Christian Topp, born in 1973, received his first harp lessons at the age of nine with I Atwood in Basle. From 1991 to 1993 he took lessons at the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik München with Prof Helga Storck. In 1993 he won the competition Jugend musiziert, appeared at the World Harp Congress in Copenhagen and received the Kulturfoerderpreis of the City of Singen. Immediately after his school-leaving examination in 1993 he went to London to study at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama with Prof David Watkins until 1998. During this time he made several recordings for BBC Radio 2 and Radio 3. In 1997 he received the Bachelor of Music and in 1998 the Concert Recital Diploma. In 2000 he took part in the Bayerischer Rundfunk Orchesterakademie Ingolstadt.
As a soloist Christian Topp has performed harp concertos by Bach, Boieldieu, Debussy, Glière, Handel, Mozart, Vivaldi and Wagenseil.
Since 1990 Christian Topp has been playing in a flute and harp combination and, from 2001 until 2004, with Prof Henner Eppel. In April 2007 he started to play recitals with Sabina Laurain, the principal flautist of the State of Mexico Symphony Orchestra. With her he performed Mozart's Concerto for Flute and Harp in November 2007 and the OSEM. Henner Eppel and Christian Topp recorded a CD Elfenreigen - fairy round dance with romantic music for flute and harp which is available at GUILDMUSIC.
The flute and the harp have been recognised as the well-loved instruments used for celebrations and religious services since the time of Ancient Egypt. Their beautiful and unique sound was not, as many may think, discovered by the French impressionists towards the end of the 19th century! Indeed there are many paintings from the Middle Ages which not only document the existence but also the popularity of these two instruments: the angelic music of the heavens almost always requires them. As the 18th century came to an end the harp was placed alongside the singing sound of the flute, which itself had become the fashionable instrument for sensitive citizens and nobles alike. Neither fortepiano nor harpsichord could produce this unique sound. Moreover, the decorative effect of a beautifully patterned harp should not be underestimated! The private residences of the upper class along with churches, concert halls and opera houses were the most important places for musical performances and played host not only to famous pianists of the time like Chopin or Liszt but also to harpists such as Elias Parish-Alvars (1808-1849) or Felix Godefroid (1818-1897).
As a level of near technical perfection was reached in the construction of both instruments new possibilities for playing arose. Prime examples are the conical flute in the old style and the two Theobald Boehm models from 1832 and 1847. The latter has, to this very day, undergone only minor modification. Above all the double-action harp of Sebastien Erard which received the patent No 3332 in 1810, after years of development, and whose principle still serves as a model for today’s concert harps.
If you glance at guides to chamber music which themselves usually list a 'large' repertoire, you will be astonished to see how rarely the harp appears. The reasons for this are manifold. Besides reasons relating to the very particular sound of the harp it is also true to say that many composers were not familiar with the variety of musical possibilities the harp affords and what potential it possesses. There is hardly any another instrument that one needs to know as intimately as the harp in order to avoid demanding the impossible. For this reason harpists themselves largely composed the music they required for the concerts. Names such as Krumpholtz, Bochsa and Tournier are prime examples; they belonged to the greatest virtuosos of their time.
This collection spans from the end of the 18th century to the 20th century. The 'solos' of the 18th century are played with a figured bass tone: this so-called general bass, derived from a form of musical shorthand, was freely played by the right hand of the keyboard instrument player, while the left hand played the notes from the manuscript and was frequently supported by another instrument (viola da gamba, cello or bassoon). One of the musicians should therefore be able to produce chord sounds. The spinet, harpsichord, organ, lute, guitar and piano were the favourites. The necessary chords could, however, also be produced by an experienced harpist.
The Hamburg Sonata in G major, Wq. No 133, was composed in 1786 by the most famous of Bach’s sons, Carl Philipp Emanuel BACH (1714-1788). All the other sonatas for flute and obligatory harpsichord, and those with the general bass accompaniment were written between 1735 and 1766. After 27 years in the service of the flute-playing Prussian King Friedrich the Great in Rheinsberg, Berlin and Potsdam, C P E Bach moved to Hamburg in 1768 where he succeeded his godfather Telemann. The general bass sonata played here has barely any likeness to the other sonatas of its creator. The bass in this instance is basically a foundation for the melodic flute part. That this work came about was the direct result of the influence of blind flautist Friedrich Ludwig Dulon (1769-1826). In the last movement there are clearly influences from great classical composers such as Haydn.
Johann Baptist KRUMPHOLTZ (1747–1790) also Jean-Baptiste, Jan Krtitel, baptised Jan Martin, often stated as having been born in 1742 or 1745, which is not correct, was a composer and harpist of Bohemian origin. After a short stay in Vienna (to improve his horn-playing) he went to Paris with his father in 1760/61 to study horn and harp. In 1767 Krumpholtz returned to Prague and took lessons in counterpoint with Haydn and Wagenseil while he was a member of the band of Count Esterhazy from 1773 to 1776. Concert trips to Germany and France led him back to Paris where he settled as a very respected harp virtuoso, composer, music teacher and instrument-maker. Important technical improvements of the harp increased his initiative. He married in 1783 his student Anne-Marie Steckler (1766–1813), who left him in 1788 to go with the pianist J L Dussek to London. Lovesickness and fear of the Revolution drove him to suicide by throwing himself into the river Seine. Compositions by this unusual harpist and composer are distinguished by classical form, noble virtuosity and sensitive cantabile. The Sonata in F major, Op 8 No 5 was composed about 1780.
Louis SPOHR(1784–1859) belongs to the highly respected musicians of his time, equally famous as composer, conductor, violinist and organizer of great musical events. He was compared with Paganini but his appearance was not as spectacular for he always behaved with extraordinary seriousness and modesty. ''The decorations, with which he was honoured were, for him, very annoying because he had to wear them on ceremonial occasions. Once when he was on the way to the theatre, where he had to conduct an opera for the Kurfürst’s birthday celebrations, he was seen in a winter coat at about 68° F. A passer-by asked him 'whether he was ill?' 'Oh no' he replied, folding back his coat and showing his breast full of decorations, 'I am ashamed to cross the street like that.' '' (Georg Wigand, 1860) His style of composition, influenced by the pre-romantic period avoids all trivia–sensibility; virtuosity and classical form are united in a very personal manner. The appearances with Dorette Scheidler (1787–1834), a very distinguished harpist whom he married in 1806, must have been sensational because of their perfect ensemble-playing. This inspired him to write several compositions for harp and violin which, as was usual for this period of time, have been edited and published also for other instruments. The Sonata in C minor, originally for harp and violin, was composed in the year before his marriage and is playable on the flute without any transcription worth mentioning. With basically two movements it represents Spohr’s early style in the most beautiful way.
A further great harpist from the French capital was Robert Nicolas Charles BOCHSA(1789–1856), son of a Czech oboist, who settled in Paris as a music dealer. As a student of Méhul (composition) and Naderman (harp) at the Conservatoire he had, when he was young, great success and, by cleverly using good connections, he was appointed harpist in 1813 to the Emperor’s band. However, his lifestyle must have been so extravagant that he needed work on the side, and in 1817 he was forced to flee to England because it had been discovered that he had received payment for forged documents and was guilty of fraud. It seems likely that in London no one took his misdemeanours seriously for in 1822 he became Professor of Harp at the Royal Academy of Music. However, even here, he did not refrain from living his extravagant lifestyle. After five years he had to give up this job. In between he worked as conductor at the King’s Theatre, but in 1839 he left England with the wife of the conductor and composer Henry Rowley Bishop (1786-1855). He had an unsteady life, went to America and finally to Australia where he died in Sydney. Bochsa’s harp-school and his many compositions (he composed several operas and ballets) were very popular in the 19th century. The work recorded here, Nocturne Concertant in G minor, Op 71 No 3 was composed about 1818 and follows a kind of opera scene uniting in this sense different forms of expression.
Like his well-known contemporaries Franck, Widor and Fauré, Henri Constant Gabriel PIERNÉ(1863–1937) was at first organist. After his thorough musical education at the Conservatoire, Gabriel Pierne succeeded Franck as organist from 1890 to 1898. As a conductor of the great Parisian orchestras from 1903 onwards he came into contact with ballet and the theatre. Among others he conducted the first performances of the famous Ballets Russes from Diaghilev for whom Debussy, R Strauss, Stravinsky, Prokofiev and Milhaud also wrote compositions. In Pierne's oeuvre chamber music plays a very considerable role. Entirely in the tradition of his contemporaries the harp becomes one of the most frequently used instruments and he uses it in a wonderful manner. His Impromptu-Caprice in A flat major, Op 9 from the year 1887 belongs to the outstanding solo works for harp and shows this instrument in particular to its advantage by using virtuosity and richness of expression.
Despite modern research it has not been possible to obtain very much useful information about B HILSE and his life or about any other potential compositions by him. Bernhard is often stated as his first name, but this is probably not correct as he clearly signed the contract with the publisher as 'Bruno Hilse'. In one directory his name is 'J. Bernhard Hilse'. In any case, the Suite Op 6 was published in 1911 in Leipzig. The work is dedicated to Justus Gelfius, flautist in Stuttgart and later in the Detroit Symphony Orchestra (1922/23). He then played in Chicago and later in the New Orleans Symphony Orchestra (1941/42 and 1943/44). It is not known whether he met Hilse in Germany or in the USA. Considering the date of publication of Hilse’s music in Leipzig, he presumably met him in Germany. This work is one of the few chamber music works of a German composer for this instrumentation and it reveals a good knowledge of both instruments.
With Marcel Lucien TOURNIER (1879–1951) we meet a third famous harpist, whose charisma reaches our days through his students at the Conservatoire in Paris. At this institute he taught from 1912 to 1948. As a student in composition with Widor he kept the romantic tradition. His two short Préludes Romantiques Op 17 were composed in 1909 and are originally for violin and harp.
Winterthur born Willy HESS (1906–1997) distinguished himself as a Beethoven specialist. He became well-known after compiling a catalogue of works of this great Viennese composer not listed in the 'complete' edition, and also publishing them. Certainly his style can only be described as imitation, but especially in the first of Drei Tonstücke Op 79, Elfenreigen, written in 1972/73, a very delicate and romantic atmosphere with the instrumentation for flute and harp is created.
