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.
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