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.
Released in late 2011, Deutsche Grammophon’s DVD of the new staging of Berg’s Lulu at the Gran Teatro del Liceu, Barcelona is an excellent contribution to the discography of this fascinating opera.
A recent release by the Metropolitan Opera, this two-disc set makes available on DVD the famous performance of Berg’s Lulu that was broadcast on 20 December 1980 as part of the PBS series “Live from the Met.”
The novels of Sinclair Lewis once shot across the American literary skies like comets, alarming and fascinating readers of that era, but their tails didn’t extend far behind them.
Once the province of only the most dedicated opera fanatics, mid-20th century recordings of privately taped live performances have become more widely available.
Flute players in opera orchestra around the world must look forward to the frequent appearances of Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor, knowing that while the stage spotlight in the mad scene will be on the soprano, the orchestral spotlight will be on their instrument.
Since his debut at the Metropolitan Opera in 1971, conductor James Levine has come to represent the house’s commitment to artistic excellence — reliable, professional, and immaculately presented.
The English composer Nicholas Maw has been a major voice since the 1960's, with a wide range of works that include the 2002 opera, "Sophie’s Choice," a violin concerto for Joshua Bell (1993), and the monumentally-scaled orchestral work, "Odyssey" (1972-87).
This present anthology by the Schola Cantorum of Oxford offers an interesting collection of his choral works, works whose texts and idioms make clear the composer’s native connection to the English tradition, while at the same time they reveal a diverse and individual voice. Maw’s music is often Romantic in spirit, though modern in harmonic language, while his contrapuntal bent, like the texts he sets, evokes earlier ages, still.
The Three Hymns (1989), settings of seventeenth-century devotional poetry, are alternately exuberant and intimate, with the second of the set, “Pastoral Hymn,” exhibiting a spry quality reminiscent of Britten—the text even seems somewhat resonant with Christopher Smart’s “Rejoice in the Lamb”—and text-inspired contrasts of pace and register are familiarly madrigalian. The Britten influence is clear in some of the Five Epigrams (1960), as well, such as the crisp frolic of the engaging “Andrew Turner.” Sometimes the nod is more in the direction of Vaughan Williams and Holst, as in the folk-song like “Popular Song” from the Five Irish Songs (1972). These examples doff the hat to notable forebears, and scattered here and there, remind us of the rich tradition to which Maw’s work is connected.
Maw’s gift for lyric lines is well in evidence in works like the Christmas carol “Balulalow” and “Swete Jesu,” the latter a commission for the annual Lessons and Carols broadcast from King’s College Cambridge. And in “Swete Jesu” an imbedding of the melody amid flowing contrapuntal lines in the second verse is especially memorable. This developmental sense is also particularly compelling in works like the beautiful Irish song, “Ringleted youth of my love,” where extended homophonic declamation warmly blossoms into more complex writing for subsequent verses.
The singing of the Schola Cantorum of Oxford is in the main very satisfying here. Complicated harmonies are handled with confidence, difficult figurations with dexterity, and the expression of the performances proceeds from a welcome sense of ownership and engagement. A recording of interest, this anthology underscores the continuing cultivation of English choral music by composers of the first rank.
Steven Plank