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.
Our modern sense of the eighteenth-century Lutheran cantata derives in large part from the works of J. S. Bach—works that have been foundational in the early music movement, works that have much shaped our understanding of Bach, and works that we now know in an impressive array of different recordings.
The emphasis on Bach has not yielded a static sense of the cantata, by any means, but I suspect that we have tended to see its dynamic changes within the boundaries of Bach’s career and not much beyond.
The present recording offers a compelling glimpse of the cantata in the years after Bach’s death with three cantatas by Telemann from the late 1750s and early 1760s, works written when Telemann was an old man in his eighties. If an old man, his style here has nevertheless moved with the times. The cantata’s mix of recitative, aria, duet, and chorale shows a degree of continuity with the earlier cantata, but the style, compared to the Bach cantatas, is decidedly different. Telemann’s late cantatas feature line and phrases that are smaller-scale and more focused on small motives; the music is less contrapuntal and arguably simpler. Those who complained of the unnaturalness of Bach may have found in this music a more agreeable vocabulary. And a distinctive difference, as well, is the relatively little amount that the choir is given to do—some chorale verses and a few short movements. The orchestral and vocal lines alike are often intricately ornamental, but it is an intricacy that graces rather than overwhelms.
The strongest link with the earlier and better known Bach works is surely the composer’s engagement of the meaning of the text. Telemann will give melismas of delight in association with words of joy, chromaticism and harmonic alteration for darker words and affections; he will harness the orchestration to special sound effect, as for instance, in the use of timpani where God’s voice thunders from Sinai; and his choral setting depicting an eerily quiet extinguishing of the stars at the Last Judgement is highly atmospheric.
There is much to like in the performances here. Ludger Rémy reveals a fine sense of style and his performers tend to respond in kind. The Telemann Collegium of Michaelstein plays with an infectious buoyance and grace, and the Chamber Choir of Michaelstein, in what little they have to do here, is nicely attuned to that buoyance, as well. Additionally, in their contrapuntal passages, the tidiness of their articulation is a particularly welcome stylistic plus. Of the soloists, both soprano Dorothee Mields and bass Ekkehard Abele are outstanding, with resonant sounds that yet remain focused and flexible, and impressive execution of ornamental sections. The soprano aria “Itzt steigt er” from Er kam, lobsingt ihm is an especially memorable chance to hear Mields’ effortless and alluringly pure tone. Tenor Knut Schoch shares in the articulative grace and focused sound of his colleagues, though on occasion there is a hint of force in the high range. Alto Elisabeth Graf sings expressively, but with an unusual tone, sometimes strident, sometimes forced, and sometimes sounding like unresonant falsetto.
That criticism aside, this is a recording that will amply gratify, both in its stylistic flair and in its exploration of the cantata after Bach. The exploration is a journey well taken, indeed, and Rémy and his forces prove to be congenial guides.
Steven Plank