22 Jan 2008
Echo de Paris: Parisian Love Songs 1610-1660
National styles of music in the seventeenth century were often distinctive, and in the case of French and Italian music, famously so.
Recently in Recordings
Adding Movie Magic to The Magic Flute
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?
L’Incoronazione di Poppea from Virgin Classics
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.
Saverio Mercadante: I due Figaro
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.
Christian Thielemann’s Der Ring des Nibelungen
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.
Cecilia Bartoli as Norma
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.
Ariane et Barbe-Bleue on Blu-Ray
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.
Kaufmann Wagner
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.
Mahler: Symphony No. 8
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.
Songs by Zemlinsky
While not unknown, the songs of Alexander von Zemlinsky (1871-1942) deserve to be heard more frequently.
Gustav Mahler: Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, Rückert-Lieder, Kindertotenlieder.
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.
Kathleen Ferrier: A Film by Diane Perelsztejn
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.
1612 Italian Vespers
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: Songs and Dances for the Soul
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.
Mahler: Symphony no. 3 / Kindertotenlieder
Michael Tilson Thomas’s recording of Mahler’s Third Symphony is an outstanding contribution to the composer’s discography.
Oliver Knussen’s Symphonies from NMC
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.
Ludwig van Beethoven: Fidelio
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: Flis
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).
Stanisław Moniuszko: Pieśni Songs
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.
Joan Sutherland and Richard Bonynge: Serate Musicali
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.
Richard Strauss: Salome
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.
OPERA TODAY ARCHIVES »
Recordings
However, this may ultimately veil the reality that in cosmopolitan centers such as Paris, musicians of diverse nationalities were active and the range of styles “polyglot.” This diversity is one of the more prominent features of the excellent anthology, Echo de Paris: Parisian Love Songs 1610-1660. There are certainly the expected airs de cour by composers such as Pierre Guédron and Michel Lambert, and these strophic airs themselves are diverse: some are intimate and languorous, others show the clear influence of the dance. But there are also Spanish songs by the Frenchman Etienne Moulinié and Italian songs by visiting Italians Luigi Rossi and Francesco Cavalli. And underscoring the diversity is the large number of instrumental pieces here, much of which proceeds in Italian and Spanish accents.
The performances are superb. The Belgian tenor, Stephan van Dyck, sings with a free and beautifully natural sound, the forward placement of which makes the intimate scale especially effective. He has declamatory agility, as well, as in Moulinié’s “O Stelle homicide,” and he handles his ornamental graces deftly and with stylistic ease. Private Musicke—for this recording an ensemble of guitars, viols, lutes, and colascione—are wonderfully engaging in the “expatriate” music of the Italian guitarist, Giovanni Paolo Foscarini; their red-blooded rendition of his “Folia” is irresistibly brilliant, as is their imaginative, swinging performance of Luis de Briceno’s “Caravanda Ciacona.” Rhythmic verve of the highest order! But Private Musicke’s collaborative work in the vocal pieces is also unusually good. In Cavalli’s “Lamento di Apollo,” a moving lament with the expected ground bass propensities, the ensemble accompaniment is dramatically fluid and highly textured—quite memorably so—in ways that take one to the heart of spontaneous music making.
Echo de Paris may not give you exactly what you expect in an anthology subtitled Parisian Love Songs. With its rich array of national styles and instrumental pieces, it gives you much more, indeed, and all of it performed with a consummate sense of grace and flair. Musical cosmopolitanism at its best!
Steven Plank