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.
Under the direction of James O’Donnell since January 2000, the Choir of Westminster Abbey has cultivated a robust singing style that well serves the music of this new recording and continues the Abbey’s position as one of the obvious standard bearers of the English cathedral tradition.
Trinity Sunday, the Sunday after Pentecost, is an unusual day in the Anglican church calendar—the only feast devoted to a doctrine—and the present recording presents music that one “might hear if you visited Westminster Abbey on Trinity Sunday.” The range of composers and styles represented is wide: Thomas Tomkins and John Farmer from the “Golden Age,” the richly Victorian John Stainer and George Elvey, twentieth-century stalwarts like Edward Bairstow, Herbert Howells, Benjamin Britten, and William Walton, and even a “modern” Francis Grier, all arranged to give a musical sense of the three choral services of the day: Matins, Eucharist, and Evensong.
The range seems to reflect actual practice, with the Dean of Westminster in a program note even suggesting that the range is, in context, “Trinitarian.” He writes that “from Tomkins through Elvey to Britten and Walton is comprehensive, mixing different styles, while their distinctiveness remains. Does not that exemplify the Trinity? One liturgy but three distinct but non-competing styles?” So, the recording is tightly thematic, although that said, the recording also seems perhaps a bit at odds with itself. In some ways it attempts to give a sense of being at a service—the opening peal of the Westminster bells, for instance, or the “functional” Preces and Responses at Matins are what one might expect in a service recording. But by the same token, the Evensong section omits responses and prayers, providing only the more musically substantial items. Surprisingly—and regrettably—none of the liturgical sections include any hymnody.
Other aspects of the programming are curious. The cathedral repertory is one rooted in tradition, and thus the frequency with which certain works get recorded is not altogether surprising. However, two of the larger works on the recording, Grier’s Missa Trinitatis Sanctae and Howells’ Magnificat and Nunc dimittis from the Westminster Service have both been recorded by the Abbey Choir under O’Donnell’s predecessor, Martin Neary, as recently as the mid-1990’s. This seems too much repetition, too soon. And, if the recording is to include but only one anthem, one wonders if Stainer’s “I saw the Lord” is the best choice. Its Victorian vocabulary easily seems decidedly melodramatic today in a way that is difficult to overcome, though admittedly, “after the smoke clears,” his lyric section is a welcome reminder of the tunefulness of the age.
Certainly there is much to like in the performances. I thought the choir at its best in the “Gloria” from Grier’s evocative Mass, where the combination of brilliant treble sound and marked rhythmic verve were particularly memorable. And, in general, it was the exuberant moments in a number of pieces—the climax of the Britten Te Deum, for instance—that found the choir most satisfyingly at home.
Certain other aspects were less satisfying. The evensong psalm, Psalm 107, is one of the longer, with a demanding forty-three verses. Given its great length, one might have imagined a more varied approach to the chanting, though the organist’s rumblings to depict “they . . . stagger like a drunken man” were well aimed. Also, in some instances throughout the recording, the blend seemed to suffer from too much vibrato in the lower men’s range. This proved particularly distracting in the mystical, intertwining lines of the Grier “Sanctus.”
“Trinity Sunday at Westminster Abbey,” though not without some curiosities and minor flaws, remains a welcome document of the richness of a liturgical and musical treasure. The distinguished musical tradition of the Abbey is, as always, one to savor.
Steven Plank
Oberlin College