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.
Richard Strauss may be most closely associated with the soprano voice but this recording of a selection of the composer’s lieder by baritone Thomas Hampson is a welcome reminder that the rapt lyricism of Strauss’s settings can be rendered with equal beauty and character by the low male voice.
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau’s recordings of Strauss’s complete lieder may have set the benchmark (the EMI Classic 6-CD set was re-released in August 2013 on the Warner Classics Budget Boxes label), but Hampson has established himself as one of the foremost interpreters of the German Romantic repertory; and, following his much-admired 2011 recording of Mahler’s Des Knaben Wunderhorn, here the American baritone celebrates Strauss’s 150th anniversary with an imaginative recording which takes the listener on a tour through the composer’s life and confirms Hampson’s discernment and sensitivity to this idiom and language.
We begin with two early songs from the Op.10 (1885) settings of Hermann von Gilm zu Rosenegg. Though, like most of these songs, they are only a few minutes in length ‘Zueignung’ (Dedication) and ‘Die Nacht’ demonstrate Hampson’s directness in conveying the young composer’s rapturous moods; the voice may itself have lost some of its youthful bloom but there is great character and richness, an intelligent sense of musical line, and a strength and brightness at the top which brings vigour and ardour. Hampson is also, throughout the recording, superbly attentive to the German text. Pianist Wolfram Rieger is an eloquent partner, providing a warm foundation in the subdued passages, the delicate inter-phrase commentaries well-shaped.
Though many share a brooding intensity, these songs are by no means singular in mood and Hampson is alert to this variety and — in ‘Winternacht’, for example, with its graphic response to Adolf Friedrich von Schack’s nature imagery — to Strauss’s overt word-painting. Strauss’s setting of Felix Dahn’s ‘Ach weh mir unglückhaftem Mann’ (Alas I am an unlucky man) expands the lyric intensity into dramatic realms and Hampson’s baritone assumes a more operatic quality. The song’s direct speech is delivered with immediacy, Hampson finding a dreamy softness for the maiden’s imagined question, ‘Was soll der großen Rosenstrauß,/ die Schimmel an dem Wagen?’ (‘What are you doing with this large bouquet of roses, and these white horses and carriage?’), while Rieger summons the energy of the trotting horses with their clanging bells and the crack of the rider’s whip with éclat.
The elongated vowels of Karl Friedrich Henckell’s brief poetic phrases form extended, searching melodic lines in ‘Ruhe, meine Seele’ (Rest, my soul). As the poet-speaker seeks peace in a tumultuous world, Hampson’s baritone rises with surprising urgency and distress — Diese Zeiten/ Sind gewaltig,/ Bringen Herz/ Und Hirn in Not’ (These times are powerful, bring torment to heart and mind) — before the piano postlude gently quells the anguish.
Both performers surmount the technical challenges of ‘Heimliche Aufforderung’ (Secret Invitation) with accomplishment, Hampson surely negotiating the unpredictable melodic twists and turns while Rieger captures the ever-changing moods in the accompaniment. The poet-speaker’s yearning for the longed-for ‘wondrous night’ (‘O komme, du wunderbare, ersehnte Nacht!’) is rich and radiant; in contrast, ‘Morgen’, presaged by Rieger’s articulate introduction, is wonderfully intimate, the voice shimmering gently as Hampson dreams of ‘tomorrow’, when the ‘silence of happiness’ will settle upon the lovers. ‘Traum durch die Dämmerung’ begins with the still composure of a lullaby but surges impassionedly, before closing with an ethereal whisper, as the poet-speaker is drawn ‘through the grey twilight to the land of love, into a blue, mild light’ (‘durch Dämmergrau in der Liebe Land,/ in ein mildes, blaues Licht’).
Three songs from the last few years of the nineteenth century capture three different and quintessential Straussian moods: the sincerity and wistful melancholy of Detlev von Liliencron’s poetry in ‘Sehnsucht’ (1896), with its quiet, declamatory opening and wonderfully floating closing phrase, is complemented by the buoyant, pure joy of ‘Das Rosenband’ (Ribbons of roses) (Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock, 1897), which in turn fades into the bitter-sweet passion of ‘Befreit’ (Released) (Richard Dehmel, 1898). In the latter, the baritone melody is skilfully crafted, building in concentration, powerfully projected. Indeed, Hampson’s thoughtful shaping of each individual narrative is impressive; the tempi are well-chosen, perfectly matched to sentiment, and the feelings and dramas that unfold are convincing and engrossing.
By 1929 Strauss had his great operatic successes behind him and it is perhaps not surprising that the Op.87 Rückert settings of that year are grander in scale. A reflection on approaching old age, ‘Vom künftigen Alter’ is characterised by a quasi-orchestral rhetoric in the accompaniment, and Rieger relishes the contrasts between the sweeping flourishes in the right hand and more subdued passages which intimate the waning of the poet-speaker’s youthful vigour and the pallor of the fading roses. In ‘Und dann nicht mehr’ (And then no more), Hampson’s outpouring of regret for an irretrievable moment is spacious and even, each statement of Rückert’s oft-repeated refrain imbued with an individual hue and complemented by the vivid piano commentary. ‘Im Sonnenschein’ (In the sunshine) sweeps elatedly to the final couplet, ‘Ich geh’, die süße Müdigkeit des Lebens nun auszuruhn,/ Die Lust, den Gram der Erde nun auszuheilen im Sonnenschein’ (I go now; let the sweet weariness of life rest now, and let the pleasure and sadness of the earth heal now in the sunshine), in which the broadening of the tempo and the openness of the baritone melody wonderfully capture a sense of the composer’s love of life.
The title song, ‘Notturno’ (1899), is the longest and probably the least well-known of this selection. In this powerful miniature drama, originally composed for voice and orchestra, Hampson and Rieger are joined by violinist Daniel Hope, the latter representing the figure of Death who appears as a nocturnal fiddle player who haunts a troubled dreamer. The song showcases Hampson’s control and range, of register and of colour — especially the mahogany richness of the bottom; Hope’s rhapsodic interjections are entrancing. If the song’s melodic invention is less appealing than in some of the other songs, the performance is still a captivating one.
This is a very valuable contribution to the Strauss celebrations this year. Though there is a pleasing generous acoustic, the recording does perhaps favour the voice and there are times when the piano accompaniment lacks clarity in the middle and lower registers; but, Hampson’s impeccable diction and intelligent interpretation, and Rieger’s attentive, persuasive accompaniments, work together to produce performances which are unfailingly absorbing and sincere.
Claire Seymour
Contents:
Richard Strauss (1864-1949): ‘Zueignung’ Op.10 No.1 (1885), ‘Die Nacht’ Op.10 No.3 (1885), ‘Winternacht’ Op.15 No.2 (1886), ‘Mein Herz ist stumm’, Op.19 No.6 (1888), ‘Ach weh mir unglückhaftem Mann’ Op.21 No.4 (1889), ‘Ruhe, meine Seele’ Op.27 No.1 (1894), ‘Heimliche Aufforderung’ Op.27, No.3 (1894), ‘Morgen’ Op.27 No. 4 (1894), ‘Traum durch die Dämmerung’ Op.29. No.1 (1895), ‘Sehnsucht’ Op.32 No.2 (1896), ‘Das Rosenband’ Op.36 No.1 (1897), ‘Befreit’ Op.39 No.4 (1898), ‘Notturno’ Op.44 No.1 (1899), ‘Freundliche Vision’ Op.48 No.1 (1901), ‘Die heiligen drei Könige aus Morgenland’ Op.56 No.6 (1904-06), ‘Vom künftigen Alter’ Op.87 No.1 (1929), ‘Und dann nicht mehr’ Op.87 No.3 (1929), ‘Im Sonnenschein’ Op.87 No.4 (1929).