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.
The “XL” of the title of this recording is, as the program book notes, a double reference. First, read as Roman numerals, it points to the extraordinary number of voice parts in Thomas Tallis’ famous “Spem in alium” and its modern analogue here, Antony Pitts’ “XL,” a forty-voice setting of text from Psalm 40.
Second, read in merchandizing code, the “XL” also points to “extra large,” the size of the Rundfunkchor Berlin, whose sixty some voices certainly exceed Renaissance norms and also the norms of many ensembles performing modern music. Happily, I would suggest a third reference, as well, and that is that “XL” is also emblematic of the excellence of the program and much of its execution.
Conductor Simon Halsey’s theme here is a tightly constructed one: he has compellingly mated pre-modern works with contemporary compositions that in some fashion transform them, and the cumulative effect is stunning. While savoring the familiarity of long-established pillars in the repertory—the Tallis “Spem in alium,” Purcell’s “Hear My Prayer, O Lord,” the first Contrapunctus from Bach’s Art of Fugue, Bach’s chorale, “Komm, süsser Tod, and the chant “Veni, creator spiritus”—one marvels at the transformations by Dieter Schnebel, Jonathan Harvey, Knut Nystedt, Sven-David Sandström, and Antony Pitts. And the ebb and flow between old and new creates a gratifying rhythm as the program unfolds.
The transformations are of varied sorts. Schnebel, for instance, arranges the Bach Contrapunctus in a verbatim manner: all of the notes are there in their original sequence, but by dividing the notes between various vocal lines and varying the singers’ vowel configurations, he re-contextualizes the work in a way that gives it a decidedly new and spatial dimension. Harvey and Nystedt, by contrast, create soundscapes with haunting harmonies, aleatoric and undulating effects, that set the sound ashimmer and provide a decidedly new envelope in which to place the pre-existent material (“Veni, Creator” and “Komm süsser Tod”). Sandström adopts more the technique of paraphrase, developing themes and contours from Purcell’s emotionally charged orginal. And Pitts carves out a relation with “Spem in alium” in a way that evokes and salutes the original without, however, taking on elements of its specific content.
Oddly thrown into the mix, as well is Kodaly’s Laudes Organi, a large-scale work, whose connection to the programmatic theme is decidedly looser—its text is a twelfth-century hymn in praise of the organ and Guido of Arezzo. Thus, while it can claim ties to an earlier epoch, they are largely verbal, not musical. Moreover, Kodaly’s compositional language is of a decidedly conservative bent, which further separates the work from the more markedly modern idioms of the other composers.
The performances are accomplished and highly polished. The choir’s sound is reedy and sinewy in the older pieces, which serves them well, although close placement of the microphones gives a solo cast to some of the works—the Tallis in particular—that undermines what one suspects would be a satisfying ensemble cohesion heard in the hall. The newer pieces find the choir much at home, dynamically alive to the range of effects and techniques, and unflaggingly expressive in their rendition.
We have long admired the sixteenth century’s propensity and ability to adapt pre-existent material to new ends, heard in the large quantities of parody and paraphrase masses that characterize the late Renaissance. In “XL,” we see that a kindred spirit is alive in our own day, as well, with results that engage and satisfy in moving ways, indeed.
Steven Plank
Oberlin College