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.
For more than a quarter century, Peter Phillips and the Tallis Scholars have achieved great distinction in the performance of sixteenth-century polyphony, bringing to that repertory interpretations of engaging directness, rhythmic vitality, and fullness of tone. These are qualities that are admirably well suited to the music of the Eton Choirbook and one of its most representative composers, John Browne, the subject of this recent recording.
John Browne: Music from the Eton Choirbook
The Tallis Scholars, dir. Peter Phillips
Gimell CDGIM 036 [CD]
For more than a quarter century, Peter Phillips and the Tallis Scholars have achieved great distinction in the performance of sixteenth-century polyphony, bringing to that repertory interpretations of engaging directness, rhythmic vitality, and fullness of tone. These are qualities that are admirably well suited to the music of the Eton Choirbook and one of its most representative composers, John Browne, the subject of this recent recording.
The founding of the "King's College of Our Lady of Eton by Windsor" by Henry VI in 1440 was a patronal act of enduring significance. And one of its richest legacies is the sumptuous body of Marian antiphons that are collected in the Eton Choirbook, an anthology compiled in the first years of the sixteenth century. The Marian emphasis was resonant with the dedication of the College and its chapel, reinforced visually by the Flemish-styled paintings of the miracles of the Virgin Mary on the north walls of the Chapel, and liturgically in the statutory daily singing of Marian antiphons at the close of day.
Browne's antiphons well represent the florid English style of the late fifteenth century. Most striking of its traits is likely the expanded range, which regularly sees five and six parts cover a full three-octave compass, and in so doing, exploits stratospheric, soaring treble lines. The appeal to a love of sonority is unmistakable. That same love of sonority is sometimes gratified by opposite means, as well. If the majority of Browne's works on this recording feature an expanded range, one antiphon, Stabat iuxti, compresses six voice parts into the tenor-bass registers, where the closeness of the harmonies make the sound unusually rich.
Typically the antiphons alternate between intricate, highly decorated counterpoint for a few voices and grand blocks of tutti sound. And throughout, the rhythmic flow is gracefully animated by cross rhythms at various mensural levels and a propensity to fill up the rhythmic space — much as the harmonic space has been filled up — with frequent off-beat motion.
The Tallis Scholars approach this music with a fluency born of their long experience with this repertory, and it is out of that natural fluency that they are able to offer performances of these works that show both an impressive command of foreground detail and at the same time performances that unfold with a gratifying sense of the architectural whole — ever spacious and ever engaging.
With a compositional style that is reasonably uniform, it is perhaps difficult to single out one piece over another. However, pride of place in the Choirbook itself is given to Browne's "O Maria salvatoris," an eight-voice antiphon that is the first in the collection. Its text is Marian in familiar ways though with an Oxonian accent — there are invocations to both Saint Frideswide (the patron saint of Oxford) and St. Catherine of Alexandria (the patron saint of students, known for her besting of fifty philosophers!). Browne was likely in the service of the Earl of Oxford, which would explain this connection, and the collegiate overtones seem nicely adapted to the Eton context, as well. And to my ear, the most memorable parts of the antiphon are its splendid opening and closing sections. The opening is a rich acclamation on the words "O Maria"; the closing an equally rich melismatic effusion on the word "melodia." It would be difficult to imagine anything more satisfyingly emblematic of the collection as a whole.
Steven Plank
Oberlin College