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.
Few works seem more seminal to our understanding of J. S. Bach than the church cantatas, written over a wide chronological swath of his career, sometimes as part of occasional duties, other times in what was clearly a frenzy of steady prolificity.
Several complete recording series offer important renditions of these works with “period” forces under the direction of directors like Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Gustav Leonhardt, and Ton Koopman. The Cantata Pilgrimage of John Eliot Gardiner and the Monteverdi Choir undertakes the complete corpus, as well, but within a new and decidedly ambitious context: recordings made from live concerts and dress rehearsals given weekly throughout the year 2000, each in a different ecclesiastical venue, and each devoted to the cantatas for a particular liturgical day. The context is one that certainly invites a resonance with the “frenzy of steady prolificity” that would have characterized Bach’s early years in Leipzig, a period in which he essentially wrote, rehearsed, and performed a new cantata every week. Gardiner’s performances are polished, often elegant, often dramatic readings that do not seem to betray the frenzy and vagaries that must have accompanied the production. However, from the standpoint of reception, our knowledge that these recordings are documents of this extraordinary undertaking shapes and forms the way we hear them; it alerts us at some level to the sense of these works as dynamic and fluid, and this is an important stamp for these recordings to bear. Additionally, given the works’ importance to our understanding of Bach, there is an appealing convenience to having them arranged by liturgical occasion: namely, we can savor Bach’s engagement of a common theological theme in juxtaposed styles that give us a rich sense of his development as a composer.
The recording aspect of the project was initially to be undertaken by Deutsche Gramophone. Their abandoning of the Pilgrimage recordings at an early stage prompted Gardiner to launch his own label, Soli Deo Gloria, and from the lavish look of the early volumes in the series, that independence has allowed the discs to be presented in distinctively engaging ways. Liner notes draw on Gardiner’s journal from the pilgrimage, thus allowing a congenial degree of anecdote as well as comment to emerge; jewel cases and program books are replaced with a hardbound volume and glossy page style; most striking are the cover photographs: highly compelling portraits of people from Afghanistan, Tibet, India, etc. by photographer Steve McCurry. The playing against expectation here is striking. Are the images ones that invite us to consider Bach as a somehow universal voice? Are the images ones that, in their geographic dispersion, invite us to linger with the idea of pilgrimage? One way or another, they prove dynamic and mark the volumes with distinction.
Volume 10 focuses on two liturgical dates, the Nineteenth Sunday after Trinity (BWV 48, BWV 5, BWV 56) and Reformation Sunday (BWV 79, BWV 192, BWV 80) with an additional cantata for Trinity XXV (BWV 90) added for good measure. Much here is a study of contrasts. The lessons for Trinity XIX underscore a Pauline division between body and soul, a contrast that itself is held in tension with the Gospel account of the healing of the body. The sin and sickness themes of these lessons are in turn strongly contrasted by the jubilant, celebrative tone of Reformation Sunday.
The Trinity XIX cantatas are richly affective—the lithe, incisive lines of the opening chorus of “Ich elender Mensch,” BWV 48, for instance, are hauntingly lamentative. And much in these cantatas plays on vivid imagery. The tenor aria in “Wo soll ich fliehen hin,” BWV 5 is based on the washing of sins in the blood of Jesus’ wounds, an image that Bach develops in richly melismatic, fluid writing for solo viola, played with notable fluency by Jane Rogers. Similarly, a bass recitative in “Ich will den Kreuzstab gerne tragen,” BWV 56 is also “liquid”—“My life on earth is like a voyage at sea,” imagery to which Bach familiarly responds with solo cello arpeggios: the waves of the sea. Particularly impressive is the aria for trumpet and bass in “Wo soll ich fliehen hin.” Both the instrumentation and the choice of voice embody a show of strength, elicited here by the text’s facing the “horde of hell.” And as is often the case with Bach’s trumpet and bass arias, the demands on both singer and player create a tour de force. In this case, bass Peter Harvey’s commanding execution and dramatic use of articulation combine splendidly with trumpeter Neil Brough’s difficult florid passage work, executed with unwaning confidence. (These two also perform a similar aria in “Es reisset euch, BWV 90, triggered by apocalyptic imagery, and equally impressive in the rendition.)
There is much to celebrate in the celebrative Reformation Day works. The general jubilance of the cantatas inspires brisk tempos, often full of dance-like buoyancy, and the ensemble’s ability to maintain an athletic agility is striking. This becomes especially significant with regard to the size of the ensemble itself. Gardiner has resisted here the trend to perform Bach’s choral works with a “choir” of one-to-a part, opting instead for seventeen singers. And while the argument for a solo choir does not rest on questions of agility—it is rooted primarily in historical documentation—one of the conspicuous by-products of one-to-a part singing is often greater ease with fast passage work. Gardiner’s ensemble belies that notion, however, giving ample proof of remarkable agility.
It is not difficult to imagine that Gardiner and his forces faced many practical challenges along the pilgrim way. As the liner notes recall, balance in the wonderful canon that opens “Ein Feste Burg,” BWV 80, proved unexpectedly difficult to achieve in the Schlosskirche in Wittenberg: the instrumental bass was overwhelmed by its treble counterpart. Accordingly, at the last minute a sackbut player from Leipzig was recruited to “even up the sides.” The trombone’s entry in this most rousing of canons is thrilling, and one of the most memorable moments in the volume. One can but look forward to all of the surprise challenges of the Pilgrimage having equally felicitous outcomes.
Steven Plank
Oberlin College