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.
![Decca 478 8305 [CD]](http://www.operatoday.com/Aida_Garifullina.png)
Here is the latest CD from a major label promoting a major new soprano. Aida Garifullina is utterly remarkable: a lyric soprano who also can handle coloratura with ease. Her tone has a constant shimmer, with a touch of quick, narrow vibrato even on short notes.
She was clearly well trained in her native Tatarstan and then in Nuremberg and Vienna. She won first prize in the Operalia competition (2013), and has already sung at major European opera houses in Russian roles. She is scheduled to make her Metropolitan Opera debut in 2019.
The repertoire she has chosen here displays her strengths. She sings Russian arias and songs by Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, and Rachmaninov, the Russian popular song known in English as “Midnight in Moscow,” and two folk songs: a Cossack lullaby and (in her native Tatar) “Allüki.”
She starts the CD off with two French arias: “Juliette’s Waltz Song” from Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette and the “Bell Song” from Delibes’s Lakmé. She transposes the latter down a bit to suit her voice, which is not the stratospheric type of soprano that has often been associated with the role, though she can certainly sing normal high notes with ease. Her French pronunciation is approximate: the mute e is too open, and I did not notice a single nasal vowel. She also did little in those two arias to color individual words—the focus is far more on producing a beautifully even string of pearl-like notes.
Garifullina says in the booklet that she took the recordings of Anna Moffo as one of her main models, and she has chosen well. I hope she continues to grow as a singer, mastering the art of performing in other languages and responding more to the meanings of individual words and phrases—but without losing the astounding perfection of vocal production that is on display here.
The orchestra is sometimes a bit in the background. Various orchestrators are credited for the songs she chose to sing (e.g., Rachmaninov’s “Lilacs”), and their work is mostly capable and inoffensive. But I disliked Paul Bateman’s reorchestration of the “Song of India” (from Rimsky-Korsakov’s Sadko): why not just let us hear what Rimsky-Korsakov wrote, since this is already an opera aria, not a song with piano? Bateman had the not-brilliant idea of making the orchestration more elaborate in the second strophe. It’s somewhat distracting and unnecessary.
Far more distracting, I find, is Paul Campbell’s lush arrangement of the Tatar folk song. Campbell seems to have taken as a model what Joseph Canteloube did with the famous Chants d’Auvergne: a cushion of string sound, swooshing harps, soft arpeggios in the woodwinds, and so on. If you like the Canteloube songs (I have never had the patience for them), then here’s a Tatar equivalent.
Complete texts in the original languages, plus good translations into French, German, and English. The CD’s table of contents is a little confusing: the layout could give the inadvertent impression that Rachmaninov wrote the Tatar song and the Cossack lullaby.
You can sample all the tracks at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tMPAqWICoE. YouTube also has a video version of Garifullina doing the Gounod (with fake applause at the end). One way or the other, I suggest that you listen to her: she offers some of the most beautiful singing I have heard in years.
Ralph P. Locke
The above review is a lightly revised version of one that first appeared in American Record Guide and appears here by kind permission.
Ralph P. Locke is emeritus professor of musicology at the University of Rochester’s Eastman School of Music. Six of his articles have won the ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award for excellence in writing about music. His most recent two books are Musical Exoticism: Images and Reflections and Music and the Exotic from the Renaissance to Mozart (both Cambridge University Press). The first is now available in paperback, and the second soon will be (and is also available as an e-book).