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.
Since his debut at the Metropolitan Opera in 1971, conductor James Levine has come to represent the house’s commitment to artistic excellence — reliable, professional, and immaculately presented.
Bach’s famed career as an organist, his prolific output of church cantatas, and his personal piety, all conspire to keep the image of the churchly Bach front and center in the modern mind, despite the enduring familiarity and popularity of Brandenburg concertos, sonatas, and suites.
A more inclusive image of Bach not only reflects historical reality, but also reminds us of the fragility of the sacred-secular boundary in Bach’s day, a boundary that he traversed with ease, if he recognized it at all. Günther Stiller has made the case that for an eighteenth-century Orthodox Lutheran the divisions of sacred and secular are ill-fitting, for the Orthodox believer would have sought to consecrate those things that we too quickly see as mundane. In this light, then, a recording of celebratory secular cantatas offers not so much a different side of Bach as much as a variation on a unified theme: music for any occasion, crafted with consummate skill and inspiration worthily reflects the divine. And it is in this way, too, that we can begin to understand the easy flow of musical materials across the divisions of sacred and secular. In one of the cantatas here, “Tönet, ihr Pauken,” BWV 214, several movements later appear in Bach’s Christmas Oratorio, where their presence raises not even the remotest scintilla of stylistic impropriety.
Philippe Herreweghe and Collegium Vocal Gent have a long-standing tradition of Bach performance, and the two cantatas performed here, “Tönet, ihr Pauken” and “Vereinigte Zwietracht der wechselnden Saiten,” BWV 207, are rendered with a style-consciousness and technical mastery that must surely define “state of the art.” Both cantatas are festive, commemorative works: “Vereinigte Zwietracht” salutes the appointment of a young professor, Gottlieb Kortte, at the University of Leipzig (1726); “Tönet, ihr Pauken” is a birthday offering for the Electress of Saxony, Maria Josepha (1733). Both cantatas either borrow from other Bach works or are the source of future borrowings—“Vereinigte Zwietracht,” for instance, gives a rollicking choral version of the third movement of the first Brandenburg Concerto, and there is much delight in meeting an old, familiar friend in this less familiar garb! Both cantatas are allegorical: Diligence, Honor, Gratitude and Happiness voice the praises of the Professor, whereas in the Electoral salute it is Peace, War, and Fame who sing, embodied in the mythological goddesses Irene, Bellona, and Fama. And finally, both cantatas reveal how short the distance is from secular to sacred.
Herreweghe’s performances are rooted in dance-like elegance and contoured shapeliness of line and motive. The celebrative nature of the works is clear both in the festive trumpetings, admirably executed by Guy Ferber, and in the energetic flurry of melismata that so frequently abounds here. Characteristically, Herreweghe responds with an exuberance that never threatens to get out of hand. Shapelieness, contour, and elegance all reign without rival. Even the opening timpani motive of “Tönet, ihr Pauken” is a model of verbally-based inflection!
Much of the duty falls to the solo ensemble of Carolyn Sampson, soprano, Ingeborg Danz, alto, Mark Padmore, tenor, and Peter Kooy, bass, all of whom seem well attuned to Herreweghe’s stylistic model, particularly as they dance through their florid passage work. Padmore and Sampson both have wonderfully free high registers; the lower voices of Danz and Kooy claim a richer resonance, though never at the cost of agility or focus. The choral forces of Collegium Vocale Gent are wonderfully flexible and articulative. If any issue seems to arise at all, it is that they are, in fact, choral forces. The case for Bach’s choir being one of solo voices—at least in church music—is well rehearsed by now, with a number of devout adherents. Herreweghe’s use of a choir reminds that the debate remains open-ended, and becomes also a compelling example of how effective choral forces can be.
Steven Plank
Oberlin College