• A 1957 live performance from Stuttgart, conducted by Lovro von Matacic. • The great Heldentenor Wolfgang Windgassen stars as Rienzi. • Stuttgart came to be known as the “Winter Bayreuth” for its staging of Wagner operas not slated for performance in Bayreuth.

From the four Books of Songs that appeared between 1597 and 1612, Hanna Thyssen and Susanne Peuker ('Fortune's Musicke') selected 15 of Dowland's most beautiful songs, weaving them together with several lute pieces into an atmospheric Dowland homage. It documents his great compositional mastery, and his instinct for unpretentious melodies and subtle text settings.

A MusicWeb International Recording of the Month!

As an opera-lover with a particular interest in the ways opera developed and proliferated over the centuries, I’ve sometimes dreamt of a world in which every important composer’s first opera was available to listen to. It’s a fantasy: first operas are seldom as good as later ones and the recording industry, quite naturally, tends to seek out the best, not the earliest. Nevertheless, to anyone like me, first operas always have an intrinsic fascination, for they mark the point at which a particular individual talent joins the larger tradition. They often have much to say about a young composer’s influences and aspirations as well as the standards and expectations of those for whom the opera is written.

Johann Simon Mayr’s Saffo (1794) is a superlatively good and superlatively interesting first opera. Mayr wrote some seventy operas in the course of his three-decade operatic career and the vast majority have not been recorded, nor indeed performed since he enjoyed his final premiere in 1824. Franz Hauk’s decision to excavate the very first is thus both enterprising and unexpected, yet the results fully vindicate the project and the efforts of those involved. Saffo is revealed as an extraordinarily confident and masterful work with the composer’s mature personality already largely developed. A major reason for this, no doubt, is its comparative lateness: Mayr was already thirty when it received its premiere at the Teatro La Fenice, Venice. It is hard to think of any other important opera composer from this era, Beethoven always apart, who waited so long before seeing his work on stage. Cimarosa, the leading Italian opera composer when Mayr’s career commenced, composed fourteen operas before he was thirty; Rossini, the dominant presence at the end of Mayr’s career, managed over twice as many as that.

Delay, in Mayr’s case, appears to have been all to the good. There is something very deliberate about Saffo, a work bearing none of the signs of haste and inexperience that mar so many composers’ first operas. It is carefully planned and beautifully composed with a strong feel for the dramatic potential inherent in Antonio Simeone Sografi’s fine libretto. Gluck was surely a powerful influence and it is easy to suppose that Mayr, a German, may have dreamed of being a second Gluck. A more immediate influence was no doubt Ferdinando Bertoni (1725-1813), Mayr’s teacher in Venice, who was himself influenced by Gluck – to the point where Gluck did not scruple quietly to ‘borrow’ some of Bertoni’s arias. Then there was the larger influence of the Venetian operatic world which had become a hotbed for experimentation with the forms of opera seria – with Paris in turmoil, there was surely no better city for a composer of Mayr’s originality to be making his debut.

Sografi’s libretto is in two acts; as Marion Englhart points out in the Naxos notes, this was itself unusual, as three acts were standard. As each act of Saffo lasts almost exactly an hour on this recording, we thus have the distinctively modern shape of a two-hour opera with a single interval. Nothing seems hurried, yet there are no longueurs either; the pacing and overall dramatic arc of the opera are finely judged. The story is simplicity itself. Saffo, Alceo, Faone and their attendants have come to the Greek city of Leucadia to hear the Pythia, or High Priestess, pronounce an oracle inspired by Apollo. Saffo, the legendary poetess (known in English as Sappho) loves Faone, but it is not reciprocated; he is mourning the death of his wife Cirene. Alceo, a poet, loves Saffo. This much is established in Act One. In Act Two, the oracle is finally pronounced, and as was often the case with oracles, it is not perfectly clear:

Saffo ardisca! Saffo dare!
Alceo, gemi! Aleco groan!
Tremi Faone! Faone tremble!
(The Naxos translation gives ‘Saffo ardisca!’ as ‘Saffo bears it’, which is surely an unfortunate mistake.) This winds the emotional situation up to a higher pitch. Saffo, with some encouragement from the Pythia, believes she should commit suicide by undertaking the famous Leucadian leap. However, at the last moment the tragedy is averted by Faone, encouraged by Alceo, showing some sympathy for Saffo’s sufferings.

I must say this ending came as a complete surprise, and not a welcome one. It has the sort of tacked-on happy ending quality found in so many earlier opere serie — and beautifully sent up in The Beggar’s Opera — but this was certainly not a requirement in Venetian operas of the 1790s. I was taking it for granted that the opera would end with Saffo’s spectacular suicide, in the manner of Giovanni Pacini’s much more famous Saffo of 1840. Interestingly, another Sappho opera of 1794, Jean Paul Égide Martini’s Sapho, did end tragically. The general dramatic movement of Mayr’s opera seems to be towards tragedy, and the sombre colouring of his music prepares one for it. Perhaps, for some reason, he was not allowed to compose the ending he would himself have chosen.

This was my only disappointment with this really exciting release. At no point does Mayr’s score sound routine or turgid, nor is there any of the fluff and padding that make so many eighteenth-century operas much longer than they need be. His recitative is incisively dramatic; his arias strongly shaped, brief and to the point; his choruses noble; his use of the orchestra colourful and inventive. One feels throughout that the subject and libretto were very congenial to Mayr, allowing him to play to his strengths in the alternation of grand ceremonial scenes with the emotionally-fraught conflicts between, and within, the three principal characters. In his 1989 book on Mayr, John Stewart Allitt refers to Saffo briefly as ‘a block-buster of an opera’. He does not elaborate on his grounds for that judgement, but now the evidence is here, such an accolade seems fully justified.

The Naxos studio recording is bright and forward to the point of occasionally being a little claustrophobic, but there is something gripping about its immediacy. Franz Hauk, who has done so much for Mayr (see below) and is surely the greatest living authority on the composer, conducts with authority and panache. The singers are uniformly impressive, with the principals entering into the drama of the opera rather than just singing beautifully.

What’s not to like? Well, you have to download the libretto, which always annoys me, but I haven’t enjoyed a first opera so much for a long time, nor felt so enlightened by the experience of listening to one. Saffo will be an essential acquisition for anyone who loves Mayr’s music and, at Naxos prices, it should prove very attractive to anyone interested in the way opera developed in the crucial period after the French Revolution and Mozart’s death.

– MusicWeb International

MAHLER Das Lied von der Erde • Hans Graf, cond; Jane Henschel (mez); Gregory Kunde (tenor); Houston SO • NAXOS 8.572498 (62:46) Live: Houston 11/19–22/2009


Just as I noted with some dismay the relative dearth of recordings of the original version of Das Lied for full orchestra ( Fanfare 35:4), this new CD arrives from Naxos. It’s also encouraging to see an American orchestra and its music director featured on a major label, since new recordings of orchestras in the U.S. increasingly originate from in-house labels like SFS Media and CSO Resound (though the lack of the former necessitated the latter).


Any performance of Das Lied lives or dies by its soloists, and taste in voices is a particularly individual foible. I’ve found that I have no tolerance for the type of ripe, chocolate-thick mezzo or contralto common to many recordings (and that, alas, includes such greats as Maureen Forrester and Kathleen Ferrier). Given those constraints, I find this performance to be one of the best I’ve heard.


Gregory Kunde is described in the bio included in the notes as a bel canto singer, but he proves more than adequate in the Heldentenor demands of “Der Trinklied” (hard to fake in a live concert recording). His sensitivity to the text, however, may be his strongest quality; the reiterations of “dunkel ist das Leben, ist der Tod” are each sung with a slight diminuendo and a touch of melancholy that are truly heartfelt. His lyrical side is heard to salubrious effect in “Von der Jugend,” while the two styles combine to make “Der Trunkene” a rousing, tipsy delight.


Jane Henschel, the voice of Maria Aegyptiaca for Eliahu Inbal, Simon Rattle, and Bertrand DeBilly in their respective recordings of Mahler’s Eighth, is a fine Mahler interpreter. Her performance of “Der Abschied” will stand up to most of the competition, but I am also taken with her handling of the fast section describing the handsome youths in “Von der Schönheit”: In a manner approaching Sprechstimme , she navigates the treacherous waters with aplomb, then immediately regains the more stately composure of the rest of the narrative. In “Der Einsame” she combines melancholy and resignation with quiet effectiveness.


Hans Graf accompanies with sensitivity and well-gauged tempos that neither drag nor rush; he allows Henschel the breathing room in “Von der Schönheit” while charging “Der Trinklied” with the kind of momentum needed to convey the angst of the narrator. The Houston Symphony plays as to the manner born. I haven’t heard too much Mahler from this source, but on the strength of this recording, I’d like to hear more. The sound production is another sterling effort by Michael Fine, placing the soloists front and center without undue spotlighting, and revealing plenty of inner voice detailing from the orchestra. Altogether, this is a real bargain at reduced price (texts and translation are available on the Naxos website). Highly recommended.


FANFARE: Christopher Abbot


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Time was when Naxos recordings of core repertoire would be considered cheap and cheerful, but hardly designed to compete with the best in the catalogue. That has long since changed, with a growing number of discs that, while still sold at the super-budget price point, are every bit as desirable as established or more expensive performances. Certainly, Antoni Wit’s Mahler Eight must be at or near the top of the list of recommendations for that work, proof that great Mahler recordings don’t all emanate from Vienna, Berlin or Lucerne.
 
The Houston Symphony Orchestra and their Linz-born music director Hans Graf are both unfamiliar to me, as are the soloists, but as I’ve already hinted that’s hardly an issue where this label is concerned. Indeed, listening to a number of more illustrious recordings in preparation for this review I was reminded of just how difficult it is to alight on an ideal – or near ideal – version of this elusive score. Either the mezzo isn’t up to the sustained demands of that long goodbye or the tenor is overstretched by Mahler’s taxing tessitura; and even if the soloists are up to snuff, the articulation and pacing of the music itself may be problematic. And then there’s the recording quality which, while not the key issue, plays an important part in one’s perception of – and response to - this multi-hued score.
 
Of my selected comparisons two – Raymond Leppard on BBC Radio Classics 9120 and Bernard Haitink on Philips 468 182-2 – feature the limpid tones of Dame Janet Baker. The clarity and directness of her vocal style is always pleasing, and while I don’t share Tony Duggan’s out-and-out enthusiasm for Baker/Leppard and the Alfreda Hodgson/Jascha Horenstein version on BBC Legends 4042-2, I like them rather more than my colleague Marc Bridle does. In particular, Baker’s Der Abschied with Leppard – recorded at Manchester’s Free Trade Hall in 1977 – has a high goose-bump count, and while she sings with characteristic commitment for Haitink she lacks the intensity of feeling that makes the Leppard disc so memorable.
 
Kathleen Ferrier for Bruno Walter (Decca 466 576-2) and Christa Ludwig for Otto Klemperer (EMI 5 66892 2) are her main rivals, although Ferrier’s artless, somewhat old-fashioned, delivery doesn’t appeal to me. Heresy, I know, but I’ve often wondered whether Walter’s link to Mahler and Ferrier’s early death have given this recording a lustre it doesn’t always deserve. And among more recent recordings Cornelia Kallisch sounds warm but all-too-often uninvolved on Michael Gielen’s otherwise admirable version (Hänssler 93.269). Of the men, John Mitchinson – for Horenstein and Leppard – struggles with Mahler’s near-falsetto writing, while Haitink’s James King – placed quite far back - is rather more secure, if a little too generalised for my tastes. Walter’s tenor, Julius Patzak, is full-bodied but a trifle staid, heldentenor Siegfried Jerusalem and the agile Fritz Wunderlich – for Gielen and Klemperer respectively – both fresh and virile.
 
How does the Houston recording fare in this mixed company? In Das Trinklied vom Jammer der Erde Gregory Kunde sounds pleasing enough, although his voice is less appealing under pressure; at first I felt the orchestra was rather backwardly balanced, but it suits the intimate scale of this performance. The real revelation, though, is Graf, whose reading of the score is very impressive indeed, becoming more insightful as the piece unfolds. He can’t quite match Klemperer for sheer amplitude and nuance, but he does find an astonishing lucidity that works especially well in the trembling loveliness of ‘Der Einsame im Herbst’.
 
In that song mezzo Jane Henschel sings most hauntingly of the loneliness and the transience of life, her delivery discreet but always subtly inflected. In many ways she is the antithesis of Baker, who sometimes strives a little too hard for effect, notably in her recording for Haitink. And while Henschel doesn’t efface memories of Ludwig here, I was captivated by her glowing, unforced response to Bethge’s texts, notably Von der Schönheit. I particularly liked her honeyed lower registers, but again it’s Graf’s lightness of touch and natural rhythms that beguile the mind and ear.
 
Kunde may be overstretched as the drunkard but his delivery has a youthful charm that’s entirely apt; that said, Jerusalem and Wunderlich negotiate those treacherous vocal lines with aplomb, their innig moments more finely calibrated. In terms of sonics the Naxos disc may not be as weighty or tactile as Gielen’s, or as atmospheric as Leppard’s, but at least it isn’t as rough and ready as Horenstein’s. As for the much-lauded Philips sound for Haitink, it isn’t nearly as refulgent as I remember it. The EMI recording for Klemperer is big and bold and, in its GROC version at least, hardly shows its age at all.
 
And despite initial caveats about the Naxos soundstage I have to say the convulsive gong shudder at the start of Der Abschied is just electrifying, ushering in half-an-hour of sublime music and even more sublime singing. For me, Ludwig is sans pareil here, a perfect match for Klemperer’s stoicism, but I can assure you Henschel is just as commanding of mood and line. This is an abendrot like no other, the trembling air suffused with the scents of loveliness and decay. The Houstonians really do capture the evanescence of this music very well indeed; as for Graf, he maintains a sensible and steady pulse throughout, achieving a rare blend of poise and penetration as well. Thankfully the audience is very quiet, and there’s no applause at the end to break this deep, deep spell.
 
Is there an ideal recording of Das Lied von der Erde? Probably not, but as the talents of this newcomer are so prodigious and its faults so minor I’d say this one comes pretty close.
 
-- Dan Morgan, MusicWeb International

The final volume in this revelatory song series charts a twenty-year period during Bohuslav Martinu’s life. The early The Three Virgins, H 73 exudes an impressionist atmosphere enhanced by Martinu’s advanced harmonic language whilst the New Slovak Songs, H 126 was the result of a highly successful rapprochement between Czech and Slovak art, reflected in music of beauty and inventiveness. Nursery Rhymes, H 283bis, though composed in perilous times, is full of wit and joy. American Record Guide wrote of Volume 3: ‘[Jana Hrochova] has a golden tone and crisp diction, and Koukl plays with warmth and clarity.’

Xavier Montsalvatge (1912 - 2002) was an important composer in Catalan music. His work ranges from operas such as "Una voz en off" and "El gato con botas," to vocal, chamber and orchestral music. Montsalvatge's "Sinfonía de réquiem" is one of the featured works on this disc. Montsalvatge achieved international recognition with the "Cinco canciones negras" for mezzo-soprano and orchestra, also featured in this recording, which shows the influence of Antillean melodic and rhythmic characteristics. His score for the 1987 film Dragon Rapide, about Francisco Franco, was nominated for the Goya Awards.

R E V I E W S:

"The latest release in Juanjo Mena and the BBC Philharmonic's La Música de España series marks the centenary of the birth of Catalan composer Xavier Montsalvatge, the best of whose music combines Catalan and Caribbean folk idioms with taut neoclassical structures and a glamorous, post-impressionistic sense of orchestration. The finest work here is Calidoscopi Simfònic, dating from 2001 – the year before Montsalvatge's death – which dazzlingly reworks music from a ballet left unfinished in 1955... The performances are immensely persuasive."
-- The Guardian (UK)

Both Black Pentecost and Stone Litany share a symphonic scale and an Orkney setting. Premièred by Simon Rattle in 1982, Black Pentecost is an impassioned plea against environmental destruction, taking its words from Orcadian author George Mackay Brown’s novel Greenvoe, and cast in the form of a vocal symphony. Chamber-like restraint is matched by tense, dark writing that embraces threnody and cataclysm. Beautifully orchestrated and featuring elaborate melismas from the vocal soloist, Stone Litany, subtitled ‘Runes from a House of the Dead’, evokes the haunted landscape of a Neolithic burial mound plundered by Vikings.

For Decades, the Zurcher Sangerknaben Have Been One of the Leading European Boys' Choirs. They Run Their Own Concert Series in Zurich, Give Concerts All Over Europe, in the USA and in China, and Have Performed Under Herbert Von Karajan and Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Among Others. The Zurcher Kammerorchester Looks Back on a Prestigious Past. It's Founder Edmond de Stoutz Was a Close Friend of Many Artists: Yehudi Menuhin, Arturo Benedetti Michelangelo and Maurice Andre Were Regular Soloists. Thanks to Sir Roger Norrington, the Ensemble Is Now a Major International Chamber Orchestra. A Particular Attraction of This Recording Is Jonah Schenkel. As Previously in Pergolesi's Stabat Mater, This Outstanding Boy Soprano Is Absolutely Thrilling. He Fearlessly Masters Every Difficulty in the Solo Sections; His Voice Is Expressive, Pure and Agile, and He Has Exceptional Personal Charisma: A Most Felicitous Combination.

The German composer Albert Lortzing’s (“Undine”) (1801-51) one-act comic opera “Die Opernprobe oder Die vornehmen Dilettanten” received its first performance in the year of Lortzing’s death. + This Vienna, 1953 performance of this rarely heard opera features famed Bach interpreter Karl Richter conducting an echt-Viennese performance of this little gem of a work.