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 composers Morales, Guerrero, and Victoria form a holy trinity of sorts, dominating Spanish church music in what we have come to see as a “Golden Age,” a time in which sixteenth-century liturgical polyphony assumed a classical perfection.
Moreover, given the flourishing of mysticism (Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross, for example) and the rich body of religious paintings associated with El Greco, we can place this “holy trinity” in a cultural milieu where religion assumed an unusually strong hold.
There are several things that make Guerrero distinctive among this three, not least the biographical color that derives from his trip to the Holy Land and his confrontation with pirates on the voyage. He also is, of the three, the only one to compose a significant body of secular works in addition to masses and motets, a notably wider range of compositions. And while this recording from Peter Phillips and the Tallis Scholars restricts itself to liturgical works, it is Guerrero’s range that once again seemss notable. We are treated here to music that ranges from abstract counterpoint to highly affective, emotional expressions, and the affective qualities themselves span luxuriant dolor to exuberant joy.
The Missa Surge Propera is a more abstract work than the motets, with closely controlled counterpoint and long stretches of uniform texture and procedures. Phillips, however, remains alert to the text and sculpts the architecture of the piece with dynamic and tempo inflections, and also a fine ear for large-scale effects. Sometimes Guerrero points the way, as in the Credo where the incarnation section becomes simpler, but in all cases, Phillips is intent—successfully so—in uniting classically constrained contrapuntal writing with engagingly dynamic interpretation.
Occasionally, when the interpretation evokes strength, the reading seems perhaps overly strong. For example in the “pleni sunt caeli” section of the Sanctus, long notes are unusually intense and square shaped in a way that seems less rather than more expressive. This is all the more apparent in that the well-contoured, shapely line is a hallmark of Phillips’ beautiful conceptions of the motets.
Some of the motets are lamentative, like “Usquequo, Domine” and “Hei mihi, Domine,” and this musical lamentation was particularly resonant with the Spanish spirituality that defined the “dark night of the soul.” “Usquequo” is poignant with its lachrymal descents and homophonic settings of individual phrases, all of which receive a finely attentive response from Phillips and the Scholars. (And the last chord is simply sublime!) At the other end of the emotional spectrum, the “Regina caeli” highlights a joyful richness of sound, and the performance dazzles with its brilliant dynamism.
The Tallis Scholars, now in their thirty-third year, remain among the best interpreters of sixteenth-century liturgical polyphony. And in this Guerrero anthology, it is the commitment to an expressive mode of interpretation itself that marks the recording with trademark distinction.
Steven Plank
Oberlin College