What better way for Masonic brothers, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Emmanuel Shikaneder to disseminate Masonic virtues, than through the most popular musical entertainment of their age, a happy ending folktale that features a dragon, enchanting flutes and bells, mixed-up parentage, and a beautiful young princess in distress?
Since its first performance at the Teatro Santi Giovanni e Paolo during Venice’s 1643 Carnevale, Monteverdi’s L’Incoronazione di Poppea has been one of the most important milestones in the genesis of modern opera despite its 250 years of unmerited obscurity.
Though 2013 is the bicentennial of the births of Giuseppe Verdi and Richard Wagner, the releases of Cecilia Bartoli’s recording of Bellini’s Norma on DECCA, a new studio recording of Donizetti’s Caterina Cornaro from Opera Rara, and this première recording of Saverio Mercadante’s forgotten I due Figaro, suggest that this is the start of a summer of bel canto.
Recording Richard Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen is for a record label equivalent to a climber reaching the summit of Mount Everest: it is the zenith from which a label surveys its position among its rivals and appreciates an achievement that can define its reputation for a generation.
Few people who love opera in general and bel canto in particular have never heard the comment made by Lilli Lehmann, veteran of the inaugural Ring at Bayreuth in 1876, that singing all three of Wagner’s Brünnhildes—in Die Walküre, Siegfried, and Götterdämmerung, respectively, all of which she sang to great acclaim—pales in comparison with singing the title rôle in Bellini’s Norma.
Paul Dukas’ Ariane et Barbe-Bleue, first heard in 1907, once seemed important. Arturo Toscanini conducted the Met premiere in 1911 with Farrar and later arranged some of its music for a 1947 recording with his NBC Symphony.
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.
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