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.
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 big draw here is Max Lorenz. He was a tenor with as much an interesting, if somewhat controversial, back-story as he had a divisive reputation. As a singer, he would draw opinions that were equal to those that would be laid upon Treptow or Suthaus after him. Lorenz was perhaps the first great tenor to follow in the Wagnerian footsteps of Melchior but for those who found him mercurial, particularly live, were just as many who found him to have a technique that was less than flawless and this only got worse, especially during the late 1940s and into the early 1950s. But Lorenz’s career was relatively long for a Wagnerian tenor and before this Hamburg Tristan were superb electrical recordings which show a singer, if not always equal to Melchior, then close to him. But perhaps if these earliest recordings sometimes towered slightly above ones by Melchior it was because Lorenz didn’t pander to making this music about the singer as Melchior was sometimes prone to do; with Lorenz it was always about Wagner.
There are at least three other available complete (usually cut) recordings of Tristan with Lorenz apart from this Hamburg one. Only one is later. The earliest is with Erich Kleiber and is live from Buenos Ares in September 1938. The sound is poor, and Lorenz is frequently occluded under a mesh of distortion, but the stamina and power of his Tristan is quite something. He is equalled by Konetzni’s Isolde and Janssen’s Kurwenal and Kleiber despite often sounding spacious and monumental at times drives the score with electrifying energy. It’s typical Kleiber. What we do hear of Lorenz is entirely characteristic of this Heldentenor - that big voice, brawny even, the tight lines and clean top notes. There isn’t too much evidence of the lazy phrasing, and blurring of text, that would sometimes become a hallmark of a few of his performances later on.
The one similarity - the only one - that this 1949 Hamburg and the 1943 Berlin recording with Robert Heger share is that both are radio recordings made in quite exceptional sound for the period. There we really don’t hear much in common afterwards. In 1943 we have one of the very greatest recordings of Tristan on record; in 1949 we have something that doesn’t bear comparison. And here, I think, we come to unearthing why there are so many issues with this recording.
Partly the problem is simply this recording comes from the immediate period in post-war Germany. Compared with the pre-war years, or even the years during the war, the Hamburg recording reflects a paucity of Wagner in German music. If not exactly unfamiliar with the music, many Wagner singers faced exceptional demands in singing the roles in Germany, especially live. If Max Lorenz sounds more familiar with his Tristan here (which of course he should) it’s because he had sung the role so widely during the war and internationally in the post-war years; on the other hand, his Isolde, Paula Baumann, seems far less secure, and even inappropriately cast. More problematically, their conductor, Hans Schmidt-Isserstedt wanders aimlessly through this Tristan and in doing so drags it out to quite inordinate lengths - a prologue to Knappertsbusch, or a throwback to Toscanini it’s almost impossible to tell, though one suspects he has the gift of neither. One almost loses interest during the Prelude, death in itself - and then we have Baumann’s Isolde who seems hardly credible; there is the limitation of her upper register which constantly sounds exhausted, its size is slight, which is magnified even more by the relatively high quality of the recording. Much of Baumann’s Isolde interferes with the Wagnerian structure of the opera - and Margarete Klose’s superb Brangäne exposes too many weaknesses. Klose often suggests this is an Isolde entirely unworthy of her faithfulness which is a killer.
Lorenz himself is certainly better preserved on recordings made either side of this one. On the Heger he is overwhelmingly self-confident in being able to project the heroic and his Act III is both visionary and dramatic. Lorenz can sometimes be a frustrating tenor, however - as he is in the wonderful extracts from the 1943 Furtwängler recordings of Tristan from Vienna. These Act II and Act III excerpts are in one sense exasperating, in another revelatory. His hysteria and madness are almost unrivalled on disc and at times his tone is just majestic; on the other hand, he can push the voice to such hardness and inflexibility he often sounds just hoarse. Come to 1951, when Lorenz was almost at the end of his career, and he sung Tristan in Milan under the mercurial baton of Victor De Sabata (a frequent collaborator with Lorenz) and we have a performance that is electrifying. There are unquestionable faults in Lorenz’s voice by 1951 but the performance is exceptional.
Which I suppose does bring us to the major problem of why this Hamburg Tristan is what it is: Hans Schmidt-Isserstedt. His expansive and meandering conducting, which seems on a trajectory to nowhere, is a sharp contrast to what Lorenz experienced with Kleiber, Furtwängler, Heger and De Sabata. It is not as if Kleiber nor Heger were not without their expansive moments; they just knew what to do with them. It almost seems irrelevant that Lorenz’s Tristan of 1949 could have found the tenor in better health - he had just recovered from a heavy cold and returned from a demanding tour. Neither would have much improved Schmidt-Isserstedt’s conducting nor Baumann’s Isolde, however.
Are there any redeeming qualities to this Tristan then? In general, most Max Lorenz recordings are worth hearing - even a somewhat bizarre performance of ‘There’s No Business Like Show Business’ from 1957, sung, in German, in the heaviest possible accent. Lorenz is in fragile form in this recording, though he has an endurance and resilience which saves this Tristan from complete disaster. But, he is unquestionably better heard as Tristan elsewhere. Listeners are better directed towards the magnificent Robert Heger recording (in excellent sound for 1943) or, if you can tolerate the abysmal sound, the Milan performance with De Sabata.
This Lorenz/Hamburg Tristan is available as a newly reissued download. The Kleiber (1938), Heger (1943) and De Sabata (1951) are also available as downloads.
Marc Bridle