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.
The House of the Sun Einojuhani Rautavaara, music and libretto Ondine 1032-2D Oulu Symphony orchestra Mikko Franck, conductor The recording company Ondine, based in Helsinki, has built itself an international reputation, at least arguably, by dedicating itself to the works...
The House of the Sun
Einojuhani Rautavaara, music and libretto
Ondine 1032-2D
Oulu Symphony orchestra
Mikko Franck, conductor
The recording company Ondine, based in Helsinki, has built itself an international reputation, at least arguably, by dedicating itself to the works of Einojuhani Rautavaara. Rautavaara's music is unclassifiable, beyond saying that it is the music of Rautavaara. Thoroughly schooled in contemporary compositional techniques, he has developed a lyrical approach of eerie beauty. Perhaps his best-known work, Cantus Arcticus, may serve as representative. A concerto for "birds and orchestra," it weaves tapes of arctic bird cries with an orchestral fabric of cool, smooth texture. The result draws the listener into a world both recognizable and alien. Besides a premiere on Ondine, that piece has also been recorded on the BIS label and on Naxos, the latter a fine version at budget price.
Rautavaara has not ignored opera, and in 1990 he composed The House of the Sun, which he subtitled a tragedia buffa. The CD booklet features a well-written essay by the composer on the creation of his opera. The inspiration for the libretto came from a tragic but bizarre news story: two older ladies were found frozen to death in their trash-filled home. Daughters of a family that had fled the Russian revolution, they had never integrated into Finnish society, and once they could no longer afford servants, they simply shut themselves away until death claimed them.
The libretto makes use of a time-honored flashback technique, as we see the sisters in their old age first and then learn their story through their hallucinations and reveries. Misbegotten romance, political disruption, family tragedy — all flash by, as unwelcome visitors from the "real" world intrude into the increasingly addled ladies' lives.
Many a contemporary opera has been built on such slender narrative. Think of Katia Saaraiho's recent L'Amour de loin, a Tristan und Isolde-inspired work in which two would-be lovers correspond, agree to meet, and at the end of one's journey to the other, the traveler dies. Perhaps composers feel that new opera must avoid the event-packed melodrama of the standard repertory, or just as likely, since much of contemporary composition builds itself up from small fragments through minute development, only such a story will serve.
Whatever the reason, each opera must be judged on its own terms, and The House of the Sun makes for compelling, even moving listening. The sisters, as lost children of a dead world, can symbolize the ideals of Western civilization, pathetically neglected and out of place in a contemporary world, represented in the opera by lawyers, bankers, and social welfare workers.
However, Rautavaara's classification of the opera as a tragedia buffa must be recalled. Sad as they are, the sisters remain somewhat foolish creatures who engineered their pathetic fate by refusing to adapt to new surroundings. When two young men, brought to the home to help the ladies out, take advantage of the ladies' obliviousness to steal a precious egg, they also, out of sheer random cruelty, shut off the electricity. The ladies cannot fathom how to turn it back on, and settle down into their hallucinations of their deceased family members, who remind me that "nothing [is] really, really real."
Despite techniques familiar from many contemporary scores, such as bursts of aggressive percussion, a haunting lyrical mood dominates. Without strong melodic content, the music still manages to convey a lost world of beauty and grace, and a long duet for the sisters in act one, over nostalgic strings, is masterfully conceived.
The stage-worthiness of the opera may be questionable, but as a vehicle for female voices, surely a smaller company could find it worthwhile. On this recording Anna-Kristina Kaappola and Raija Regnell's voices blend beautifully as the older sisters, and their younger selves are sung by Mia Huhta and Helena Juntunen. Male voices tend to the gruff, fitting the characters, and Mikko Franck leads the Oulu Symphony Orchestra with requisite force and sensitivity.
Rautavaara's libretto is as skillful as his music. Under 90 minutes long, the opera as recorded conveys the sad, monotonous life of the sisters without being static itself. When the final visitor knocks portentously on the door as the sisters slip away, listeners may feel that a whole world, slightly ridiculous and yet deeply beautiful, has slipped off to its eternal rest, leaving nothing but a world of commerce and bureaucracy.
One may even be inspired to turn off the electricity and join the sisters in proclaiming that nothing is really, really real — but have some batteries for the CD Walkman handy, so that Rautavaara's The House of the Sun can serve as a morbid soundtrack.
Chris Mullins