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.
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.
Recorded live on 13 August 2005, this recent release on the Orfeo label in its Festspiel Dokumente imprint makes available a recital given by soprano Diana Damrau and pianist Stephan Matthias Lademann during the 2005 Salzburg Festival and given at the Mozarteum.
This particular Liederabend offers a selection of music by five late-Romantic composers, Alban Berg, Gustav Mahler. Alexander Zemlinsky, Hugo Wolf, and Richard Strauss, and presents some repertoire performed infrequently.
More familiar, perhaps in the opera house, Damrau offers a different side of her voice in the more intimate venue of the song recital. This provides those who are familiar with Damrau to hear her perform literature that they could not hear elsewhere. One of the selections, for example, is the Strauss song “Amor,” which is remarkably similar to the music associated with Zerbinetta in the composer’s opera Ariadne auf Naxos and in this context provides a fine connection between Damrau in the opera house and her efforts in the recital milieu. That song in particular demonstrates not just Damrau’s facility, but her virtuosity in performing the lengthy coloratura melismas associated with Zerbinetta but here, in the more exposed medium of voice and piano. It is a persuasive performance, all the more remarkable for Damrau’s performance at the conclusion of an otherwise full recital.
As to the other literature performed, Damrau performed entire sets of Lieder, starting with Berg’s Sieben frühe Lieder, a selection of songs from the early part of his career, when the pulls between the late-Romantic style and the atonal idiom he would pursue are audible from the start in “Nacht,” which Damrau delivers convincingly. “Traumgekrönt,” with its text by Rainer Maria Rilke, has a similar sense, which Damrau brings out not only in her execution of the line, but also in her enunciation of the text. (In Berg’s “Liebesode” Damrau’s work on the stage is perceptible in the rolled “r” of the word “Arm,” an element that she brings into her performance of the piano version of “Das himmlische Leben,” the Song-Finale of Mahler’s Fourth Symphony.)
With Zemlinksy’s Walzergesänge this infrequently heard piece conveys a sense of Brahms’s vocal Liebeslieder waltzes, with the inflection of the kind of modernism heard a generation later, albeit inspired by the Tuscan folksongs of Ferdinand Gregorovius. These short, early settings by Zemlinsky do not yet embody the kind of expressive dissonances that are part of the composer’s Lyrische Symphonie, yet clearly take the listener into the late Romantic idiom, as found distinctively in “Ich geh’ des Nachts.” These pieces are removed from the idiom Wolf used in the five settings of Eduard Mörike performed in this recital. Her approach to “Lebe wohl” captures the style of the text well, and stands out for its moving interpretation. Likewise, the pianism of Landemann is nicely heard in “Nimmersatte Liebe,” where it sets the tone for the song at the beginning. His subtle conclusion of the last of the Wolf set is effective in bringing this relatively lengthy setting to an appropriate musical ending.
With Strauss’s relatively early set Mädchenblumen, op. 22, Damrau offers another perspective on the late-Romantic Lied. The register of several of these songs, like “Kornblumen” fit Damrau’s voice, and she offers some solid performances of these seldom heard pieces. That son and others in the cycle are unified by the images of flowers, and the deft touch Damrau gives the music is quite effective, something nicely connected with her inclusion of a later setting by Strauss of “Ich wollt’ ein Sträußlein binden” (“I will make a bouquet”), a song which literally connects the parts of the song cycle and, through the author of text, Clemens Brentano, creates a link to the final piece on the recital, the song “Amor.”
The audience was quite enthusiastic about Damrau, and the applause is nicely captured on the recording, which also preserves the four encores she gave: Mahler’s song “Wer hat dies Liedlein erdacht?” along with two selections from Wolf’s Italienisches Liederbuch “Auch kleine Dinge” and a virtuoso treatment of “Ich hab’ in Penna” and, at the end, a song by Liszt, “Es muss ein Wunderbares sein.” The latter is a curious piece that adds an earlier composer to the recital with this piece that also conveys, as Damrau remarks, as a means of expressing her own enthusiasm for this recital.
This recording captures a fascinating recital that not only serves to document the Salzburg Festival, but also serves as a fine example of programming. As various expressions of late-Romantic music, the music Damrau performed offers several perspectives on the style and her own facility with each of the composers represented. As such, it serves well in making available some vibrant interpretations of song repertoire by an exceptional performer.
James L. Zychowicz