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Only one Shakespeare play has resulted in three operas that get performed today (whether internationally or primarily in one language-region). Perhaps surprisingly, the play in question is a comedy that is sometimes considered a lesser work by the Bard: The Merry Wives of Windsor.
There have to be special reasons to release a monophonic live recording of a much-recorded opera. Often it can give us the opportunity to hear a singer in a major role that he or she never recorded commercially—or did record on some later occasion, when the voice was no longer fresh. Often a live recording catches the dramatic flow better than certain studio recordings that may be more perfect technically.
Critic and scholar John Barker has several times complained, in the pages of American Record Guide, about Baroque vocal recitals that add instrumental works or movements as supposed relief or (as he nicely calls them) “spacers.”
Hans Knappertsbusch was one of the most renowned Wagner conductors who ever lived. His recordings of Parsifal, especially, are near-legendary among confirmed Wagnerians.
Kathleen Ferrier Remembered, from SOMM Recordings, makes available on CD archive broadcasts of British and German song. All come from BBC broadcasts made between 1947 and 1952. Of the 26 tracks in this collection, 19 are "new", not having been commercially released. The remaining seven have been remastered by sound restoration engineer Ted Kendall. Something here even for those who already own the complete recordings.
The Requiem text has brought out the best in many composers. Requiem settings by Mozart, Verdi, and Fauré are among the most beloved works among singers and listeners alike, and there are equally wondrous settings by Berlioz and Duruflé, as well as composers from before 1750, notably Jean Gilles.
Matthias Goerne Schumann Lieder, with Markus Hinterhäuser, a new recording from Harmonia Mundi. Singers, especially baritones, often come into their prime as they approach 50, and Goerne, who has been a star since his 20's is now formidably impressive. The colours in his voice have matured, with even greater richness and depth than before.
La Jacquerie—here recorded for the first time—proves to be a wonderful opera, bringing delight upon delight.
Good news for lovers of Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro: the famous Living Stereo recording, a co-production of RCA Victor and English Decca, is now available again, well remastered, on Urania.
In May 2016, Opera Rara gave Bellini aficionados a treat when they gave a concert performance of Vincenzo Bellini’s first opera, Adelson e Salvini, at the Barbican Hall. The preceding week had been spent in the BBC’s Maida Vale Studios, and this recording, released last month, is a very welcome addition to Opera Rara’s bel canto catalogue.
Jonas Kaufmann Mahler Das Lied von der Erde is utterly unique but also works surprisingly well as a musical experience. This won't appeal to superficial listeners, but will reward those who take Mahler seriously enough to value the challenge of new perspectives.
A new recording, made late last year, Morfydd Owen : Portrait of a Lost Icon, from Tŷ Cerdd, specialists in Welsh music, reveals Owen as one of the more distinctive voices in British music of her era : a grand claim but not without foundation. To this day, Owen's tally of prizes awarded by the Royal Academy of Music remains unrivalled.
The Feast at Solhaug : Henrik Ibsen's play Gildet paa Solhaug (1856) inspired Wilhelm Stenhammer's opera Gillet på Solhaug. The world premiere recording is now available via Sterling CD, in a 3 disc set which includes full libretto and background history.
Honours yet again to Oehms Classics who understand the importance of excellence. A composer as good, and as individual, as Walter Braunfels deserves nothing less.
‘Can great music be inspired by the throw of the dice?’ asks Peter Phillips, director of The Tallis Scholars, in his liner notes to the ensemble’s new recording of Josquin’s Missa Di dadi (The Dice Mass). The fifteenth-century artist certainly had an abundant supply of devotional imagery. As one scholar has put it, during this age there was neither ‘an object nor an action, however trivial, that [was] not constantly correlated with Christ or salvation’.
Francesco Cavalli’s La Calisto was the composer’s fifteenth opera, and the ninth to a libretto by Giovanni Faustini (1615-1651). First performed at the Teatro Sant’Apollinaire in Venice on 28th November 1651, the opera by might have been sub-titled ‘Gods Behaving Badly’, so debauched are the deities’ dalliances and deviations, so egotistical their deceptions.
New from Oehms Classics, Walter Braunfels Orchestral Songs Vol 1. Luxury singers - Valentina Farcas, Klaus Florian Vogt and Michael Volle, with the Staatskapelle Weimar, conducted by Hansjörg Albrecht.
Edouard Lalo (1823-92) is best known today for his instrumental works: the Symphonie espagnole (which is, despite the title, a five-movement violin concerto), the Symphony in G Minor, and perhaps some movements from his ballet Namouna, a scintillating work that the young Debussy adored.
Two new recordings from highly acclaimed specialists Opera Rara - Gounod La Colombe and Donizetti Le Duc d'Albe.
It is not often that a major work by a forgotten composer gets rediscovered and makes an enormously favorable impression on today’s listeners. That has happened, unexpectedly, with Herculanum, a four-act grand opera by Félicien David, which in 2014 was recorded for the first time.
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.
The title, 1612 Italian Vespers, is a little misleading, the year being chosen because it marks the death of Giovanni Gabrieli, the departure of Monteverdi from Mantua and his move to Venice, and a notable composition of the little known Parmesan composer, Lodovico Grossi da Viadana — the ambitious 4-part Vesper Psalms — rather than because of the provenance of any one substantial work. Moreover, the most ambitious work recorded is itself highly speculative: Giovanni Gabrieli’s 28-voice Magnificat is, according to the press release, reconstructed by Hugh Keyte and I Fagiolini’s founder and director Robert Hollingworth from 8 extant parts with “scholarship fired by imagination”. Similarly, the hymn Ave, Maria Stella, unites the double-choir setting from Monteverdi’s 1610 Vespers with Francesco Soriano’s collection of canons and oblighi, published in the same year. Yet, since Monteverdi’s revered Vespers have long inspired debate about the authenticity of the cohesiveness of the constituent parts (were they ever performed as a whole, or were the Vespers a publishing project designed to win Monteverdi a new job in Venice?), perhaps such inventive conjecture does not matter, especially when the resultant recording as sumptuous and full of vitality as this one.
Gabrieli’s lost masterpiece recreates a thanksgiving Vespers, The Feast of the Holy Rosary, reputedly celebrated for 200 years in commemoration of the famous Venetian victory over the Turks at Lepanto in 1574. The diverse performers — vocal and instrumental — ‘choirs’ signifying ensemble groupings rather than denoting vocalists or instrumentalists — rejoice in the immense sound-scape and the intricate complexity of the idiom: dialogues, echoes and extravagant rhetorical gestures, such as the vigorous repetitions of the fittingly jubilant ‘He have shown strength in his arm/ scattered the proud’, are fore-grounded, and their declamatory effects celebrated. Monumental blocks of sound, conjuring the awesome, inspiring nature of the original setting and context of performance contrast with sparser instrumental textures. And, after a momentous pause — which Keyte presumes originally offered an opportunity for a “‘military’ interpolation”, and for which he duly supplies a fanfare and brief reminiscence of Andrea Gabrieli’s Aria della battaglia for eight wind instruments — bells and cannon fire surprise and excite, resurrecting the triumphant, self-congratulatory festivities of years long hence and empires long lost.
The elder Gabrieli, Andrea, also features, in the form of the densely textured, two-choir, Benedictus Dominus Deus Sabaoth, an assemblage of war-like scriptural texts, presumed to be assembled for Lepanto celebrations, which interposes rhythmically enlivened passages within the weighty sonorities of the massed forces. Andrea Gabrieli’s Toccata del 9 Tono is a brief but impressive study in finger technique, here ornamented impressively by organist James Johnstone.
Despite the monumental scale of Gabrieli’s Magnificat it is Claudio Monteverdi’s Ab aeterno ordinata sum, a supremely virtuosic solo motet, which inspires most admiration, show-casing the range and flexibility of bass, Jonathan Sells, as it moves from imperious dignity to increasingly florid rhetorical splendour.
Of the less renowned composers represented, Viadana’s expressive text setting impresses in a sequence of poly-choral psalms characterised by expressive text setting, dramatic declamation and melodic richness — and framed by beautifully pure, resonant antiphons, reflecting various aspects of the Rosary feast, performed by the members of De Profundis. Massive sonorities contrast with solo passages of inventive virtuosic expression, as two vocal choirs are supplemented by additional high and low choirs for instruments, creating a kaleidoscopic of colours and a rich, invigorating ambience. Viadana’s O dulcissima Maria, for solo soprano is performed with exquisite, piercing sweetness and dexterous agility by soprano Clare Wilkinson, accompanied by theorbo and chamber organ.
Exaudi, Deus by Barbarino from the composer’s second book of solo motets, allows an instrumentalist to shine, show-casing a wonderfully reedy, resounding and elaborate cornetto solo by Gawain Glenton. The earlier generation of composers is represented by Palestrina’s Quae ets ista from the composer’s setting of the Song of Songs.
The disc concludes with an extra-liturgical motet: Giovanni Gabrieli’s In ecclesiis which rejoices that ‘God [is] our helper for ever’. Conjecture and assumption are necessary aspects of music-making among devotees and scholars of Renaissance repertoire and Hugh Keyte introduces an additional element of romance, commenting that when ‘resurrecting’ the original choirs presumed to have been omitted from the later printed edition, the “recovery process has often felt semi-automatic; as though the rejected parts were phantoms jostling at my elbow, eager to be resuscitated”.
Standards of musicianship and technical accomplishment are extraordinarily and consistently high. The diversity of textures, colours and combinations ensures freshness and animation; the monumental balanced by the intimate. And, the crisp definition of recording allows full appreciation of both massive sonorities and subtle dialogues between contrasting groups and individual voices.
Claire Seymour