31 May 2006
MANFREDINI: 12 Concerti op. 3
The general aversion of the listening public to vocal music can nowhere be more easily seen than in the comparative success of the operatic and instrumental works of the Italian baroque.
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Le Monde Reviews Lamento
Cela arrive rarement, le souffle coupé dès les premières notes. Une minute entière à retenir sa respiration dans une apnée d’émotion totale pour recevoir la première phrase du Lamento pour contralto, de Johann Christoph Bach, d’après les Lamentations de Jérémie, son ascension douloureuse, ornée de sanglots, puis les deux accords d’une longue plainte instrumentale, avant l’entrée, magique, de la voix de Magdalena Kozena. “Ach, dass ich Wassers g’nug hätte.” “Ah, si ma tête était remplie d’eau, si mes yeux étaient une source de larmes.” L’insouciance a été jusqu’alors votre lot ? Vous, toi, nous tous, pécheurs, allons connaître ce que pèse le lourd fardeau de nos iniquités – et la récompense de cette connaissance : 7 minutes 22 d’une pure splendeur musicale.
MOZART: Le Nozze di Figaro
Recorded in Tokyo on October 23, 1963, this live recording of Nozze di Figaro boasts fine sound, a top cast, and the leadership of a conductor of great skill and experience. The label, Ponto, has joined the ranks of such other companies as Opera D’oro and Gala in making available broadcast and in-house recordings at affordable prices. Sometimes these releases are not even worth the modest price asked for; this one may well have more to offer than higher-priced studio sets. After a slightly hesitant first few moments, the sound quality settles down and becomes admirably strong and well defined. There is relatively little stage noise, the voices have a natural presence without being too forwardly placed, and Böhm’s orchestral control can be relished. His may be an old-fashioned reading, but it never lags or lacks for humor or beauty. The audience can be heard laughing from time to time at the stage antics; applause only interferes with the musical pleasures at the end of Non piu andrai, when unrestrained clapping covers a bit of Böhm’s ironically happy martial send-off.
WAGNER: Tristan und Isolde
Elsewhere on Opera Today readers can find a recent review of a live recording of Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro from the Ponto label, a company that has joined the ranks of Opera D’oro and Gala in offering, at budget price, live recordings of various provenance. At their best, as with that Nozze, these recordings offer in acceptable sound (sometimes better) performances of such quality they rival their more expensive competitors. At less than the best, however, even the budget price becomes exorbitant. This Tristan und Isolde, recorded on January 25, 1967, unfortunately belongs to the latter category. Unless one has a strong personal reason for wanting a keepsake of this company or the artists involved, the recording is unlikely to please most listeners. The primary reason is the sound. While not unlistenable, the recording is clearly an “in-house” affair, and probably from an audience member, as some of the coughing is more up-front than the singing. Worse, during the climax, some audience members are whispering as Isolde enters the Leibestod. One would love for a Jon Vickers to have been present to yell out, “Stop your damn whispering!”
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Recordings
Any Italian composer with some degree of success ( i.e. published works) must by now have multiple recordings of multiple concerti available on disc. Think of Leonardo Leo, Francesco Durante, Tommaso Albinoni, Francesco Manfredini. And yet virtually nothing in the way of operas is available on recordings from these same figures. Listening to vocal music takes a level of music concentration beyond that necessary for consumption of instrumental music, beginning with a willingness to enter the poetry of the text and the drama of the plot, and for most listeners, grappling with a language that is not their native tongue. Instrumental music is far more accessible. All this means that the present disc is far from a discographic debut.
Manfredini was from the provinces, born in Pistoia, and spending most of his career there. Then, as now, Pistoia was hardly a leading cultural center in Tuscany. Manfredini studied and was employed as violinist in Bologna as a young man, spent several years in Monaco, but returned to Pistoia in 1724 as choir director at the Cathedral, and remained there until his death in 1762. All of his published works were issued in Bologna between 1704 and 1718 (the concertos, op. 3), with one posthumous collection issued almost fifty years later in London.
These concertos are short (three movements, usually under seven minutes), easily digestable, far from challenging, the sort of thing you might expect on the radio between seven and nine AM, say. That is their virtue and their defect. They are well-made, but there is as much difference between the various concertos as there is between the contents of a nice box of petit-fours. Individually, they may be sweet and tasty, but only the hardiest or most gluttonous could imagine eating the whole box. Cloying, in a word. It is revealing that "in order to offer the hearer a varied listening experience" (in the words of the note), the producers have chosen to present the works out of numerical order.
As far as I know, this is the third complete recording of the set, with a deluxe set on Vox back in the glory days of the Italian baroque concerto on disc (1956), and a more recent set on Naxos. The Naxos set, by the Capella Istropolitana, is more in the vein of the modern performance on modern instruments, full tone, vibrato, etc., and Rémy and party follow the "historically-informed performance line", but it is not enough to bring these weak pieces back to life.
Tom Moore