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.
![Harmonia Mundi HMM 902621 [CD]](http://www.operatoday.com/Sirenes.jpg)
After D’Oustrac’s striking success as Cassandre in Berlioz Les Troyens, this will reach audiences less familiar with her core repertoire in the baroque and grand opéra. Berlioz’s Les nuits d’été and La mort d’Ophélie, Wagner’s Wesendonck Lieder and the Lieder of Franz Liszt are very well known, but the finesse of D’Oustrac’s timbre lends a lucid gloss which makes them feel fresh and pure.
D’Oustrac’s Sirènes is also valuable because it demonstrates different approaches to the art of song for voice and piano. Berlioz’s Les Nuits d’été op 7, to poems by Théophile Gautier, initially completed in 1841, was exactly contemporary with the works of Schumann’s Liederjahre. Later, Berlioz would expand the accompaniment for orchestra, effectively creating a new genre, orchestral art song, which would be developed later in the century by composers like Mahler and Hugo Wolf. Nonetheless, even in the original form for voice and piano, these songs are highly individual, quite distinct from the songs of Schumann and Mendelssohn. “I only wish people to know that [these works] exist”, wrote Berlioz, “ that they are not shoddy music . . . and that one must be a consummate musician and singer and pianist to give a faithful rendering of these little compositions, that they have nothing to do with the form and style of Schubert’s songs”.
These mélodies of Berlioz are characterized by elegance and restraint. In “Villanelle”, for example, the repeating patterns in the piano part might evoke Schubert, but there’s an effervescent gaiety in them that is matched by graceful flow of the vocal line. In “Le spectre de la rose”, the more languid pace allows the voice to curve sensuously. Berlioz clearly understood the carnal undertones in Gautier’s poetry. The piano part is gentle, but persistent, like an embrace. When D’Oustrac’s tone deepens with the phrase “Ô toi qui de ma mort fus cause”, one can almost sense the perfume rising from the petals of the doomed rose. Although Les Nuits d’été is not a song cycle in the strictest sense of the term, recurring themes of love, and death and perpetual change give it a coherence which is particularly clear when it is performed with the intimate focus that a single singer and pianist can achieve. The three songs, “Sur les lagunes : Lamento”, “Absence” and “Au cimetière: Clair de lune”, form a unit, sombre with the stillness of the tomb, which is then broken by “L’île inconnue” where the ebullient high spirits of “Villanelle” return. Les Nuits d’été begins with promise of Spring and new life, and ends with adventure. “La voile enfle son aile, La brise va souffler.”, D’Oustrac breathing buoyancy into the word “souffler”. Though Heine inspired Mendelssohn and Schumann with dreams of the East, Gautier and Berlioz are tapping into an even deeper vein in the French aesthetic : ideas of freedom, change and new frontiers in exotic settings. D’Oustrac and Jourdan extend Les Nuits d’été by following it with Berlioz’s La mort d’Ophélie, from Tristia op 18, a setting of a ballade by Ernest Legouvé, who, like Berlioz himself, adapted Shakespeare for French theatre. Ophélie, who dies for love, floats upon a torrent, depicted in the rippling piano part. “Mais cette étrange mélodie passa rapide comme un son”. Though the voice imitates a lament, this is not so much a song of mourning but a transformation through music. The stream carries “la pauvre insensée, Laissant à peine commencée Sa mélodieuse chanson.”
This recording is titled Sirènes, tying Berlioz’s songs together with Richard Wagner’s Wesendonck Lieder, both inspired, in part, by women who awoke strong emotions. Sirens, who attract but aren’t necessarily positive, though they generated great art. With full orchestration, the Wesendonck Lieder showcase Wagnerian flamboyance. But, as with Les Nuits d’été , voice and piano versions concentrate focus on a more intimate scale. Even more pertinently, this highlights Wagner’s place in the context of the Lieder of his time, and in relation to Schumann and Franz Liszt. “Der Engel” is gentle, and the dramatic declamation of “Stehe Still !” more human scale. D’Oustrac and Jourdan are particularly impressive in “Im Treibhaus”, the sensitivity of their expression reflecting the intense inwardness that makes Lieder as powerful a genre as opera.
One of the most iconic siren figures of 19th century Romanticism was the Loreley. This recording begins with one of the most beautiful Loreley songs of all, Liszts’s “Die Loreley” S273/2, a setting of Heine’s poem. D’Oustrac’s silvery timbre illuminates the song, accentuating its mystery. She and Jourdan include another other Liszt setting of Heine, “Im Rhein im schönen Strome”, S272/3 and four settings of Goethe, of which “Über allen Gipfeln ist Ruh” S306/2 works particularly well with D’Oustrac’s lucid style.
Anne Ozorio