The Sixteen continues its exploration of Henry Purcell’s Welcome Songs for Charles II. As with Robert King’s pioneering Purcell series begun over thirty years ago for Hyperion, Harry Christophers is recording two Welcome Songs per disc.
In February this year, Albanian soprano Ermonela Jaho made a highly lauded debut recital at Wigmore Hall - a concert which both celebrated Opera Rara’s 50th anniversary and honoured the career of the Italian soprano Rosina Storchio (1872-1945), the star of verismo who created the title roles in Leoncavallo’s La bohème and Zazà, Mascagni’s Lodoletta and Puccini’s Madama Butterfly.
Collapsology. Or, perhaps we should use the French word ‘Collapsologie’ because this is a transdisciplinary idea pretty much advocated by a series of French theorists - and apparently, mostly French theorists. It in essence focuses on the imminent collapse of modern society and all its layers - a series of escalating crises on a global scale: environmental, economic, geopolitical, governmental; the list is extensive.
Amongst an avalanche of new Mahler recordings appearing at the moment (Das Lied von der Erde seems to be the most favoured, with three) this 1991 Mahler Second from the 2nd Kassel MahlerFest is one of the more interesting releases.
If there is one myth, it seems believed by some people today, that probably needs shattering it is that post-war recordings or performances of Wagner operas were always of exceptional quality. This 1949 Hamburg Tristan und Isolde is one of those recordings - though quite who is to blame for its many problems takes quite some unearthing.
The voices of six women composers are celebrated by baritone Jeremy Huw Williams and soprano Yunah Lee on this characteristically ambitious and valuable release by Lontano Records Ltd (Lorelt).
As Paul Spicer, conductor of the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire Chamber Choir, observes, the worship of the Blessed Virgin Mary is as ‘old as Christianity itself’, and programmes devoted to settings of texts which venerate the Virgin Mary are commonplace.
Ethel Smyth’s last large-scale work, written in 1930 by the then 72-year-old composer who was increasingly afflicted and depressed by her worsening deafness, was The Prison – a ‘symphony’ for soprano and bass-baritone soloists, chorus and orchestra.
‘Hamilton Harty is Irish to the core, but he is not a musical nationalist.’
‘After silence, that which comes closest to expressing the inexpressible is music.’ Aldous Huxley’s words have inspired VOCES8’s new disc, After Silence, a ‘double album in four chapters’ which marks the ensemble’s 15th anniversary.
A song-cycle is a narrative, a journey, not necessarily literal or linear, but one which carries performer and listener through time and across an emotional terrain. Through complement and contrast, poetry and music crystallise diverse sentiments and somehow cohere variability into an aesthetic unity.
One of the nicest things about being lucky enough to enjoy opera, music and theatre, week in week out, in London’s fringe theatres, music conservatoires, and international concert halls and opera houses, is the opportunity to encounter striking performances by young talented musicians and then watch with pleasure as they fulfil those sparks of promise.
“It’s forbidden, and where’s the art in that?”
Dublin-born John F. Larchet (1884-1967) might well be described as the father of post-Independence Irish music, given the immense influenced that he had upon Irish musical life during the first half of the 20th century - as a composer, musician, administrator and teacher.
The English Civil War is raging. The daughter of a Puritan aristocrat has fallen in love with the son of a Royalist supporter of the House of Stuart. Will love triumph over political expediency and religious dogma?
Beethoven Symphony no 9 (the Choral Symphony) in D minor, Op. 125, and the Choral Fantasy in C minor, Op. 80 with soloist Kristian Bezuidenhout, Pablo Heras-Casado conducting the Freiburger Barockorchester, new from Harmonia Mundi.
A Louise Brooks look-a-like, in bobbed black wig and floor-sweeping leather trench-coat, cheeks purple-rouged and eyes shadowed in black, Barbara Hannigan issues taut gestures which elicit fire-cracker punch from the Mahler Chamber Orchestra.
‘Signor Piatti in a fantasia on themes from Beatrice di Tenda had also his triumph. Difficulties, declared to be insuperable, were vanquished by him with consummate skill and precision. He certainly is amazing, his tone magnificent, and his style excellent. His resources appear to be inexhaustible; and altogether for variety, it is the greatest specimen of violoncello playing that has been heard in this country.’
Baritone Roderick Williams seems to have been a pretty constant ‘companion’, on my laptop screen and through my stereo speakers, during the past few ‘lock-down’ months.
Melodramas can be a difficult genre for composers. Before Richard Strauss’s Enoch Arden the concept of the melodrama was its compact size – Weber’s Wolf’s Glen scene in Der Freischütz, Georg Benda’s Ariadne auf Naxos and Medea or even Leonore’s grave scene in Beethoven’s Fidelio.
Albert Lortzing has suffered much lately. Artistically speaking, he is somewhat moribund. In a recent article in the German operatic magazine, Orpheus, one writer rightfully complained that the once so popular composer has almost disappeared from the German theatres.
Even in the sixties, his operas were played all over the German-speaking countries, while nowadays one has to look carefully to find a performance. The reasons are twofold. “Das Regie-Theater” has little attraction for Lortzing’s well-crafted, very romantic “Spielopern”— too civilized, too polite, too simple, not enough blood and adultery so that one can shock spectators. Nowadays, as directors dictate what a general manager may or may not put on the boards, there is no place for him. Secondly, a cynical age such as ours, with cynical people all over the place, no longer has room for the gentle characters of Lortzing or for operas that are deeply drenched in the days of late feudal customs and small German states.
For most of his life, Lortzing lived in abject poverty—while everywhere his operas were enthusiastically performed in those days without author’s rights—he had to stoop to his audiences and to perform what they liked or thought decent. This Undine is a fine example. It’s almost the same story as Dvořák’s better-known Rusalka, which is largely based on the Undine story. But Rusalka premièred in 1901, 56 years after Lortzing’s opera, in an age when artistic freedom had already some real meaning and author’s rights were a source of income. So, Dvořák could keep the legend intact and have his prince kiss the water nymph whereupon he dies. Lortzing, too, preferred such a finale for his opera; but his audiences wanted a happy ending. Therefore, the composer acquiesced to their wishes and Undine ends with a rather sugary end: the prince kisses the nymph and accompanies his love for eternity into her water world.
The performance under review was recorded for a radio performance on the classical German music channel and appeared not long after on the Capriccio label in full price version. This less expensive reissue, however, has no libretto, just a short summary. This recording has only one rival, recorded exactly forty-years ago; but what a competitor it is. The cast of the EMI recording speaks for itself: Gedda, Rothenberg, Prey, Schreier, Frick. To be somewhat blunt, almost none of the singers on this issue are on the same level as their elders. This is especially true in the soprano department. Both ladies here sing well, but without much charm or individuality. Both are a little bit shrill and one has constantly to look at the sleeve notes to know who is exactly singing. Pütz and Rothenberger have better and more distinct voices on the EMI-recording.
The gentlemen fare somewhat better. Protschka has a good lyric voice, seeminlgy destined to become the great German lyric tenor that somehow has never materialized. But, he almost matches Nicolai Gedda’s Ritter Hugo on EMI. His voice is not on the same level. Yet, there is the feeling for this kind of music he probably knew well from his youth that is somewhat lacking in the Swede's interpretation, who probably recorded while looking for the first time at his score. Incidentally, there is a story that Gedda was flown in at the last moment as a substitute for Fritz Wunderlich who had recorded a magnificent Der Wildschütz by the same composer. Only his tragic death prevented him from recording Undine. This is not true. The EMI-recording was finished on the 6th of September 1966, while Wunderlich died exactly 11 days later. On the Capriccio recording, baritone John Janssen sings a noble and convincing water ghost Kühleborn, and he yields nothing to EMI’s Hermann Prey—high praise indeed. Undine has one common trait with Giordano’s La Cena delle Beffe—the best known aria, a wonderful melodious tenor piece, belongs to the second tenor. On record no one equals Wunderlich’s interpretation in a solo album; but neither Peter Schreier (EMI) nor Heinz Kruse (Capriccio) is mellifluous enough. Andreas Schmidt and Günter Wewel do well, but who can nowadays compete with Gotlob Frick?
This performance has one big advantage: its completeness. It contains some extra choruses lacking on the EMI, it gives us, finally, the fine ballet and it provides some additional dialogue as well. Conductor Kurt Eichhorn is one of the last maestri who can honour this kind of romantic piece and he succeeds in giving us a fine interpretation, never pushing his singers but not indulging in sentimentality either.
If you want to leave Verdi and Puccini for a while and discover a wonderful melodious score, you would do well to purchase this issue. Maybe Lortzing is old fashioned in the theatre, but on records he still holds his own. In the meantime, you will discover that Engelbert Humperdinck and Siegfried Wagner found a lot of inspiration from him. Should you be able to read German, I can only advise to buy Lortzing—Gaukler und Musiker by Jürgen Lodemann (Steidl Verlag, Göttingen). It is one of the best researched biographies of a composer I have ever read. It tells us a lot about the horrible artistic conditions Lortzing had to live with and it illustrates in great detail how miserable, poor, honest and caring for his wife and his eleven children Lortzing was—he buried 5 of them. He himself died only at 50-years of age, a composer, who until the seventies, was the most performed operatic genius in Germany after Verdi and Mozart.
Jan Neckers