The Sixteen continues its exploration of Henry Purcell’s Welcome Songs for Charles II. As with Robert King’s pioneering Purcell series begun over thirty years ago for Hyperion, Harry Christophers is recording two Welcome Songs per disc.
In February this year, Albanian soprano Ermonela Jaho made a highly lauded debut recital at Wigmore Hall - a concert which both celebrated Opera Rara’s 50th anniversary and honoured the career of the Italian soprano Rosina Storchio (1872-1945), the star of verismo who created the title roles in Leoncavallo’s La bohème and Zazà, Mascagni’s Lodoletta and Puccini’s Madama Butterfly.
Collapsology. Or, perhaps we should use the French word ‘Collapsologie’ because this is a transdisciplinary idea pretty much advocated by a series of French theorists - and apparently, mostly French theorists. It in essence focuses on the imminent collapse of modern society and all its layers - a series of escalating crises on a global scale: environmental, economic, geopolitical, governmental; the list is extensive.
Amongst an avalanche of new Mahler recordings appearing at the moment (Das Lied von der Erde seems to be the most favoured, with three) this 1991 Mahler Second from the 2nd Kassel MahlerFest is one of the more interesting releases.
If there is one myth, it seems believed by some people today, that probably needs shattering it is that post-war recordings or performances of Wagner operas were always of exceptional quality. This 1949 Hamburg Tristan und Isolde is one of those recordings - though quite who is to blame for its many problems takes quite some unearthing.
The voices of six women composers are celebrated by baritone Jeremy Huw Williams and soprano Yunah Lee on this characteristically ambitious and valuable release by Lontano Records Ltd (Lorelt).
As Paul Spicer, conductor of the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire Chamber Choir, observes, the worship of the Blessed Virgin Mary is as ‘old as Christianity itself’, and programmes devoted to settings of texts which venerate the Virgin Mary are commonplace.
Ethel Smyth’s last large-scale work, written in 1930 by the then 72-year-old composer who was increasingly afflicted and depressed by her worsening deafness, was The Prison – a ‘symphony’ for soprano and bass-baritone soloists, chorus and orchestra.
‘Hamilton Harty is Irish to the core, but he is not a musical nationalist.’
‘After silence, that which comes closest to expressing the inexpressible is music.’ Aldous Huxley’s words have inspired VOCES8’s new disc, After Silence, a ‘double album in four chapters’ which marks the ensemble’s 15th anniversary.
A song-cycle is a narrative, a journey, not necessarily literal or linear, but one which carries performer and listener through time and across an emotional terrain. Through complement and contrast, poetry and music crystallise diverse sentiments and somehow cohere variability into an aesthetic unity.
One of the nicest things about being lucky enough to enjoy opera, music and theatre, week in week out, in London’s fringe theatres, music conservatoires, and international concert halls and opera houses, is the opportunity to encounter striking performances by young talented musicians and then watch with pleasure as they fulfil those sparks of promise.
“It’s forbidden, and where’s the art in that?”
Dublin-born John F. Larchet (1884-1967) might well be described as the father of post-Independence Irish music, given the immense influenced that he had upon Irish musical life during the first half of the 20th century - as a composer, musician, administrator and teacher.
The English Civil War is raging. The daughter of a Puritan aristocrat has fallen in love with the son of a Royalist supporter of the House of Stuart. Will love triumph over political expediency and religious dogma?
Beethoven Symphony no 9 (the Choral Symphony) in D minor, Op. 125, and the Choral Fantasy in C minor, Op. 80 with soloist Kristian Bezuidenhout, Pablo Heras-Casado conducting the Freiburger Barockorchester, new from Harmonia Mundi.
A Louise Brooks look-a-like, in bobbed black wig and floor-sweeping leather trench-coat, cheeks purple-rouged and eyes shadowed in black, Barbara Hannigan issues taut gestures which elicit fire-cracker punch from the Mahler Chamber Orchestra.
‘Signor Piatti in a fantasia on themes from Beatrice di Tenda had also his triumph. Difficulties, declared to be insuperable, were vanquished by him with consummate skill and precision. He certainly is amazing, his tone magnificent, and his style excellent. His resources appear to be inexhaustible; and altogether for variety, it is the greatest specimen of violoncello playing that has been heard in this country.’
Baritone Roderick Williams seems to have been a pretty constant ‘companion’, on my laptop screen and through my stereo speakers, during the past few ‘lock-down’ months.
Melodramas can be a difficult genre for composers. Before Richard Strauss’s Enoch Arden the concept of the melodrama was its compact size – Weber’s Wolf’s Glen scene in Der Freischütz, Georg Benda’s Ariadne auf Naxos and Medea or even Leonore’s grave scene in Beethoven’s Fidelio.
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