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.
This disc is well worth the price for the first track alone: the opening measures of Jean-Féry Rebel’s “Cahos,” (Chaos), written in 1737 or 1738, may cause you to wonder if you accidentally left a Stockhausen or Ligeti disc in the changer.
According to the composer’s preface to the published score, the opening fortissimo chord, containing all seven notes of the scale, represents “that confusion which reigned between the elements before the moment when . . . they took the places prescribed for them by the nature’s order.” What follows is literally chaotic: each of the elements has its own leitmotif and key, and they clash and conflict in nearly random fashion. A throbbing bass note represents Earth; Water is a flute scale; Air is a series of flute trills, and Fire is represented by high, rapid violin notes; they resolve themselves into a coherent and dramatic D minor tonality only at the end of the movement. What follows is a pleasant, but far more pedestrian, ballet suite in D major, intended for the Paris Opéra.
Although Les Élémens was originally written for an orchestra of about fifty players, the published version is set up to permit concert performance by two violins, two flutes and a bass, or private performance by violin and harpsichord, or by harpsichord alone. Christopher Hogwood and the Academy of Ancient Music, in this digital remastering of an analog recording that won the French Grand prix du disque in the early days of the historical performance movement, thus fall somewhere in the middle, with an ensemble of about twenty which includes future superstars Monica Huggett and Simon Standage. Two all-digital recordings of Les Élémens are currently available from Les Musiciens du Louvre (1993) and Musica Antiqua Köln (1995); both of them use approximately the same performing forces. To hear the chamber version, one must track down the hard-to-get recording by the Palladian Ensemble (Linn Records, U.K., 2003).
The other work on this CD is a suite of excerpts from another ballet, also entitled Les Élémens. Rebel was probably familiar it, since the six-year-old King Louis XV danced in its first performance in 1721. The booklet lists it as being composed by André Cardinal Destouches, who was at that time the Inspector General of the Paris Opéra, but many of the movements were actually among the last works of court composer Michel-Richard de Lalande. The recording includes the overture, the “Air” numbers, and the “Water” numbers, and the “Fire” chaconne. Unlike the Rebel piece, little attempt is made to represent the elements programmatically. Lalande and Destouches rely on the scenery and costumes; the overture contains no vestige of the “fire spouting from volcanoes” that would have been visible onstage. Although this work is far more conventional than the Rebel piece, it is still well worth hearing, and the Academy’s recording appears to be the only one currently available.
Beverly Wilcox
University of California, Davis