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.
From Hyperion comes a particularly fine account of Leoš Janáček’s song cycle The Diary of One Who Disappeared. Handsome-voiced Nicky Spence is the young peasant who loses his head over an alluring gypsy and is never seen again.
He and pianist Julius Drake are evocative storytellers in this unsettling tale of desire and doom. Janáček himself was in the grip of romantic obsession when he composed the Diary, the first of several works inspired by Kamila Stösslová, whom he met in 1917. Almost forty years younger and married, Stösslová neither fanned nor spurned Janáček’s attentions. As his muse, she inspired characters in his operas Káťa Kabanová, The Cunning Little Vixen and The Makropoulos Affair. Zefka the gypsy was her first artistic incarnation. As per Janáček’s instructions, she was the model for the woman on the front cover of the published score. The text, anonymous poems that appeared in a Brno newspaper, is scored for tenor, mezzo-soprano, piano and a small choir.
Spence, who has performed Janáček on the operatic stage, is eminently at home in the composer’s distinctive vocal writing, with its speech-like cadences and folk music lineage. His delivery is immediate, as if he’s confiding to a sympathetic listener. In an emotionally layered portrayal, his hero falls in love with sweet head tones. His fate is sealed when Zefka proffers to show him “how gypsy people sleep”. At the moment of surrender, Spence, sounding dazed, pares down his voice to a sliver of resigned sadness. Later on, he projects mordant self-hatred as the young man realizes he has fallen for someone he considers his social inferior – the undertone of violence is palpable. Mezzo-soprano Václava Housková avoids crass earthiness, giving the folky lilt of her siren call a youthful guilelessness. The offstage female chorus, recorded with a pronounced reverb, surrounds her with eerie echoes, evoking the almost supernatural role that destiny plays in this work. “Who can escape his fate?”, asks the troubled hero. Drake gives an unequivocal answer in the Intermezzo erotico, with its tattered rhythms and final, plummeting 32nd notes. Like the beautiful Zefka, Drake’s piano playing is ravishing and tenacious, with assertive coloring that leaves the harmonies transparent. Dissonances are forceful without ever sounding ugly. After Spence’s anguished, closing top Cs, there can be no doubt about the protagonist’s unhappy future. This performance was recorded at All Saints’ Church in East Finchley, London. Piano and solo voices are encircled with space, but sound close enough to preserve intimacy.
The second half-hour of the recording is more cheerful. The choir sings the first version of Říkadla (Rhymes), eight nursery rhymes for one to three voices, clarinet and piano. (In the later, definitive version, Janáček more than doubled the number of songs, scoring them for chamber choir and ten instruments.) Drake and clarinetist Victoria Samek accompany the charmingly nonsensical words with a sparkling sense of fun. This time, the reverb around the singing trio is obtrusive, giving them a disembodied quality that jars with the material. Spence and Housková feature again in the last set, twelve selections from Moravian folk poetry in songs. These folk tune arrangements, a mix of wistful ballads, love songs and brisk dances, illuminate the influence of traditional music on Janáček’s idiom. They are also utterly captivating. Housková interprets them with endearing simplicity, like someone sharing native songs learned in childhood. Spence’s approach is a tad more operatic. He shades the words with a feather-light touch, suggesting a sigh on a diminuendo, or an increasing heartbeat on a rising phrase. The recital ends with a foot-tapping duet, a party number called Musicians. For those who feel like singing along, the accompanying booklet contains the original poems in Czech, with English rhyming translations. Texts in Czech and English translations are also included for The Diary of One Who Disappeared and the nursery rhymes.
Jenny Camilleri