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.
I had never heard of Stefano Secco before receiving this CD. But I see that, at age 34, he already has had a substantial career, singing major roles at important houses throughout Europe and, while I was not paying attention, occasionally in the US.
During the current season (2016-17) he has sung, for example, Hoffmann at the Bastille Opera (Paris), Alfredo in Seattle, Manrico in Rome, Don José in Naples, and Edgardo in Beijing. He is also featured in several DVDs, singing Macduff and (again) Hoffmann in Paris, and Cavaradossi at the Festival Puccini (Torre del Lago).
Here he performs fifteen of the world’s most beloved tenor arias—most of them Italian—with solid tone, perfect intonation, and very clear diction. Though his family name means “dry,” the singing has lots of juice, under splendid control. In short, Secco provides just what one wants from an Edgardo (in Lucia di Lammermoor) or a Rodolfo (in La Bohème). The disc is entitled Crescendo, and Secco has indeed mastered the art of making individual notes get louder but he can also make them grow softer and more tender. There is much to admire and enjoy here.
Almost inevitably, a certain sameness occurs when someone sings highlights from fourteen different operas one after the other. I say fourteen operas, not fifteen, because we get, from Il trovatore, “Ah sì, ben mio” and, in the next track, “Di quella pira,” both of them marvelously sung. (Alas, we don’t get to hear the wonderful tempo di mezzo that, in the opera, connects the first of these numbers to the second—indeed motivates it dramatically and prepares it musically. I suppose the section was omitted because it would have required hiring a major soprano.)
One small complaint: the traditional high C at the end of “Di quella pira” seems a bit effortful, just when one wants to feel that Manrico is at his most confident and determined. One can get a sense of his strain in a live performance of Il trovatore from Covent Garden. (Unfortunately the recording quality on that YouTube excerpt is dim, and Secco seems to be turning repeatedly toward and away from the microphone.) I wonder if Secco could help tenors around the world by devising some alternative way for a singer to end this aria or maybe even by boldly singing the actual written note: G, a fourth lower than the unwritten C! Still, that spirited cabaletta, as a whole, ends the CD with a bang. It helps that the men of the Kaunas State Choir suddenly join in, assisting Manrico in his heroic quest.
Secco has wisely chosen to include three French selections, which add some variety. They are the single best-known tenor moments from Carmen, La juive, and Faust. He pronounces the French texts well, something that is not always the case with non-native singers in French roles.
The conductor, Constantine Orbelian, is an American, born in California to immigrant parents from Russia and Armenia. He has conducted some thirty recordings on the Delos label, including an absolutely captivating disc of Handel arias with Polish contralto Ewa Podleś. He also performs widely as a piano soloist and accompanist. In 1991 he was appointed conductor of the famed Moscow Chamber Orchestra, becoming the first American to be director of a Russian musical ensemble. He is now the principal conductor of the orchestra heard here: the Kaunas City Symphony. I first read the name as Kansas City, but then quickly learned that Kaunas is the second-largest city in Lithuania.
The orchestra sounds fine throughout the disc, sometimes a little small (like many an opera-house orchestra) but very responsive to the push and pull of the tenor’s phrasing. The orchestra plays in what I would describe as today’s standard international style. The clarinet solo that opens “E lucevan le stelle” is beautifully turned, and vibrato-free, with nothing about it to reveal the Eastern European identity of the performer (Andrius Bernotaitis). The balance between singer and orchestra feels just right: I never had to strain to hear an accompanimental figure but never was distracted away from the vocal outpouring.
Orbelian and his forces provide atmospheric and sensitive backups to what is one of the most enjoyable CDs of tenor singing that I have encountered in a while. Robert A. Moore, the noted critic at American Record Guide (Sept/Oct 2015), reviewed a complete recording—likewise on Delos—of Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra, in which tenor Secco is featured, along with Dmitri Hvorostovsky, Barbara Frittoli, and Ildar Abdrazakov. Moore admired the whole recording and called Secco “a commanding tenor with a gorgeous voice in the style of Bergonzi.” Moore also enjoyed Secco’s disc of songs (with piano)—most of them composed by Tosti—on Naxos (ARG, July/Aug 2011).
In short, this is a very welcome introduction to a tenor whom all lovers of excellent singing will be happy to get to know; and a convenient way to get some of the best-loved tenor arias in a single disc.
Texts and capable translations are included. Brief but helpful notes are by Lindsay Koob.
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).