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.
Following their 2011 Decca recording of Striggio’s Mass in 40 Parts (1566), I Fagiolini continue their quest to unearth lost treasures of the High Renaissance and early Baroque, with this collection of world-premiere recordings, ‘reconstructions’ and ‘reconstitutions’ of music by Giovanni and Andrea Gabrieli, Monteverdi, Palestrina, and their less well-known compatriots Viadana, Barbarino and Soriano.
The title, 1612 Italian Vespers, is a little misleading, the year being chosen because it marks the death of Giovanni Gabrieli, the departure of Monteverdi from Mantua and his move to Venice, and a notable composition of the little known Parmesan composer, Lodovico Grossi da Viadana — the ambitious 4-part Vesper Psalms — rather than because of the provenance of any one substantial work. Moreover, the most ambitious work recorded is itself highly speculative: Giovanni Gabrieli’s 28-voice Magnificat is, according to the press release, reconstructed by Hugh Keyte and I Fagiolini’s founder and director Robert Hollingworth from 8 extant parts with “scholarship fired by imagination”. Similarly, the hymn Ave, Maria Stella, unites the double-choir setting from Monteverdi’s 1610 Vespers with Francesco Soriano’s collection of canons and oblighi, published in the same year. Yet, since Monteverdi’s revered Vespers have long inspired debate about the authenticity of the cohesiveness of the constituent parts (were they ever performed as a whole, or were the Vespers a publishing project designed to win Monteverdi a new job in Venice?), perhaps such inventive conjecture does not matter, especially when the resultant recording as sumptuous and full of vitality as this one.
Gabrieli’s lost masterpiece recreates a thanksgiving Vespers, The Feast of the Holy Rosary, reputedly celebrated for 200 years in commemoration of the famous Venetian victory over the Turks at Lepanto in 1574. The diverse performers — vocal and instrumental — ‘choirs’ signifying ensemble groupings rather than denoting vocalists or instrumentalists — rejoice in the immense sound-scape and the intricate complexity of the idiom: dialogues, echoes and extravagant rhetorical gestures, such as the vigorous repetitions of the fittingly jubilant ‘He have shown strength in his arm/ scattered the proud’, are fore-grounded, and their declamatory effects celebrated. Monumental blocks of sound, conjuring the awesome, inspiring nature of the original setting and context of performance contrast with sparser instrumental textures. And, after a momentous pause — which Keyte presumes originally offered an opportunity for a “‘military’ interpolation”, and for which he duly supplies a fanfare and brief reminiscence of Andrea Gabrieli’s Aria della battaglia for eight wind instruments — bells and cannon fire surprise and excite, resurrecting the triumphant, self-congratulatory festivities of years long hence and empires long lost.
The elder Gabrieli, Andrea, also features, in the form of the densely textured, two-choir, Benedictus Dominus Deus Sabaoth, an assemblage of war-like scriptural texts, presumed to be assembled for Lepanto celebrations, which interposes rhythmically enlivened passages within the weighty sonorities of the massed forces. Andrea Gabrieli’s Toccata del 9 Tono is a brief but impressive study in finger technique, here ornamented impressively by organist James Johnstone.
Despite the monumental scale of Gabrieli’s Magnificat it is Claudio Monteverdi’s Ab aeterno ordinata sum, a supremely virtuosic solo motet, which inspires most admiration, show-casing the range and flexibility of bass, Jonathan Sells, as it moves from imperious dignity to increasingly florid rhetorical splendour.
Of the less renowned composers represented, Viadana’s expressive text setting impresses in a sequence of poly-choral psalms characterised by expressive text setting, dramatic declamation and melodic richness — and framed by beautifully pure, resonant antiphons, reflecting various aspects of the Rosary feast, performed by the members of De Profundis. Massive sonorities contrast with solo passages of inventive virtuosic expression, as two vocal choirs are supplemented by additional high and low choirs for instruments, creating a kaleidoscopic of colours and a rich, invigorating ambience. Viadana’s O dulcissima Maria, for solo soprano is performed with exquisite, piercing sweetness and dexterous agility by soprano Clare Wilkinson, accompanied by theorbo and chamber organ.
Exaudi, Deus by Barbarino from the composer’s second book of solo motets, allows an instrumentalist to shine, show-casing a wonderfully reedy, resounding and elaborate cornetto solo by Gawain Glenton. The earlier generation of composers is represented by Palestrina’s Quae ets ista from the composer’s setting of the Song of Songs.
The disc concludes with an extra-liturgical motet: Giovanni Gabrieli’s In ecclesiis which rejoices that ‘God [is] our helper for ever’. Conjecture and assumption are necessary aspects of music-making among devotees and scholars of Renaissance repertoire and Hugh Keyte introduces an additional element of romance, commenting that when ‘resurrecting’ the original choirs presumed to have been omitted from the later printed edition, the “recovery process has often felt semi-automatic; as though the rejected parts were phantoms jostling at my elbow, eager to be resuscitated”.
Standards of musicianship and technical accomplishment are extraordinarily and consistently high. The diversity of textures, colours and combinations ensures freshness and animation; the monumental balanced by the intimate. And, the crisp definition of recording allows full appreciation of both massive sonorities and subtle dialogues between contrasting groups and individual voices.
Claire Seymour