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.
Released in late 2011, Deutsche Grammophon’s DVD of the new staging of Berg’s Lulu at the Gran Teatro del Liceu, Barcelona is an excellent contribution to the discography of this fascinating opera.
A recent release by the Metropolitan Opera, this two-disc set makes available on DVD the famous performance of Berg’s Lulu that was broadcast on 20 December 1980 as part of the PBS series “Live from the Met.”
The novels of Sinclair Lewis once shot across the American literary skies like comets, alarming and fascinating readers of that era, but their tails didn’t extend far behind them.
Once the province of only the most dedicated opera fanatics, mid-20th century recordings of privately taped live performances have become more widely available.
Flute players in opera orchestra around the world must look forward to the frequent appearances of Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor, knowing that while the stage spotlight in the mad scene will be on the soprano, the orchestral spotlight will be on their instrument.
For more than a quarter century, Peter Phillips and the Tallis Scholars have achieved great distinction in the performance of sixteenth-century polyphony, bringing to that repertory interpretations of engaging directness, rhythmic vitality, and fullness of tone. These are qualities that are admirably well suited to the music of the Eton Choirbook and one of its most representative composers, John Browne, the subject of this recent recording.
John Browne: Music from the Eton Choirbook
The Tallis Scholars, dir. Peter Phillips
Gimell CDGIM 036 [CD]
For more than a quarter century, Peter Phillips and the Tallis Scholars have achieved great distinction in the performance of sixteenth-century polyphony, bringing to that repertory interpretations of engaging directness, rhythmic vitality, and fullness of tone. These are qualities that are admirably well suited to the music of the Eton Choirbook and one of its most representative composers, John Browne, the subject of this recent recording.
The founding of the "King's College of Our Lady of Eton by Windsor" by Henry VI in 1440 was a patronal act of enduring significance. And one of its richest legacies is the sumptuous body of Marian antiphons that are collected in the Eton Choirbook, an anthology compiled in the first years of the sixteenth century. The Marian emphasis was resonant with the dedication of the College and its chapel, reinforced visually by the Flemish-styled paintings of the miracles of the Virgin Mary on the north walls of the Chapel, and liturgically in the statutory daily singing of Marian antiphons at the close of day.
Browne's antiphons well represent the florid English style of the late fifteenth century. Most striking of its traits is likely the expanded range, which regularly sees five and six parts cover a full three-octave compass, and in so doing, exploits stratospheric, soaring treble lines. The appeal to a love of sonority is unmistakable. That same love of sonority is sometimes gratified by opposite means, as well. If the majority of Browne's works on this recording feature an expanded range, one antiphon, Stabat iuxti, compresses six voice parts into the tenor-bass registers, where the closeness of the harmonies make the sound unusually rich.
Typically the antiphons alternate between intricate, highly decorated counterpoint for a few voices and grand blocks of tutti sound. And throughout, the rhythmic flow is gracefully animated by cross rhythms at various mensural levels and a propensity to fill up the rhythmic space — much as the harmonic space has been filled up — with frequent off-beat motion.
The Tallis Scholars approach this music with a fluency born of their long experience with this repertory, and it is out of that natural fluency that they are able to offer performances of these works that show both an impressive command of foreground detail and at the same time performances that unfold with a gratifying sense of the architectural whole — ever spacious and ever engaging.
With a compositional style that is reasonably uniform, it is perhaps difficult to single out one piece over another. However, pride of place in the Choirbook itself is given to Browne's "O Maria salvatoris," an eight-voice antiphon that is the first in the collection. Its text is Marian in familiar ways though with an Oxonian accent — there are invocations to both Saint Frideswide (the patron saint of Oxford) and St. Catherine of Alexandria (the patron saint of students, known for her besting of fifty philosophers!). Browne was likely in the service of the Earl of Oxford, which would explain this connection, and the collegiate overtones seem nicely adapted to the Eton context, as well. And to my ear, the most memorable parts of the antiphon are its splendid opening and closing sections. The opening is a rich acclamation on the words "O Maria"; the closing an equally rich melismatic effusion on the word "melodia." It would be difficult to imagine anything more satisfyingly emblematic of the collection as a whole.
Steven Plank
Oberlin College