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.
This recent recording of the men and boys from King’s College, Cambridge, is an anthology organized around the texts and themes of the liturgical year, a scheme that offers ample opportunity for diverse works—in that sense the recording feels something like a “sampler”—but a scheme that also reflects the real experience of the daily life of the choir which sings demanding choral services six days of the week in term time.
Some of the works on the recording like Tallis’s extraordinary 40-voice motet, “Spem in alium,” or Gregorio Allegri’s fabled setting of “Miserere” are by now well-entrenched in the modern ear. How they acheived that status, however, owes a deep debt to pioneering recordings by the choir under the direction of Sir David Willcocks (the “Miserere” in 1963 and “Spem” in 1965). The recent versions stand in the echo of the earlier, amply reconfirming the persistence of a King’s style, but also the lasting associations of the works with the choir.
The choir is one of many “Oxbridge” choral foundations, of course, though in reputation and reception they have arguably a singular status; in the broader world they represent the idealized standard of the English collegiate tradition and they set the bar very high, indeed. Their idealized position has been nurtured by the BBC broadcasts of their Christmas Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols and by a robust legacy of recording, begun under Willcocks. But the idealization also derives from the cultivation of a singularity of sound, impeccable, pristine, warm, smoothly blended, seemingly effortless. This is all predictably and gratifyingly manifest in “A Year at King’s.” If there is any downside, it is that there are no surprises.
The warmth of the sound—tone embued with the kiss of candlelight--is particularly rewarding in two Advent antiphons by the Estonian Arvo Pärt, but even in other styles it figures characteristically, as in Palestrina’s exuberant Christmas motet, “Hodie Christus natus est.” And if the sound is warm, it is also flexibly evocative. The pristine clarity of the trebles, for instance, well serves the astral imagery of Lassus’s Epiphany motet, “Videntes stellam magi,” whereas the richness of the lower voices undergird the presence of the aged Simeon in Eccard’s motet for the Presentation, “When to the Temple.”
These are pieces whose performances and very selection are unsurprising. In a context so shaped by notions of tradition, it has been significant, however, that King’s has regularly commissioned new works for their famous carol service. The commission for 2005, John Tavener’s “Away in a Manger,” is recorded here, a welcome toying with familiarity. Tavener uses the well-known text—the strand of familiarity—while in harmonic and dynamic range he pushes the bounds of expectancy, and in the absence of the familiar tune, gives a haunting new shape to the lullaby. Given the number of Christmas commissions that King’s has now amassed and their high quality, a new recording of them as a group would be a most welcome project; the Tavener here whets the appetite!
One “member of the ensemble” deserves special mention, and that is the chapel itself. The King’s sound bears the golden touch of its acoustical environment, and one might easily imagine that the marvelous sustaining power in the singing of works like Barber’s “Agnus Dei,” a reworking of the well-known “Adagio for Strings,” is the fruit of the daily singing in so wondrous a space.
A year at King’s would seem altogether too short a time to sample the glories of the choir; “A Year at King’s,” however, makes for a good step in that direction.
Steven Plank