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.
Recorded live on 13 August 2005, this recent release on the Orfeo label in its Festspiel Dokumente imprint makes available a recital given by soprano Diana Damrau and pianist Stephan Matthias Lademann during the 2005 Salzburg Festival and given at the Mozarteum.
This particular Liederabend offers a selection of music by five late-Romantic composers, Alban Berg, Gustav Mahler. Alexander Zemlinsky, Hugo Wolf, and Richard Strauss, and presents some repertoire performed infrequently.
More familiar, perhaps in the opera house, Damrau offers a different side of her voice in the more intimate venue of the song recital. This provides those who are familiar with Damrau to hear her perform literature that they could not hear elsewhere. One of the selections, for example, is the Strauss song “Amor,” which is remarkably similar to the music associated with Zerbinetta in the composer’s opera Ariadne auf Naxos and in this context provides a fine connection between Damrau in the opera house and her efforts in the recital milieu. That song in particular demonstrates not just Damrau’s facility, but her virtuosity in performing the lengthy coloratura melismas associated with Zerbinetta but here, in the more exposed medium of voice and piano. It is a persuasive performance, all the more remarkable for Damrau’s performance at the conclusion of an otherwise full recital.
As to the other literature performed, Damrau performed entire sets of Lieder, starting with Berg’s Sieben frühe Lieder, a selection of songs from the early part of his career, when the pulls between the late-Romantic style and the atonal idiom he would pursue are audible from the start in “Nacht,” which Damrau delivers convincingly. “Traumgekrönt,” with its text by Rainer Maria Rilke, has a similar sense, which Damrau brings out not only in her execution of the line, but also in her enunciation of the text. (In Berg’s “Liebesode” Damrau’s work on the stage is perceptible in the rolled “r” of the word “Arm,” an element that she brings into her performance of the piano version of “Das himmlische Leben,” the Song-Finale of Mahler’s Fourth Symphony.)
With Zemlinksy’s Walzergesänge this infrequently heard piece conveys a sense of Brahms’s vocal Liebeslieder waltzes, with the inflection of the kind of modernism heard a generation later, albeit inspired by the Tuscan folksongs of Ferdinand Gregorovius. These short, early settings by Zemlinsky do not yet embody the kind of expressive dissonances that are part of the composer’s Lyrische Symphonie, yet clearly take the listener into the late Romantic idiom, as found distinctively in “Ich geh’ des Nachts.” These pieces are removed from the idiom Wolf used in the five settings of Eduard Mörike performed in this recital. Her approach to “Lebe wohl” captures the style of the text well, and stands out for its moving interpretation. Likewise, the pianism of Landemann is nicely heard in “Nimmersatte Liebe,” where it sets the tone for the song at the beginning. His subtle conclusion of the last of the Wolf set is effective in bringing this relatively lengthy setting to an appropriate musical ending.
With Strauss’s relatively early set Mädchenblumen, op. 22, Damrau offers another perspective on the late-Romantic Lied. The register of several of these songs, like “Kornblumen” fit Damrau’s voice, and she offers some solid performances of these seldom heard pieces. That son and others in the cycle are unified by the images of flowers, and the deft touch Damrau gives the music is quite effective, something nicely connected with her inclusion of a later setting by Strauss of “Ich wollt’ ein Sträußlein binden” (“I will make a bouquet”), a song which literally connects the parts of the song cycle and, through the author of text, Clemens Brentano, creates a link to the final piece on the recital, the song “Amor.”
The audience was quite enthusiastic about Damrau, and the applause is nicely captured on the recording, which also preserves the four encores she gave: Mahler’s song “Wer hat dies Liedlein erdacht?” along with two selections from Wolf’s Italienisches Liederbuch “Auch kleine Dinge” and a virtuoso treatment of “Ich hab’ in Penna” and, at the end, a song by Liszt, “Es muss ein Wunderbares sein.” The latter is a curious piece that adds an earlier composer to the recital with this piece that also conveys, as Damrau remarks, as a means of expressing her own enthusiasm for this recital.
This recording captures a fascinating recital that not only serves to document the Salzburg Festival, but also serves as a fine example of programming. As various expressions of late-Romantic music, the music Damrau performed offers several perspectives on the style and her own facility with each of the composers represented. As such, it serves well in making available some vibrant interpretations of song repertoire by an exceptional performer.
James L. Zychowicz