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 title of this recording “Joy: the Laments of Gilles Binchois” introduces a seeming contradiction, one that plays on a contemporaneous description of the composer as "pére de joyeusetè"—the father of joy—in tension with an affinity for melancholy in his works.
Björn Schmelzer proposes however that in the musical settings of laments “sorrow is transformed into sublime bliss—the secret of any lament of a high standard,” as Binchois’s surely were. In the creating of this conceptual frame for Binchois’s laments, Schmelzer and his generally excellent Graindelavoix, seek perhaps a new niche in which to place the composer’s works. Unsurprisingly, their performances also seek difference and distinction, be it with exaggerated tempo, degree of ornamentation and improvisation, or an especially “orchestrational” approach, switching and intertwining instrumental and vocal sounds with careful design.
The search for distinctive modes of performance invites us to hear things with new ears. The opening “Adieu mes tres belles amours,” for instance is sung unusually slowly. And the exaggerated pace, somewhat jolting at first hearing, gives the affection of the text (regrettably untranslated in the liner notes) greater gravity. One pauses anew to savor the detail of the musical syntax and one lingers with the sensuous elegance of Patrizia Hardt’s singing. There are trade-offs, however. The very slow speed seems to work against the level of note that was idiomatically the basic unit of motion, and thus may sound more like “slow motion” than expressive enhancement. Significantly, the slow speed well accommodates the florid ornamentation impressively added here by Hardt.. Yet, based on figuration in the Buxheimer Organ Book, the ornamentation sounds anachronistic in the vocal appropriation, and its degree of floridity seems to work against the affective dolor that inspired the choice of a slow speed in the first place.
In the extensive liner notes, Schmelzer writes of archetypal features of laments, including an “atmosphere which enables a kind of feminisation of feelings (high, ornamental or trembling voices, tears, etc.), absolutely impossible in a conventional social context.” The appeal to the “trembling voice” is amply apparent in the singing of Silvie Moors here. A skillful singer with a wide range of activity in jazz and folk styles, she has a tremulosity in her voice that is expressive, but also distracting for its associations with other styles. It is beautiful singing—the kind of sound we often encounter today in modern Celtic folk recordings—but a novel sound in this context. This again invites us to hear things anew—a good thing—but it may also court a degree of mannerism in the end.
Schmelzer gives much attention to vibrant and robust instrumental participation in the performance of many of the laments, again favoring an ornamental and improvisatory style. Occasionally this seems to have hijacked other priorities. For example, the rondeau “Esclave puist yl devenir” has only the refrain sung, while fiddles—a nice salute to the blind Castilian fiddle players at the Burgundian court—render the rest of the musical material. Orchestrationally interesting, it nevertheless runs rough-shod over the song as a textual event, rendering a significant portion of the text silent.
There is much beautiful singing in this anthology. The lament “Mon seul et souverain désir” is simply stunning, set to an unsually low pitch that wraps the tone in a veil of dark profundity. This presages sounds we associate with Ockeghem, who likely studied with Binchois, and whose lament on the death of Binchois is the concluding chanson of the recording.
“Joye” will assuredly be of interest to devotees of early Renaissance music. Some of the performances perhaps try too hard to achieve difference, but in this we also sense a gratifying dynamism in the performance tradition: that, too, is something about which we can be joyful.
Steven Plank