On the dark side of fame awaits the slide into obscurity. That’s certainly true for a number of operas that, while popular and highly lucrative during their composers‘ lifetime, soon followed their creators into the shadowy realm of oblivion. Operas, for example, that only ever get mentioned in connection with some much more famous sibling. Giuseppe Gazzaniga’s Don Giovanni – premiered half a year before Mozart’s masterpiece – is such an example, as is Ruggero Leoncavallo’s La Boheme and George Bizet’s Djamileh, widely considered the predecessor of Carmen. Other operas just do not stand out among other works by a composer – Jules Massenet’s operas for example are hardly a footnote of music history, his opera Therese, a thoroughly forgotten work, however, is. Two examples for works that are scarcely performed or even known outside of what is now the Czech Republic are also included in this collection of Opera Rarities on ORFEO: Antonin Dvorak’s last opera Armida and Zdenek Fibich’s Sarka.

REVIEW:

Containing radio performance recordings of six works by Dvorak, Massenet, Leoncavallo, Bizet, Gazzaniga, and Fibich mentioned often in histories of music but almost never on the bill, this is a box certainly precious for those who love opera.

– Classical Music Daily (Giuseppe Pennisi)

Born in Slovakia in 1979, Pavol Breslik made his professional singing debut at the age of twenty-one. Since his debut, he has progressively added more and more to his repertoire however he continually finds himself returning to Mozart. Warmly praised by critics, he has no qualms with his decision to return to Mozart: "When I go back to Mozart after excursions into other repertoire - like Lensky or bel canto - and feel at home with Tamino, I know I have done the right thing."

When the ORFEO label was established in Munich forty years ago, surely no one with the music scene back then would have predicted that the record company would develop into a firmly established player on the classical music market. One of the label’s main priorities in the early years was vocal music, with opera rarities top of the list and since the mid 1980s the re-use of historic tape recordings. Big names featured on the label’s own productions, while ORFEO also developed into a talent factory by discovering and nurturing young artist. This “ORFEO 40th Anniversary” 2-album sampler well reflects these two sides of the label by combining highlight tracks of historical recordings with today’s global stars.

Hardly any other composer of his epoch was as deeply rooted in the German and European choral traditions as Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy. Strongly influenced by the art of Johann Sebastian Bach, which he had encountered in the Berlin Singakademie under his teacher Carl Friedrich Zelter, the young composer wrote a series of eight chorale cantatas, including "Verleih uns Frieden gnädiglich" (“Give us Thy blessed peace”, 1831) - a short prayer for choir and orchestra set to words by Martin Luther. Mendelssohn's five wide-ranging and large-scale psalm settings became even more famous, and three of them can be heard here. The first piece in the group is the multi-part setting of Psalm 115 "Non nobis Domine" (“Not unto us, O Lord”) for soloists, choir and orchestra, op. 31 (1829/30), which was probably begun during the composer’s first stay in England and reveals his fascination for Händel's music. Mendelssohn himself considered “Wie der Hirsch schreit” ("As pants the hart"), a multi-part, cantata-like setting of Psalm 42 for soprano, choir and orchestra, op. 42 (1837/38), to be the best work of this group. Also highly praised by Robert Schumann, it remains one of the composer’s most famous choral works to this day. For the newly-formed Berlin Cathedral Choir, he also wrote a setting of Psalm 98 "Singet dem Herren ein neues Lied” (“Sing to the Lord a new-made song”) for soloists, choir and orchestra, op. 91, and in response to requests from London he composed "Hear my Prayer", a “hymn” based on Psalm 55 for soprano, choir and organ, which he later orchestrated. The piece became one of his most famous sacred works in Victorian England.

REVIEW:

It’s always pleasing to have a new album of Mendelssohn’s exalting psalm settings which sadly are an all too neglected part of his oeuvre. It is sometimes said that the German composer’s greatest accomplishment lies in this field. Here we have a judiciously chosen programme of four psalm settings and a single chorale cantata. Especially gratifying too is that these live performances, from a quartet of soloists, Chor des Bayerischen Rundfunks and Münchner Rundfunkorchester under Howard Arman, feel so inspiring.

With utmost conviction from beginning to end the renowned Chor des Bayerischen Rundfunks deliver appropriately devout singing, well focused and eminently unified. Conductor Howard Arman pulls everything together with calm assurance, adopting sensible speeds and dynamics. Of high order too is the playing of Münchner Rundfunkorchester such a versatile ensemble that seems completely at home with Mendelssohn’s music.

– MusicWeb International

Ivan Repusic, the new chief conductor of the Munich Rundfunkorchester, devotes his first album on BR-Klassik to works by the composers Maurice Durufle and Ottorino Respighi, both of whom took a major interest in the melodies and harmonies of Gregorian chant. The French composer Durufle’s “Requiem” is based on the Gregorian “Missa pro defunctis,” the Latin Mass for the Dead, and the Italian Respighi, in his “Concerto Gregoriano,” used Gregorian chant as a source of inspiration for the harmonious sound of the concerto and for the song-like treatment he gives to the solo violin. Maurice Durufle’s “Requiem” became especially well-known. Its first performance in 1947 was one of the high points of his career; the work not only helped to establish Durufle as a successful composer but also brought him fame far beyond the borders of France. This self-contained, homogeneous and contemplative composition is based on themes from the Gregorian Mass for the Dead. In his work, Durufle succeeded in fusing Gregorian chant, Baroque polyphony and colorful orchestration into a unified whole, and the spiritual, inward-looking character of the chants harmonizes most effectively with the composer’s personal style.

Joseph Beer was the operetta's rising star during the early 1930's and his Polish Wedding promised to bring him a major breakthrough. However, Nazi rule abruptly and tragically ended his career. Paul Abraham's librettist Fritz Lohner-Beda had taken Beer under his wing and did everything in his power to promote his success. Abrahama nd Beer had a lot in common - Jewish roots, a nervous disposition and above all, a bold stylistic mix combining folklore and jazz. All the characteristics of the operetta genre are united in concentrated form in Beer's music - buffo duets of folk character in the manner of Kalman, operatic finales a la Lehar and "Abrahamic" dance hits with rhythmic pep. An Austrian magazine wrote in 1934, "Surprises in the field of the operetta have become rare. The successes of recent years have been associated with a few names that one can count on the fingers of one hand. And now a young man of twenty-four by the name of Joseph Beer suddenly comes along and presents a work with an extraordinary musical appeal, sumptuous and personal invention, firm execution and an instrumentation that is a delight ot hear." Franz Lehar was forty years older than Beer and only a few months before Giuditta, his last work, had celebrated it's premiere at the Vienna State Opera - the crowning culmination of an operetta epoch that quite noticeably was nearing it's end. The time was ripe for a new generation, and Joseph Beer seemed to be just the right composer to lead it into the future.

The Loreley is one of the most famous figures of the romantic era, and even today the massive rock in the Rhine is notorious for threatening the river’s skippers with shipwreck. The legendary female figure with her seductive beauty today no longer haunts the river, but her story continues to resonate in the imagination. In 1861, when he was a mere twenty years old, Max Bruch, a Rhinelander born in Cologne, devoted an opera to the Loreley, a work based on a libretto by the great Emanuel Geibel himself. This opera in four acts is only rarely performed and until now has never been recorded on album. The Munich Radio Orchestra will now change this state of affairs: in a concert performance initiated by cpo the orchestra presented the work under the conductor Stefan Blunier, who was the General Music Director of the City of Bonn – that is, in the vicinity of the Loreley – when the recording was produced. The marvelous Michaela Kaune interpreted the title role in a top-quality performance, and Thomas Mohr was her male counterpart. Bruch set the Loreley story, in which everything, both in ambience and action, constituting a “Grand Romantic Opera” (thus the work’s subtitle) is present, in a highly romantic musical language. It is not without reason that Hans Pfitzner lent his support to this forgotten gem throughout his life.

Walter Braunfels studied law and economics at the university of Munich until, after seeing a performance of Richard Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, he decided to shift his focus to music. He went on to study with Theodor Leschetizky in Vienna before returning to Munich to study composition with Felix Mottl and Ludwig Thuille. His earliest success came with the opera Die Vogel. With the rise of the Nazis to power, however, he was dismissed from his positions and listed as being half-Jewish. Luckily, the war passed peacefully for his family, he returned to the public eye after the war was over. On this release, the Munchner Rundfunkorchester with violinist Henry Raudales, violist Norbert Merkl, and hornists Karl Reitmayer and Marc Ostertag present Braunfel’s String Quintet in F sharp minor in its version for String Orchestra, and his Sinfonia Concertante op. 68 for violin, viola, 2 horns, and string orchestra. These are world premiere recordings.