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.

In comic operas there are stock figures. One of these is the bass, often conceited and self-important, silly or evil – or both – who often ends up being ridiculed, humiliated and has to humble himself. We first meet him in Uberto in Pergolesi’s La serva padrona, then in Il barbiere di Siviglia – Paisiello’s as well as Rossini’s – as Doctor Bartolo. Mustafa in L’Italiana in Algeri is a close relative, as is Don Magnifico in La Cenerentola. The eponymous anti-hero in Don Pasquale is also a pitiable character – the slimy Dulcamara in L’Elisir d’amore less so. Later in history Sir John in Verdi’s Falstaff is possibly the most complex character in this mould, thanks to Boito’s masterly condensation of Shakespeare’s portraits and Verdi’s music. He has predecessors: Salieri wrote a Falstaff before Verdi was even born. On German ground Otto Nicolai created a rather likeable character in Die lustigen Weiber von Windsor. In operas by Lortzing and Flotow we encounter similar second cousins. We shouldn’t forget Osmin in Die Entführung aus dem Serail either. A lesser known but well delineated relative within the German sphere is Abul Hassan Ali Ebn Bekar, the larger-than-life barber in Peter Cornelius’s Der Barbier von Bagdad. He isn’t an evil person, quite the contrary, but he is a big braggart and manages to make a mess of things. The plot goes back to a story from ‘The Arabian Nights’ and a condensed version goes something like this:

The young and rich Nureddin is deeply in love with Margiana, the daughter of the Cadi. His childhood friend, Bostana, arranges a meeting and Nureddin sends for Abul Hassan Ali Ebn Bekar, the best barber in town, to make him presentable. The barber is more interested in talking about his knowledge of art and science and Nureddin asks his servants to throw him out. The Barber turns furious and chases the servants, knife in hand, but some tactical flatteries makes him calm down and do his job. When Nureddin tells him about his approaching meeting, the barber gets so excited that he offers to accompany Nureddin. In the second act the two lovers meet but are disturbed by the sudden return of the Cadi. Nureddin hides and when the barber hears cries from a slave being punished he believes it is Nureddin and rushes into the house. Believing Nureddin to have been murdered he sends for the Caliph, who arrives. Nureddin is found and pressurised by the Caliph. The Cadi accepts that the young couple should be married. The verbose barber makes such an impression on the Caliph that he is invited to work for him.

Not one of literature’s masterworks, maybe, but much thinner and more incomprehensible librettos have been successfully set to music. Cornelius’s opera was not a success at the premiere on 15 December 1858 at Hoftheater in Weimar. The composer describes the disaster as follows:

‘My work had drawn a full house. The performance filled the evening and was excellent, splendid, considering the difficulties the work presents. Right from the start, the applause was accompanied by persistent hissing from a hired, well-organized and expediently distributed group that was unprecedented in the annals of Weimar … At the end there was a fight lasting ten minutes.’

The reason for the debacle was decidedly not the quality of the music or the play. This was a protest against the conductor of the evening, Franz Liszt, whose radical ideas were not to everybody’s liking – and it was successful. The production was taken off the repertoire and Liszt resigned and left Weimar for good. But the one who suffered the most was Cornelius, who never saw his opera staged again during his lifetime. It was revived about twenty years later, again with no success. In 1884 in Karlsruhe, Felix Mottl – who orchestrated Wagner’s Wesendonck-Lieder – presented it, but in truncated and altered form. It was not until 1904 that it was staged in its original shape. After that it was regarded as one of the best German comic operas – next to Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg according to some judges.

I hadn’t heard the opera before, although there exist two studio recordings. Columbia set it down in London in 1956 with Erich Leinsdorf conducting and a starry cast including Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Nicolai Gedda, Hermann Prey and with Oskar Czerwenka as the barber. In the early 1970s Heinrich Hollreiser recorded it with Sylvia Geszty, Adalbert Kraus, Bernd Weikl and with Karl Ridderbusch as the barber. There also seems to have been an even older, Vienna-based recording, from 1952.

What I knew from as far back as the early 1960s was the overture, which appeared now and then in recordings and on concerts. I remembered it as something quite different from the usual potpourri of melodies from the subsequent opera. This piece, with a playing time of over seven minutes, is symphonically constructed – a kind of symphonic poem in fact. It is artfully orchestrated with a lot of woodwind solos and an orchestral texture that is transparent and airy - more Mozartean than Wagnerian. What is more: the whole opera is permeated by this artfulness with impressive ensembles and powerful but still translucent choruses with some contrapuntal writing. On top of all this there is an atmospheric entr’acte opening act two, thematically built on the muezzin’s proclamation of prayer. It is the only music in the score with an oriental touch.

The proceedings are dominated by Nureddin and Abul Hassan Ali Ebn Bekar, the barber. Both singers are excellent. Horst R. Laubenthal, then at the beginning of a great international career – was born in 1939 and made his debut in 1967. He has a mellifluous lyric tenor, ideally suited to Mozart and the lyric German tenor roles. He is also a vivid actor. The fine love duet in act two is one of the high-spots in the opera. There he is especially winning, partnered by Helen Donath, who here manages to soften her voice a little – elsewhere she can be irritatingly acidulous. There is nothing sour about Hans Sotin’s impressive barber, however. This must be a dream role for a fruity bass and Sotin revels in the opportunities to make a show. His is a large, sonorous, warm and evenly produced voice of exceptional beauty. The very lowest notes – and he is required to sing quite a few of them – are somewhat sketchy but otherwise he is admirable. He produces ringing top notes that many a baritone should envy.

The rest of the cast are more or less comprimarios, but the young Dale Duesing – he was only 26 at the time – is a fine Caliph. Veteran Fritz Peter is a Cadi full of character and Marga Schiml – also still in her twenties – does what she can with Bostana’s role. The versatile Ferdinand Leitner, who had a special affinity with Mozart, obviously enjoys the score. He is well supported by the Cologne Radio forces. The male chorus has a field day in the riveting Hinaus aus Hof und Haus (CD 1 tr. 7), where they are ordered to throw the cackling barber out of the house.

The sound is what is to be expected from a 35-year-old radio recording: not very spectacular but well balanced. I wouldn’t have minded some more cue-points and a libretto should have been included. Not many listeners will be familiar with the work and the brief synopsis is no substitute.

Whether Der Barbier von Bagdad will ever be a standard work again is hard to prophesy – this kind of story has probably lost its attraction to latter-day generations. It is nevertheless rather amusing and the music definitely deserves a better fate than oblivion.

-- Göran Forsling, MusicWeb International

A lasting love affair with the clarinet amongst composers from the dawn until the dusk of the Romantic era (i.e. from Schubert to Strauss) is the key takeaway of this Signum release. In recognition, a trio of leading British soloists - clarinetist Julian Bliss, soprano Ailish Tynan and pianist Christopher Glynn - perform a sumptuous selection of the era's chamber music by Brahms, Chopin, Schubert, Schumann and Richard Strauss. The program is centered around Schubert's iconic The Shepherd on the Rock, virtually the final complete work that Schubert composed before his tragic death in 1828, age 31.

CPO's previous release with the soloists and ensembles of the Boston Early Music Festival was awarded two prestigious prizes. The recording of Charpentier’s opera La Descente d’Orphée aux Enfers and La Couronne de Fleurs received the Grammy Award for the Best Opera Production in February 2015 and recently won the Klassik-Echo 2015, again for the Best Opera Recording of the Year. Prior to this double success, other productions by cpo and BEMF had been nominated for Gramophone Awards. In the category of the Best Opera Production these were Ariadne by Johann Georg Conradi and Thésée and Psyché by Jean-Baptiste Lully. In addition, Thésée and Psyché received nominations in the category honoring Baroque Vocal Works.

Now the American ensemble joins forces with successful soloists like Aaron Sheehan and Teresa Wakim for our production of Handel’s opera Acis and Galatea in the version of 1718, which was composed for the landed estate of the Earl of Carnarvon and does not recycle music from the earlier version. Both Acis and Galatea and the cantata Sarei troppo felice heard here represent decisive turning points in Handel’s career. The Italian cantata came at the beginning of the one and half decades spent by Handel in the service of patrons. Acis and Galatea marks the highpoint of this phase and therefore, like the cantata before it, clearly renders recognizable the musical means available to him in the private ensembles of his employers. Moreover, Acis and Galatea contains the musical and textual seeds of the English oratorio, which after 1742 completely supplanted opera compositions.

RIMSKY-KORSAKOV The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh and the Maiden Fevronya • Vitaly Panfilov ( Prince Vsevolod ); Tatiana Monogarova ( Fevronya ); Mikhail Gubsky ( Grishka Kuterma ); Mikhail Kazakov ( Prince Yury ); Gevorg Hakobyan ( Fyodor Poyarok ); Marika Gulordava ( Page ); Valery Gilmanov ( Bedyay ); Alexander Naumenko ( Burunday ); Alexander Vedernikov, cond; Cagliari Th O & Ch • NAXOS 2.110277/78 (2 DVDs: 187:28) Live: Cagliari 5/2–4/2008


I wanted to see this video because, for many years, I’ve heard exorbitant praise from certain critics regarding Kitezh , yet in listening to the commercial recording conducted by Valery Gergiev I felt let down. The music seemed to me flat and characterless, lacking drama, development, and momentum. Surely, I said to myself, a good stage production would change my mind, as it did with Mussorgsky’s Khovanschina.


Yet opinions on The Invisible City of Kitezh (to abbreviate its title) are divided. Although many critics wax ecstatic over Rimsky-Korsakov’s magnificent orchestration for this work, few outside Russia are very impressed by the opera as a whole. It is an overlong, derivative grand opera in which two old tales of magic were welded together by librettist Vladimir Belsky, and finally presented intact in 1908. Even the first Russian audiences didn’t care much for it, finding it very old-fashioned in concept and musical style as well as overly rambling, though it is still periodically revived, mostly within Russia.


This production gives us a rare glimpse of the opera as performed in Italy. The audience reaction is not enthusiastic; on the contrary, when the applause comes at the ends of acts, it sounds like perhaps 80 to 100 people half-heartedly clapping.


One glance at the production tells you why. Although it is not Regietheater —the characters are, thankfully, clad in traditional-looking costumes—Eimuntas Nekro?ius’s idiotic staging has too much symbolism and too little that resembles reality. The first act, set in the “woods,” presents a stage littered with “wooden” structures, bird houses and the like. Get it? Woods. The presentation of Little Kitezh, where the maiden Fevronya is to marry Prince Vsevolod, is cluttered with giant, tinfoil-covered bell-like objects with people popping out of their tops. Get it? Bells. This kind of idiocy continues throughout a production of a work in which the music itself is also static and rarely wedded to the text. In act IV, scene 1, where Fevronya and Grishka are supposed to be wandering in the woods, what you see is a plain blue-tiled floor with two Erector-set structures in the background. Apparently, Nekro?ius ran out of birdhouses, but not to despair! When Grishka runs off into the woods and Fevronya is left alone, two giant, hideous bird creatures sneak out of the woods and behind her as she sleeps. Perhaps Nekro?ius has seen too many of the Alien movies. In the final scene, supposed to represent Kitezh triumphant, the stage is filled with objects that look like rocket silos.


Musically, many passages sound like leavings from Boris Godunov, and not good leavings at that, so even when the singers are excellent the plot crawls along. It is an opera more about characters who stand there and sing than about characters creating a musical drama. Compare, for instance, the first act to the similar situation in Verdi’s Don Carlo. A prince meets a beautiful woman in the woods, and they fall in love. Verdi miraculously manages to wed lovely music, some of it even memorable, to a flexible musical structure in which the orchestra comments on or moves the action. Rimsky-Korsakov creates a static structure wedded to pretty but undistinguished melodies that just toodle along, and do so for half an hour.


Moreover, the plot is remarkably dismal and depressing for a magic or fairy-tale opera. Everyone sings about death even before the Tartars invade Russia, and several characters die except Fevronya and the seedy drunkard Grishka Kuterma, who becomes a traitor, willing to turn Kitezh over to invading Tartars and finger Fevronya as the snitch just to save his own worthless hide. Prince Vsevolod goes off to battle for Kitezh, not to win it but to die in it. (I’m guessing he flunked military school.) He does so, but returns in the second half of act IV as a ghost, and at the end of the opera Fevronya marries the ghost. And you talk about overlong … each of the first two acts runs over a half hour, but each of the last two acts runs more than an hour apiece.


Getting to the performance, Tatiana Monogarova is simply magnificent as Fevronya, not only vocally but histrionically, which is important because this is a rare Russian opera in that the soprano dominates everything. Here is a woman who fully understands how to inhabit a role. You come to believe wholeheartedly in her character within the first five minutes she is onstage, and she holds you in her thrall to the end. As for her voice, it is a remarkably rich lyric soprano, close to spinto in power, exactly the kind of voice Rimsky wanted for this part. Her midrange, in fact, reminds me strongly of Mirella Freni at her best, only with more power. The top range is not as lovely as Freni’s, but it has its own interesting luster and more metal. Monogarova made her American debut as Lisa in Pique Dame in Houston in 2010, and also began singing Cio-Cio-San around the same time in Europe. She is signed with IMG, and I really do wish her well in what I hope will be a major career.


Vitaly Panfilov, as Prince Vsevolod, is neither an interesting actor nor a particularly fine singer. The voice is fluttery, dry, and percussive. He sings on pitch and phrases well, but that is all one can say of him. His stage presence registers somewhere between nil and mediocre. On the other hand, Mikhail Gubsky as the nefarious Grishka Kuterma is a superb stage actor, though his voice is strictly that of a good comprimario. Nevertheless, the world needs good comprimarios, and he is certainly one of them. His pathetic wheedling is completely believable.


A word of praise is also due Marika Gulordava in the somewhat thankless role of the Page. The Page is analogous to Cassandra in Les Troyens or the Simpleton in Boris, someone who warns of danger to come. Though her role is important it is not as long as either of the other two, yet Gulordava is simply stunning in her one big scene. Her voice is not as beautiful as Monogarova’s, but it has a laser-beam focus with a bright, perhaps over-brilliant top. As a musician and singing actress she is first-rate. I also hope for her to have a good career. Mikhail Kazakov, singing the role of Vesvolod’s father, Prince Yury, has a nice voice but an uneven flutter and a constricted low range, a real detriment for a Russian bass.


Alexander Vedernikov is a fine conductor who obviously loves and understands this music. He brings out all of the wonderful orchestral subtleties of the score and moves the opera about as well as can be expected under the circumstances. Indeed, his conducting here is finer for this particular work than Gergiev’s.


My copy of the DVD may have been defective, but all through the first two acts the video is out of synch with the audio, as if one were watching something in which the video was on a two-second tape delay. On the second DVD, most of it is in synch, yet there are still strange moments when the picture freezes for a couple of seconds, only to jump ahead and eventually catch up with the audio.


Thus there are good and bad points to be taken into consideration in approaching both the work and the performance, but if you are fond of Kitezh I would recommend this for the excellent acting of a handful of participants and the excellent singing of the two sopranos.


FANFARE: Lynn René Bayley


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THE LEGEND OF THE INVISIBLE CITY OF KITEZH AND THE MAIDEN FEVRONYA

Opera in 4 Acts. Sung in Russian
Libretto by Vladimir I. Belsky

Prince Yuri Vsevolodovich – Mikhail Kazakov
Hereditary prince Vsevolod Yuryevich – Vitaly Panfilov
Fevronya – Tatiana Monogarova
Grishka Kuterma – Mikhail Gubsky
Fyodor Poyarok – Gevorg Hakobyan
Page – Marika Gulordava
Two notables – Gianluca Floris, Marek Kalbus
Bedyay – Valery Gilmanov
Burunday – Alexander Naumenko

Orchestra e Coro del Teatro Lirico di Cagliari
(chorus master: Fulvio Fogliazza)
Alexander Vedernikov, conductor

Eimuntas Nekrošius, stage director
Marius Nekrošius, set designer
Nadezhda Gultiayeva, costume designer
Audrius Jankauskas, lighting designer

Recorded live from the Teatro Lirico di Cagliari, Sardinia, 2 and 4 May 2008

Picture format: NTSC 16:9
Sound format: PCM Stereo / Dolby Digital 5.0 / DTS 5.0
Region code: 0 (worldwide)
Subtitles: English
Running time: 187 mins
No. of DVDs: 2 (DVD 5 + DVD 9)

Connolly’s is a distinguished addition to the catalogue.

In many respects Schumann is the archetype of the romantic artist: deeply influenced by literature, committed to powerfully intense emotions, creatively aware of the virtuosity of performers. He was himself a fine pianist, and the first twenty-three of his published compositions were for his own instrument. He then went on to match this achievement in the field of solo song, in which regard he became the true inheritor of Schubert’s mantle.

Another important aspect of Schumann’s creative nature was his fondness for creating large-scale compositions out of sequences of miniatures. He developed this trend in piano works such as Carnaval and Kreisleriana, and continued it in the vocal song-cycles, including for example Frauenliebe und -leben and the two groups of songs under the title Liederkreis (Opp. 24, 39).

All of these issues are germane to this collection of songs presented by Sarah Connolly with the expert support of Eugene Asti. Under the collective title 'Songs of Love and Loss', this Schumann programme includes two cycles from the great song year of 1840, the Liederkreis and Frauenliebe und –Leben. The remaining songs come from later in the composer’s life: the collection entitled Gedichte der Königin Maria Stuart Op.135, the beautiful short 'Requiem' from Op.90 and 'Mein schöner Stern!' Op.101 No.4. These show no falling-off in quality, despite the commonly-held view that his encroaching final illness undermined the quality of the composer’s later compositions.

There are abundant alternative performances of Frauenliebe und –Leben and the Liederkreis, but Sarah Connolly brings a distinguished addition to the catalogue. While many great artists have brought their insights to the former, a personal favourite is the 1996 Deutsche Grammophon disc by Anne-Sophie von Otter with Bengt Forsberg (445 881 2), while in the Op. 39 Liederkreis there is always the issue of whether a man’s voice is better. Among notable interpretations is that of Bryn Terfel, for instance, with Malcolm Martineau (again DG, 447 042 2). Therefore the excellent Sarah Connolly does not become an instant top recommendation, but she does have both the technique and the insight to do full justice to these great songs.

In Frauenliebe und –leben Connolly and Asti tend towards slower tempi, perhaps missing some degree of ardour, though a real highlight of their performance is 'Du Ring an meinem Finger', in which there is much intensity. The balance between voice and piano is nicely achieved by both the artists and the Chandos engineers, while the recording venue, Potton Hall in Suffolk, is a tried and tested acoustic well suited to chamber music and songs.

Although Connolly is not a native German speaker, her treatment of the language is assured and the treatment of the text abounds in all the subtleties the songs have to offer, with a vocal timbre that is rich and nicely in focus. The collaboration of the artists seems even better in the lesser-known songs. For instance Requiem moves to a convincing climax after a beautifully chaste opening phase, and the somewhat austere songs on poems attributed to Mary Queen of Scots have an intensity that is all their own. Perhaps her preference for slower tempi pays its strongest dividends here.

-- Terry Barfoot, MusicWeb International