs of famous composers. Both the Musica Neerlandica and the Casa del Violino are regarded as the most important collections in their area of music anywhere in the world.

Willem Noske himself was a modest man. According to him only the music was of importance and the performing artist should be subservient to the music. One of his beliefs was: “See what you can do for the music; not what the music can do for you.” Because of this, relatively few of his recordings have been preserved.

In the aftermath of Noske’s discoveries a revolution was unleashed in the practice ofperforming Baroque music because the nineteenth century’s late romantic interpretation would have irredeemably polluted the authentic Baroque approach. However, Noske was far from an unthinking follower of the prevailing romantic practice of performing.

Hans Roskam, translation by Lucille Brakefield

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