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A baroque Christmas from Harmonia Mundi, this year’s offering in their acclaimed Christmas series. Great value for money - four CDs of music so good that it shouldn’t be saved just for Christmas. The prize here, though is the Pastorale de Noël by Marc-Antoine Charpentier with Ensemble Correspondances, with Sébastien Daucé, highly acclaimed on its first release just a few years ago.
Christmas at St George’s Chapel, Windsor, with the Choir of St. George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle, James Vivian, organist and conductor. New from Hyperion, this continues their series of previous recordings with this Choir. The College of St George, founded in 1348, is unusual in that it is a Royal Peculiar, a parish under the direct jurisdiction of the monarch, rather than the diocese.
As a musicologist, particularly when working in the field of historical documents, one is always hoping to discover that unknown score, letter, household account book - even a shopping list or scribbled memo - which will reveal much about the composition, performance or context of a musical work which might otherwise remain embedded within or behind the inscrutable walls of the past.
New from Albion, Time and Space: Songs by Holst and Vaughan Williams, with Mary Bevan, Roderick Williams, William Vann and Jack Liebeck, highlighting the close personal relationship between the two composers.
The 23-year-old Giacomo Puccini was still three months from the end of his studies at the Conservatoire in Milan when, in April 1883, he spotted an announcement of a competition for a one-act opera in Il teatro illustrato, a journal was published by Edoardo Sonzogno, the Italian publisher of Bizet's Carmen.
O Lieb! presents the lieder of Franz Liszt with a distinctive spark from Cyrille Dubois and Tristan Raës, from Aparté. Though young, Dubois is very highly regarded. His voice has a luminous natural elegance, ideal for the Mélodie and French operatic repertoire he does so well. With these settings by Franz Liszt, Dubois brings out the refinement and sophistication of Liszt’s approach to song.
The Academy of Ancient Music’s new release of Handel’s Brockes-Passion - recorded around the AAM's live performance at the Barbican Hall on the 300th anniversary of the first performance in 1719 - combines serious musicological and historical scholarship with vibrant musicianship and artistry.
From Albion, The Song of Love featuring songs by Ralph Vaughan Williams, with Kitty Whately, Roderick Williams and pianist William Vann. Albion is unique, treasured by Vaughan Williams devotees for rarely heard repertoire from the composer’s vast output, so don’t expect mass market commercial product. Albion recordings often highlight new perspectives.
Henze’s Das Floß der Medusa is in some ways a work with a troubled and turbulent history. It is defined by the time in which it was written – 1968 – a period of student protest throughout central Europe. Its first performance was abandoned because the Hamburg chorus refused to perform under the Red Flag which had been placed on stage; and Henze himself decided he wouldn’t conduct it at all after police stormed the concert hall to remove protesters, among them the librettist Ernst Schnabel.
Berthold Goldschmidt’s Beatrice Cenci at last on DVD, from the Bregenzer Festspiele in 2018, with Johannes Debus conducting the Wiener Symphoniker, directed by Johannes Erath, and sung in German translation.
Sandrine Piau and Le Concert de la Loge (Julien Chauvin), Si j’ai aimé, an eclectic collection of mélodies demonstrating the riches of French orchestral song. Berlioz, Duparc and Massenet are included, but also Saint-Saëns, Charles Bordes, Gabriel Pierné, Théodore Dubois, Louis Vierne and Benjamin Godard.
Where might you hear medieval monophony by the late 12th-century French composer Pérotin, Renaissance polyphony by William Byrd, a vocal arrangement of the stirring theme from Sibelius’s tone poem Finlandia, alongside a newly commissioned work, ‘Vertue’ (2019) by Jonathan Dove, followed by an arrangement of the Irish folksong ‘Danny Boy’ and a snappy rendition of Antonio Carlos Jobim’s ‘One Note Samba’ arr. for eight voices by Naomi Crellin, all within 90 minutes?
From Hyperion, Gerald Finzi choral works with the Choir of Trinity College, Cambridge, conducted by Stephen Layton. An impressive Magnificat (1952) sets the tone.
The Choir of King’s College, Cambridge has played a role in the evolution of British music. This recording honours this heritage and Stephen Cleobury’s contribution in particular by focusing on Herbert Howells, who transformed the British liturgical repertoire in the 20th century.
Mieczysław Weinberg witnessed the Holocaust firsthand. He survived, though millions didn’t, including his family. His Symphony no. 21 “Kaddish” (Op. 152) is a deeply personal statement. Yet its musical qualities are such that they make it a milestone in modern repertoire.
Although some works by a number of composers have had to wait uncommonly lengthy periods of time to receive Japanese premieres - one thinks of both Mozart’s Jupiter and Beethoven’s Fifth (1918), Handel’s Messiah (1929), Wagner’s Parsifal (1967), Berlioz’s Roméo et Juliette (1966) and even Bruckner’s Eighth (1959, given its premiere by Herbert von Karajan) - Mahler might be considered to have fared somewhat better.
Superlatives to describe Lise Davidsen’s voice have been piling up since she won Placido Domingo’s 2015 Operalia competition, blowing everyone away. She has been called “a voice in a million” and “the new Kirsten Flagstad.”
From Hyperion comes a particularly fine account of Leoš Janáček’s song cycle The Diary of One Who Disappeared. Handsome-voiced Nicky Spence is the young peasant who loses his head over an alluring gypsy and is never seen again.
Why did Jean Sibelius suppress Kullervo (Op. 7, 1892)? There are many theories why he didn’t allow it to be heard after its initial performances, though he referred to it fondly in private. This new recording, from Hyperion with Thomas Dausgaard conducting the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, soloists Helena Juntunen and Benjamin Appl and the Lund Male Chorus, is a good new addition to the ever-growing awareness of Kullervo, on recording and in live performance.
Not the familiar version of Mahler's Symphony no 1, but the “real” Mahler Titan at last, as it might have sounded in Mahler's time! François-Xavier Roth and Les Siècles present the symphony in its second version, based on the Hamburg/Weimar performances of 1893-94. This score is edited by Reinhold Kubik and Stephen E.Hefling for Universal Edition AG. Wien.
Carmen was one of Victoria de los Angeles’ favorite roles and she brought to it much that we hear on this recording of French songs: a winsome voice without heavy vibrato, a close attention to musical detail, and an evident understanding of the French words that she conveys, if not with an impeccable accent, at least with a convincingly understandable pronunciation.
As a Spanish singer in a French opera set in Spain, her interpretation had an organic integrity that added authenticity to the operatic visit to her home country.
We enjoy a similar musical voyage on this EMI re-release of songs by Ravel, Debussy and Duparc. The Ravel songs provide an ethnic travelogue in Tristan Klingsor’s fantastic text to Shéhérazade and in actual ethnic songs from around the Mediterranean region in the Cinq Mélodies Populaires Grecques, the Chants Populaires, and the Deux Mélodies Hébraïques. The Debussy songs provide imaginary time travel to the worlds of Watteau paintings in the Fêtes Galantes and to an imaginary ancient Greece in the Chansons de Bilitis. The Debussy songs and the Ravel Chants Populaires are accompanied by Gonzalo Soriano on the piano; the rest have orchestral accompaniment.
These songs were recorded in 1963 and 1967 when the singer was in her prime vocally and we hear none of the roughness that crept in as financial concerns caused her to extend her career. Still, it has to be acknowledged that in the upper registers, her voice, while retaining a beautiful purity, does not really blossom. Thus the sound that transports some listeners does not excite everyone. To my ear, this pure tone works very well in most of this repertoire. Ravel’s ethnic songs have a directness from which a heavier vibrato would detract. Thus the Chants Populaires, infrequently recorded, are very successful. The ubiquitous Cinq Mélodies Populaires Grecques bring out the endearing warmth of her personality, but the orchestral accompaniment, while adding color, perhaps makes a bigger production of these songs than they should have (only two of the orchestrations are by Ravel himself). The Deux Mélodies Hébraïques are simple and, especially in the case of the Kaddisch, worshipful. A quick comparison with Cecilia Bartoli’s performance of these songs and the Chants Populaires on her 1996 Chant d’Amour disc shows Bartoli having a richer sound but less clearly understandable texts. Bartoli also sings these songs in Hebrew rather than French, and noticeably modifies her voice to sound childlike in the son’s section of the dialogue in the Chanson Hebraïque.
There is also much to like in De los Angeles’s performance of the Debussy songs. Again, the purity and containment of her vocal sound bring out the ironic detachment as well as the charm of the Fêtes Galantes set. Her performance of the Chansons de Bilitis beautifully evokes what Graham Johnson calls their “Delphic spirituality”, where the eroticism is “veiled, understated, and under-age”. Her ability to sound vulnerable while using her whole voice draws us into the heart of the young woman encountering the birth, consummation and death of erotic passion. Again, one can compare with more recent performances. Dawn Upshaw on her 2004 Voices of Light presents a more sharply defined emotional range: more intensely passionate in “La Chevelure,” while backing off the (already fairly transparent) sound to sound more childlike in places. By contrast, René Fleming on her 2001 Night Songs has a less focused sound with more pronounced legato than either of the others. There is more shimmer in the higher registers, but less personality in the interpretation. De los Angeles’s final Debussy song is the troubled “Noël des enfants qui n’ont plus de maison”, written by the aged Debussy in horror at the devastation of World War I. Again, De los Angeles’s sincerity and pure timbre allow her to sing unaffectedly as one of the displaced children regretting the loss of “our little beds” (as well as the rest of their villages, families, and daily lives).
It is in the Ravel Shéhérazade, and the orchestrated Duparc songs that admirers of a richer sounding voice may be disappointed in this program. In the expansive “Asie”, which opens the entire disc and describes a fantasy voyage across the continent, exploring every dark nook and cranny before returning home to tell one’s friends about it, the changing colors of the travelogue are heard in the orchestra rather than in the singer’s voice. However, the two more intimate songs that follow are quite effective, particularly when one takes into account that they both deal with erotic passion that under the circumstances cannot or will not be pursued, so the singer’s contained sound works well.
There is no faulting de los Angeles’s emotion, musicality or technique in the Duparc songs that close the disc. Duparc himself might object to the performance, since he apparently was annoyed to hear a woman’s voice sing a man’s song. And of course, those who are drawn to Duparc among French composers because he is more like their real love, Wagner, than many others, will want to hear a bigger vocal sound than de los Angeles offers. Nevertheless, she does bring off the intimacy of the opening of “Phydilé” very well, and when the sonic landscape opens out in the climax, she is able to fill it effectively without pushing her voice, reminding us once again of her very successful operatic career.
It should be noted that this disc, released as part of EMI’s “Great Recordings of the Century” series, has been completely remastered at Abbey Road studios. Fans of Victoria de los Angeles should know that all of these performances are also available on the multi-disc set entitled The Fabulous Victoria de los Angeles. Since I had that set already, I compared some of the tracks on my own equipment and that of my audiophile brother-in-law, and he and I both agreed that her middle voice in particular is better captured on the older discs, so I wouldn’t advise buying this disc if you have the older set, or are enough of a fan to consider acquiring it (last I checked it’s still available). The new release includes a 2006 essay by John Steane (in English and in German translation) discussing the songs and the singer, as well as texts and German and English translations of the songs.
Barbara Miller