What better way for Masonic brothers, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Emmanuel Shikaneder to disseminate Masonic virtues, than through the most popular musical entertainment of their age, a happy ending folktale that features a dragon, enchanting flutes and bells, mixed-up parentage, and a beautiful young princess in distress?
Since its first performance at the Teatro Santi Giovanni e Paolo during Venice’s 1643 Carnevale, Monteverdi’s L’Incoronazione di Poppea has been one of the most important milestones in the genesis of modern opera despite its 250 years of unmerited obscurity.
Though 2013 is the bicentennial of the births of Giuseppe Verdi and Richard Wagner, the releases of Cecilia Bartoli’s recording of Bellini’s Norma on DECCA, a new studio recording of Donizetti’s Caterina Cornaro from Opera Rara, and this première recording of Saverio Mercadante’s forgotten I due Figaro, suggest that this is the start of a summer of bel canto.
Recording Richard Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen is for a record label equivalent to a climber reaching the summit of Mount Everest: it is the zenith from which a label surveys its position among its rivals and appreciates an achievement that can define its reputation for a generation.
Few people who love opera in general and bel canto in particular have never heard the comment made by Lilli Lehmann, veteran of the inaugural Ring at Bayreuth in 1876, that singing all three of Wagner’s Brünnhildes—in Die Walküre, Siegfried, and Götterdämmerung, respectively, all of which she sang to great acclaim—pales in comparison with singing the title rôle in Bellini’s Norma.
Paul Dukas’ Ariane et Barbe-Bleue, first heard in 1907, once seemed important. Arturo Toscanini conducted the Met premiere in 1911 with Farrar and later arranged some of its music for a 1947 recording with his NBC Symphony.
The economics of the recording companies dictate much that is not ideal. Wagner’s operas were not composed as they were in order to permit the extraction of bleeding chunks, even on those occasions when strophic song forms do occur.
Among the recent recordings of Mahler’s Eighth Symphony, Valery Gergiev’s release on the LSO Live label is an excellent addition to the discography of this work.
While not unknown, the songs of Alexander von Zemlinsky (1871-1942) deserve to be heard more frequently.
Recorded on 5 and 6 May 2008 and 17 and 18 January 2009 at the Lisztzentrum (Raiding, Austria), this recent Bridge release makes available the piano-vocal versions of three song cycles by Gustav Mahler, Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, Rückert-Lieder, and Kindertotenlieder performed by mezzo-soprano Hermine Haselböck, accompanied by Russell Ryan.
Contraltos rarely achieve the acclaim and renown of sopranos. Assigned few leading roles in opera, they are condemned to playing the villain or the grandmother, or to stealing the castrati’s trousers in en travesti roles.
Following their 2011 Decca recording of Striggio’s Mass in 40 Parts (1566), I Fagiolini continue their quest to unearth lost treasures of the High Renaissance and early Baroque, with this collection of world-premiere recordings, ‘reconstructions’ and ‘reconstitutions’ of music by Giovanni and Andrea Gabrieli, Monteverdi, Palestrina, and their less well-known compatriots Viadana, Barbarino and Soriano.
Eternal Echoes is an album of khazones [Jewish cantorial music] for cantorial soloist, solo violin and a blended instrumental ensemble comprising a small orchestra and the Klezmer Conservatory Band.
Michael Tilson Thomas’s recording of Mahler’s Third Symphony is an outstanding contribution to the composer’s discography.
Oliver Knussen burst into British music with an unprecedented flourish. In 1967, the London Symphony Orchestra premiered Knussen’s First Symphony, with István Kertész scheduled to conduct.
Based on performances given in Summer 2010 at the Lucerne Festival, this recording of Beethoven’s Fidelio is an admirable recording that captures the vitality of the work as conducted by Claudio Abbado.
Stanisław Moniuszko (1819-1872) was one of the most popular composers of his day in Poland, and of the many works he wrote for the stage, two are performed from time to time, Halka (1848) and Strazny dwór [The Haunted Manor] (1865).
The Polish alto Jadwiga Rappé is a familiar voice in various stage and concert works, and the recent release of a selection of songs by Stanisław Moniuszko (1819-1872) is an opportunity to hear her performing artsongs.
Originally released on multiple discs in 1981 this reissue on two CDs is a comprehensive collection of art songs by Italian and French composers from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
An exciting contribution to the discography of this popular opera, the live performance of Richard Strauss’s Salome from the Festspielhaus at Baden-Baden is a compelling DVD.
The most recent recording by England’s premier performers of Renaissance vocal music, the Orlando Consort, features a selection of works by the renowned fifteenth-century composer Antoine Busnois, works that represent the major genres of music composition of the time — mass, motet, and chanson. The performances are what we have come to expect from the fine singers of the Orlando Consort: warm, vibrant, and precise.
Antoine Busnois: Missa O Crux lignum, Motets, Chansons
Orlando Consort
harmonia mundi — HMU 907333
The most recent recording by England's premier performers of Renaissance vocal music, the Orlando Consort, features a selection of works by the renowned fifteenth-century composer Antoine Busnois, works that represent the major genres of music composition of the time -- mass, motet, and chanson. The performances are what we have come to expect from the fine singers of the Orlando Consort: warm, vibrant, and precise.
A relatively few facts are known about Busnois' biography. Because he was famous enough during his lifetime for the date to have been recorded, we know when he died: November 6, 1492. The circumstances of his birth are less certain; he was probably born around the year 1430, in or near the small town of Busne (hence, "Busnois") in north-eastern France. From pay records -- and from the text of his famous motet In hydraulis -- we know that Busnois was a musician in the court of Charles the Bold. Busnois' reputation as a composer among his contemporaries was exceeded only by that of Ockeghem, with whom Busnois may have studied. Contemporary composers and poets honored Busnois by including his name in a number of texts and poems, among which is Loyset Compère's motet Omnium bonorum plena, in which Busnois is praised as one of the "masters of song."
Indeed it is Busnois' songs that are probably his most original works, despite their adherence to the poetic formes fixes that were cultivated widely during the fifteenth century: rondeau, bergerette, and ballade. Each type of poem features strict patterns of rhyme and syllabic structure that are reflected musically in the alternation and repetition of two principal sections of music. The songs presented by the Orlando Consort represent all three of the major formes fixes and display the subtleness of Busnois' melodies and the perfection of his counterpoint. Among the chansons included on the recording is a bergerette whose text reveals something about Busnois' personal life: Ja que li ne s'i attende. This is one of four songs by Busnois whose texts refer directly to Jacqueline d'Hacqueville, the wife of a Parisian councilor, with whom Busnois apparently had a romantic dalliance. In the case of Ja que li ne s'i attende, the first four words of the first line of text (Ja que li ne) together make up the first name of Busnois' beloved.
The centerpiece of the recording is Busnois' Missa O Crux lignum, one of only two masses that can be securely attributed to the composer. Busnois' setting of the five major items of the Catholic mass Ordinary -- Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus (with a separate track for the Benedictus section), and Agnus -- is constructed as a typical cantus firmus mass of the time: The melody of the hymn O Crux lignum is placed in the tenor voice in drawn-out notes, while the other voices weave polyphony around it. The polyphonic mass is truly the most elaborate musical form of the period, with a changing variety of meters, voice pairings, and tempo changes, which enliven the complex polyphonic interaction of the four voices. Busnois' mass stands out from its contemporaries in its subtle use of imitation to organize the strands of polyphony, and his frequent passages of parallel thirds and sixths to soften its severity.
The fine performances of the Orlando Consort bring to life Busnois' exquisite music, which has been underrepresented in recent recordings. The close blend of voices in the ensemble is well-suited to Busnois' complex and subtle pieces.
Deborah Kauffman
University of Northern Colorado