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As a musicologist, particularly when working in the field of historical documents, one is always hoping to discover that unknown score, letter, household account book - even a shopping list or scribbled memo - which will reveal much about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.
It has often been the case that the destruction wrought by wars, especially the Second World War, has been treated unevenly by composers. Theodor Adorno’s often quoted remark, from his essay Prisms, that “to write poetry after Auschwitz would be barbaric” - if widely misinterpreted - is limited by its scope and in a somewhat profound way composers have looked on the events of World War II in the same way.
New from Harmonia Mundi, Matthias Goerne and Lief Ove Andsnes: Robert Schumann – Liederkreis, op 24 and Kernerlieder. Goerne and Andsnes have a partnership based on many years of working together, which makes this new release, originally recorded in late 2018, well worth hearing.
This is a valuable new recording of a work that is only rarely heard, but was widely influential and wildly popular during the eighteenth century. Philosophe Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote both the libretto and the music, with mixed success.
Although it was the first time a composer had written his own libretto, and Rousseau wanted to demonstrate a new method of setting French text to music in the Italian taste, the dramatic pacing leaves much to be desired and the quality of musical composition is uneven. Some of the musical numbers are quite catchy (Colette’s entrance aria “J’ai perdu tout mon bonheur,” for example, was said to have been sung all day long, off-key, by King Louis XV on the day following the first court performance) but others, such as the muddily-scored “Colin revient à sa bergère,” are aimless, weak, and interminable. Charles Burney, who adapted the opera for English-speaking audiences in the 1770s, thought it went on far too long after Colette and Colin find true love and happiness. He was right, but eighteenth-century audiences apparently disagreed: the opera racked up at least 350 performances in its first fifty years.
This production, by rising young performers in the first year of an annual summer opera festival at the Swiss Castle Waldegg (a Baroque jewel, see the pictures at http://www.schloss-waldegg.ch/), is classified as a live performance, but it is almost completely free of the drawbacks of live recordings: no coughing or clapping, no clumping feet or fade-outs as the singers move around, and good balance between singers and orchestra. The CD, co-produced by Swiss Radio DRS 2, contains the complete opera — except for a few verses of one seemingly-endless ensemble number — including recitatives, a pantomime, and a ballet divertissement. An almost-complete libretto is included: the song texts are all there, but Rousseau’s stage directions for the pantomime are not. The lengthy pantomime music sounds pointless unless you know the accompanying story about a village girl, her sweetheart, and a courtier with a diamond necklace, which starts off like a farmer’s-daughter joke and but ends as a mini-morality play.
The singing is pleasing and competent, as is the period-instrument band. The CD booklet is mostly silent about the nature of the orchestra, which is a shame, because the Cantus Firmus Consort overcomes the limitations of their 18th-century instruments rather well, especially the maniacally energetic bassoonist. It appears that for this performance Rousseau’s scoring (doubled or tripled strings, continuo, and pairs of oboes and flutes), has been augmented by horns, tambour and bells. The extra percussion works well, as it is mostly used on instrumental dances, but the raucous horns (probably big-throated German/Bohemian hunting horns, rather than the smaller and more delicate French instrument) are too prominent and too continuous for the early 1750s, when horns were still a novelty in Paris orchestras.
The Soothsayer (Le Devin), Dominik Wörner, is an agreeable and agile baritone, although his German vowels sometimes get the better of his French diction. Michael Feyfar does well for a modern tenor attempting to reproduce the 18th century French haute-contre voice, but he has to use his head voice a bit too often in the upper range, and only sometimes achieves a smooth passage between the two ranges. The star of the show (both in Rousseau’s plot and in this performance) is Colette (soprano Gabriela Bürgler); her tone is natural, light, and silvery, her ornamented repeats in the arias are tasteful, and her rage aria “Si des gallants de la ville” causes sparks to fly.
Beverly Wilcox
University of California, Davis