Search results: Search results
53 results
Products
-
![]()
-
![]()
-
O Guiding Night - The Spanish Mystics / Christophers, The Sixteen
$20.99CDCoro
Apr 26, 2011COR16090 -
![]()
-
![]()
-
On SaleDodgson: Mirage - Piano Music
CD$20.99$15.99SOMM Recordings
Apr 19, 2024SOMMCD 0684 -
![]()
-
![]()
- Steve Nelson, Jack Rollins: Frosty the Snowman
- Tchaikovsky: The Seasons, Op. 37b XII. December "Christmas"
- Berlin, I: White Christmas
- Marks, J: Holly Jolly Christmas
- Blake, H: Walking in the Air
- Cory Hills: 'Twas the Night Before Christmas
- Fred Coots, Haven Gillespie: Santa Claus Is Coming to Town
- Guaraldi: Christmas Time Is Here (From "A Charlie Brown Christmas")
- trad: Joy to the World
- trad: Good King Wenceslas
- Martin, Hugh: Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas
- Gruber, F: Silent Night, H. 145
-
On SaleImagine Christmas
CD$13.99$6.99Sono Luminus
Oct 27, 2017DSL-92216 -
![]()
-
![]()
-
Eccles: The Judgment Of Paris, Mad Songs / Curnyn, Crowe, Hulett, Early Opera Company
$21.99CDChandos
Apr 28, 2009CHAN 0759 -
![]()
-
![]()
-
On SaleIn Terra Pax - A Christmas Anthology / Wetton, Bournemouth SO, City Of London Choir
CD$19.99$13.99Naxos
Nov 17, 20098572102 -
![]()
-
![]()
-
On SaleLuminos - Contemporary Music for Clarinet / Woodley, West
CD$20.99$15.99Metier
Jan 12, 2024MEX77118 -
MACMILLAN: CHRISTMAS ORATORIO
$16.50CDLPO
Dec 16, 2022LPO125.2 -
![]()
-
![]()
-
John Blow: Venus And Adonis / Boston Early Music Festival
$18.99CDCPO
May 31, 2011777614-2 -
![]()
-
![]()
-
On SaleWinter Journey / Glynn, Williams
CD$19.99$14.99Signum Classics
Apr 13, 2018SIGCD531 -
![]()
-
![]()
-
Handel: Alceste / Curnyn, Crowe, Hulett, Foster-Williams, Early Opera Company
$21.99CDChandos
May 29, 2012CHAN 0788 -
![]()
-
![]()
-
On SaleWilliams: String Quartets Nos. 1 & 2 - Holst: Phantasy Quartet / Tippett Quartet
CD$20.99$15.99SOMM Recordings
Oct 14, 2022SOMMCD 0656 -
![]()
-
![]()
-
On SaleA Christmas Celebration / Bell, Halle Choirs
CD$20.99$15.99Halle
Sep 09, 2016HLL7545 -
![]()
-
![]()
-
On SaleHindemith: The Long Christmas Dinner
CD$18.99$14.99Bridge Records
Jul 10, 2015BCD9449
O Guiding Night - The Spanish Mystics / Christophers, The Sixteen
O’REGAN Fleeting, God. O vera digna hostia. Beloved, All Things Cease. BYRCHMORE The Dark Night. Prayer of St. Teresa of Avila. A Birthday. WILLIAMS O Guiding Night. Let Nothing Trouble You. O Adonai
Harry Christophers has recorded a great deal of music from Spain’s Siglo de Oro. This program marks a new view of the same period, one that starts with the two Carmelite mystics of the time, St. John of the Cross and St. Teresa of Avila. They were not only mystics in the spiritual life but reformers of the Carmelite religious orders. Among the nine works on this program are six new works commissioned by the Genesis Foundation, each of the three composers setting the prayer of St. Teresa of Avila, “Let Nothing Trouble You,” and a poem of St. John of the Cross, “The Dark Night.” An additional recent composition by each of the three fills out the program. This follows an earlier Christophers disc ( Fanfare 33:1) for which the same foundation commissioned settings of Padre Pio’s prayer by three other British composers. St. Teresa’s prayer is shorter than the six strophes of St. John’s poem.
Tarik O’Regan is the youngest but the most familiar of these three composers, for earlier he had a disc to himself (30: 1) and has received similar commissions to this one. O’Regan and Roderick Williams, the oldest of the three, both set the prayer unaccompanied and the poem with piano. Ruth Byrchmore also sets the prayer unaccompanied but the poem with organ, the magnificent instrument at St. Giles, Cripplegate, where this program was recorded. (Robert Quinney plays both organ and piano.) I hear more similarity than difference in these works, but that suggests that the mystical texts inspired all three composers alike. The three settings of the prayer run five to six minutes, the three of the poem just over 10 minutes each.
The brief added works are varied. O’Regan sets a 10th-century text of St. Wulfstan in Latin, commissioned by Winchester Cathedral. Byrchmore sets a poem by Christina Rossetti commissioned for a St. Cecilia’s Day celebration. Williams sets the Advent antiphon O Adonai in Latin, commissioned by Ex Cathedra ensemble. All are unaccompanied. Christophers brings the excellent performances to life in his accustomed manner. This is a fine program of new music.
FANFARE: J. F. Weber
Dodgson: Mirage - Piano Music
SOMM Recordings is pleased to announce the release of Mirage, a recital of piano music by Stephen Dodgson performed by Osman Tack in his impressive label debut.
Featuring 24 first recordings, Mirage is the third volume in a series marking the 10th anniversary of Dodgson’s death in 2013, and celebrates a composer of “urbane and civilised” music, as Robert Matthew-Walker describes it in informative booklet notes.
The recital spans seven decades from 1956’s Eight Fanciful Preludes – “a judiciously varied suite… bound by the directness of utterance that so distinguished Dodgson’s music” – to the Six Bagatelles composed between 1998 and 2005 when “his inspiration burned brightly in his eighties”.
Also included are the “vastly impressive” Piano Sonata No.7 (Dodgson’s last) from 2003; the “significant” Three Impromptus (1962, revised 1985), and the varied, impressionistic Four Moods of the Wind Suite (1968).
A bonus track, the Rondo in A flat from 1953, will be available for downloading on digital platforms.
Osman Tack is a former Chandos Young Musician of the Year who has performed throughout the UK and internationally as a soloist, accompanist, and chamber musician (having won the Pro-Corda Festival competition).
Dodgson’s Songs Volume 1, The Peasant Poet (SOMMCD 0659) was hailed by Opera Today as “an incredibly interesting and engaging disc… done excellent service by all the performers”. Of Volume 2, The Distances Between (SOMMCD 0673), the British Music Society said “the performances (by some prestigious names) and the warm, lifelike recording are impeccable”.
SOMM’s championing of British song includes Stanford’s Children’s Songs (SOMMCD 0655), “fairly and squarely in the great English song tradition” (MusicWeb International), and Roderick Williams and Susie Allan’s Celebrating English Song (SOMMCD 0177), lauded by Gramophone as “a treat”, and Somervell’s A Shropshire Lad and Maud (SOMMCD 0615), “performances of much beauty, empathy, and sensitivity” (British Music Society).
Imagine Christmas
Note the three striking elements on this album, from the minute you press play. The first is the quality of the performances. These are top-level musicians bringing their same superlative artistry to Christmas favorites that they do to a Schubert quartet or Taverner score. The second is the sterling quality of the recording. If there is a sonic equivalent to sipping a hot toddy while curled up before a roaring fire, it is Sono Luminus’s peerless mixes and captures. Third–and in every way as essential as the previous two–this is a kaleidoscopic collection of styles and interpretations of beloved songs and carols that keeps one eager for the next number. With such a fetching variety of artists and approaches, you will find yourself going top-to-tail on this one. Simplicity is an underrated avenue when it comes to holiday releases, so the entries by Irina Muresanu & Matei Varga, Bruce Levingston, Kathryn Bates, and Skylark Vocal Ensemble are a breath of proverbial fresh air. Muresanu’s seductive playing is a glimpse into the golden age of violin technique–lush vibrato and delicious sentimentality, which infuses “White Christmas” with every bit of nostalgia one could hope for.
CONTENTS:
REVIEW:
This is a well-constructed program of solo piano music that valuably includes the premiere recording of Holst’s Brook Green Suite in Vally Lasker’s transcription and two pieces by Roderick Williams; one an original composition and the other his free transcription of John Ireland’s Sea Fever.
Britten’s Holiday Diary seems to be receiving more recordings and concert performances of late. I last movements from it in a highlights disc from the Husum Festival. The nippy flurries of Early Morning Bathe are finely projected by Maria Marchant, who ensures that the Sailing movement is by no means plain, though after the squalls one returns to its elysian introduction. The big contrast between the showy Fun-Fair aand the subdued Night could hardly be more potent. Ronald Stevenson tended to be more-than-somewhat dismissive of the solo piano writing of some senior British composers. His Peter Grimes Fantasy, which follows with inexorable programmatic logic, is a fugue on two subjects and Britten approved of it according to the paragraph in the booklet that preserves Stevenson’s own introduction to the piece. It’s driving, powerful music, idiomatically laid out, as one would expect of the prolific executant-composer. Maria Marchant’s metronome is set to ‘action’ when it comes to John Ireland’s Ballade of London Nights, which she takes at a real lick—the fastest recording of it yet to be set down, I think. If I happen to prefer the more insinuating tempi of, say, John Lenehan, Alan Rowlands and Eric Parkin, it’s certainly bracing to hear Marchant’s take, if only the once.
Roderick Williams’s Sea Fever transcription opens like Rachmaninov and is vividly accomplished, whilst his own Goodwood by the Sea fits the program delightfully: richly colored, rhythmically vivid, wholly delightful. Kenneth Leighton’s Six Studies are knottier by far, a sequence of so called ‘Study-Variations’, composed in 1969. The color and astringency of the writing is always exciting, the ‘e secco’ instruction fully realized here in the second study, and the way that economy of means develops gravity in the Adagio a particularly revealing example of Leighton’s skill. The garrulous quality of the capricious fourth movement and the dramatic energy of the finale study reinforce the rewarding merits of this brief but intense cycle. Holst’s solo piano music aspires to little more than charm, though the folklorically inflected Toccata is thoroughly engaging: the Brook Green Suite is similarly effortlessly charming and Lasker’s transcription—she was his assistant and ex-pupil—is fresh-faced and effective.
It ends a well selected work list that will reward close listening. Robert Matthew-Walker’s notes are very readable, though he has to strain to make connections between the works from time to time. Fine recording quality.
-- MusicWeb International (Bruce McCollum)
Eccles: The Judgment Of Paris, Mad Songs / Curnyn, Crowe, Hulett, Early Opera Company
ECCLES The Judgment of Paris & • Christian Curnyn (hpd, 1–3 cond); Roderick Williams ( Mercury ); Benjamin Hulett ( Paris ); Susan Bickley ( Juno, mez 3 ); Claire Booth ( Pallas Athena, sop 2 ); Lucy Crowe ( Venus, sop 1 ); Richard Sweeney (gtr, archlute); 1–3 Emilia Benjamin (b vl); 1–3 early op company • CHANDOS 759 (62:13 Text and Translation)
& Restless in Thought; 1 Love’s but the frailty of the Mind; 2 I Burn, I burn 3
The Judgment of Paris , the tale of the famed competition between three Olympian goddesses that led to the Trojan War, was itself the subject of a competition. In 1700, a group of English nobility offered up a libretto by the famous William Congreve for competitive setting. Four composers were selected from those who replied to this ad in the London Gazette:
Several Persons of Quality having, for the Encouragement of MUSICK Advanced 200 Guineas, to be distributed in 4 Prizes, the First of 100, the Second of 50, the Third of 30 and the Fourth of 20 Guineas, to such Masters as shall be adjudged to compose the best; this is therefore to give Notice, that those who intend to put in for the Prizes, are to repair to Jacob Tonson at Grays-Inn-Gate before Easter-Day next, where they may be further Informed.
All four completed works were presented on stage individually, in events that, according to Congreve, a social snob of the first water, were “crammed with beauties and beaux, not one scrub being admitted.” This was followed by all four Judgments being offered as a single evening’s entertainment, with subscribers choosing the order of winners. John Weldon, organist of New College, Oxford and a former pupil of Purcell’s, scored something of an upset victory, having little previous theatrical experience. Eccles, the favorite, musical director for the Lincoln’s Inn Fields company and one of the king’s 24 musicians-in-ordinary, came in second, ahead of Daniel Purcell, the late composer’s younger brother. Placing last was Gottfried Finger, a Moravian composer and viol-player who a few professional musicians felt made the best showing of all. According to Roger North, James II’s attorney general and an inveterate concertgoer, Finger complained, perhaps unreasonably, that he had hoped to be “judged by men, and not by boys.” Sadly, his Judgment of Paris is lost, though all three of the others have survived; they were presented in 1989 at Proms concerts, where Eccles was given the palm. I can’t speak to the versions of Weldon or Daniel Purcell, though a bundled recording of all three works would have made for some fine comparisons. In any case, the opera of Eccles is by no means easily dismissed. Choral pieces are handled with distinction. Melodies are usually unadorned, and not infrequently possess a popular cast. The work is technically assured, rhythmically varied, and theatrically alive.
The judgment section of the piece, following the exposition, supplies a good illustration of the composer’s gifts. In it, Eccles differentiates among the three goddesses who seek the golden apple from Paris, providing each with a distinctive ritornello and brief, introductory song. Juno receives a majestic march; Pallas Athena, a graceful chaconne, whose accented second beat seems to sweep all before it; Venus, a minor-key sarabande that utilizes two recorders and a flute in the melodic line to emphasize what the period perceived as femininity. (At least she comes off better than in Tannhäuser .) Congreve shrewdly leaves out all efforts at bribery up to this point, however, leading to confusion in the mind of Paris, and a second, intensified round of presentations by the deific trio. In the fey “Let Ambition fire thy Mind,” Juno delivers a darkly martial, minor-key piece. She promises to Paris the delights of ruling an empire without toil or care. (The concluding verse, given to the divided chorus, with the violins running semiquaver figures, is especially effective.) The theme itself proved catchy enough upon publication to survive as a popular solo fiddle tune of the day. Boswell wrote of his almost obsessive affection for it. Ironically, a friend of mine who was part-timing as a Celtic fiddler once asked me if I knew why an old piece he played was given the odd name of “Let Ambition fire thy Mind.” After that, “Hark, hark! the glorious Voice of War” seems a small step down in energy and character, though it grants Pallas the first appearance of trumpets in the opera, alla battaglia . Venus restores an edge to the competition with “Nature fram’d thee sure for Loving,” a haunting minor key tune whose sensuous intimacy proves Handel wasn’t the only one capable of musically ravishing an English Baroque audience.
The recording concludes with three “mad songs.” These were very popular on London stages at the time, involving a female singer whose unrequited or suddenly terminated love leads to insanity. This chaotic madness is then revealed in a series of rhetorically balanced and logically contoured poems. I confess to little love for the genre, as you might guess from my remarks, but these three of Eccles are at least pleasant, if unmemorable. I find the best of the lot to be “I burn, I burn, my Brain consumes to Ashes,” and that’s at least in part due to its performer, Susan Bickley. If this recording were to offer its own golden apple to one of its three female soloists for articulation, tone, and dramatic interpretation, she would win, hands down. Bickley is one of those mezzos who shade up to a soprano, and her upper range is bright and ringingly glorious in its sound. Claire Booth’s slightly dull tone is not always well supported, and though she enunciates well, I find her far too restrained in lines that brim over with ardor for and joy in war. Lucy Crowe’s sweet tone and refined phrasing makes her an excellent choice for Venus, though, and if she’s rushed a bit in the opera, there’s more expressiveness in her mad song, “Restless in Thought disturb’d in Mind.”
The rest of the cast is top notch. Benjamin Hulett displays an attractive lyric tenor voice, notable for its sensitive deployment of color in “O Ravishing Delight.” Baritone Roderick Williams does a particularly fine job with the phrasing of his only song, “Fear not, Mortal, none shall harm thee.” This is my first exposure to the early opera company, an ensemble of 22 performers; effectively 18, if you disregard the brief appearance of the four trumpets. They deploy two bass violins and a bass viol instead of cellos and double basses on this release, along with a lowered A pitch of 392 Hz. The resulting sound is mellow, if not dark, vitiated by a few rushed tempo choices, notably Venus’s second song. Balance between singers and orchestra is good, with excellent choices for continuo.
It’s great to have this major work by Eccles easily available on disc. Perhaps we can now get the other two extant versions of the opera, as well—or possibly his opera Semele , set to another text by Congreve. Regardless, there’s much to enjoy, here.
FANFARE: Barry Brenesal
In Terra Pax - A Christmas Anthology / Wetton, Bournemouth SO, City Of London Choir
Baritone Roderick Williams and soprano Julia Doyle are ideal soloists in the Finzi, but Williams stands out for his warm, lyrical tone, fluid, natural phrasing, and affecting expression. He's a very gifted interpreter whose discs of Finzi songs and "Children's" songs are well worth checking out. Doyle's opening to the Leighton and subsequent interaction with the choir in this difficult a cappella work is very well done, as is the substantial contribution from the orchestra. Conductor Hilary Davan Wetton has a cool and perfectly judged sense of both the celebratory and the serene, important in realizing the variety of mood and complexity in these 20th-century works. I had a little trouble with the extremely slight intonation discrepancy between choir and organ in Rutter's What sweeter music, which must have been a function of the particular acoustic space--a different venue from most of the other selections. Some listeners will notice; others won't.
The program ends in grand style with Vaughan Williams' God bless the Master (the last of his set of four "Winter" songs from his Folk songs of the four seasons. You can't help but be caught up in the joyful spirit that's apparent throughout all the performances on this disc, from the soloists and accompanists to the choir and orchestra. And while that alone is reason enough to own this, you really shouldn't miss the Leighton or the very rarely-recorded In terra pax, in this now-reference version of the work.
--David Vernier, ClassicsToday.com
Luminos - Contemporary Music for Clarinet / Woodley, West
A captivating anthology of British clarinet compositions curated and performed by versatile musician Ronald Woodley and pianist Andrew West. This collection explores British musical modernism, featuring both new and underappreciated pieces from the twentieth century by composers Elisabeth Lutyens, Angela Elizabeth Slater, Morris Pert, Christopher Fox, and Edward Cowie. Woodley's deep-rooted fascination for the basset horn, inspired by Lutyens, drove him to rediscover the world of British musical modernism, revealing its complexities and dynamics.
Notable compositions in the anthology include Elisabeth Lutyens'"This Green Tide" for the basset horn, Angela Elizabeth Slater's"Around the Darkening Sun" for bass clarinet and piano, Morris Pert's"Luminos" for basset horn and piano, Christopher Fox's"This has happened before" featuring multitracked bass clarinets, and Edward Cowie's"Heather Jean Nocturnes" inspired by visual art. This collection is a valuable addition for clarinet enthusiasts and music lovers, shedding light on the lesser-known gems of British music and showcasing the power of artistic collaboration across mediums, offering a glimpse into the evolution of British music.
Ronald Woodley has a distinguished academic background, holding the title of Emeritus Professor of Music at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire. His career spans the roles of clarinettist, chamber pianist, and musicologist. Trained at the Royal Northern College of Music, he completed a doctorate in musicology at Keble College, Oxford. Woodley has been the dedicatee of numerous works by esteemed composers and has recorded a wide range of music, including bass clarinet compositions and twentieth-century British song. As a respected musicologist, he specializes in late medieval music theory, particularly the fifteenth-century musician Johannes Tinctoris, and has conducted research on various composers and early recordings. In his chamber pianist role, he has collaborated with renowned tenor James Geer and pianist Andrew West.
Andrew West, an accomplished pianist with a deep connection to contemporary music, has premiered works by renowned composers like Birtwistle, Henze, Goehr, and Wigglesworth in collaboration with prominent vocalists such as Mark Padmore and Roderick Williams. He also enjoys a long-standing partnership with flautist Emily Beynon, embarking on a five-CD project that explores flute and piano repertoire dating back to the Second World War. Andrew's extensive discography includes recordings with various artists, including Strauss, Les Six, and Schubert. He serves as Chairman and Artistic Director of the Kirckman Concert Society and holds positions at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and the Royal Academy of Music, where he was recently named a Fellow.
MACMILLAN: CHRISTMAS ORATORIO
John Blow: Venus And Adonis / Boston Early Music Festival
BLOW Venus and Adonis & • Paul O’Dette, Stephen Stubbs, cond; Amanda Forsythe ( Venus ); Tyler Duncan ( Adonis ); Mireille Lebel ( Cupid ); Boston Early Music Fest Vocal/Ch Ens • CPO 777 614-2 (65:21 Text and Translation)
& Welcome, Ev’ry Guest. Chloe Found Amyntas Lying All in Tears. Ground in g
Venus and Adonis is an opera or masque (at the time, an opera intended for royal presentation) composed by John Blow in or around 1683. It isn’t the earliest English work of its kind to be set to music without spoken dialogue, though it is the first whose score is known to have survived. A tally of its predecessors yields much of interest. The great playwright Ben Jonson wrote that Nicolas Lanier’s setting of one of his masques in 1617 was completely composed, and in “stylo recitativo,” while William Davenant penned the libretto in 1656 for an all-sung opera titled The Siege of Rhodes , with music by Henry Cooke, Henry Lawes, and Matthew Locke. Two other operas composed around that time, Richard Flecknoe’s Ariadne Deserted by Theseus and The Marriage of Oceanus and Brittania , were also sung without spoken dialogue. Whether these or other operas furnished Blow with any English precedent to draw upon is impossible to determine, though the lack of any similar dramatic works in his career may indicate a commission or request of some kind.
The opera’s subject is well known, but here, too, a mystery arises. In other versions of the myth, Venus tries to persuade her lover Adonis not to go hunting; he refuses, leaves, then dies. Blow’s librettist, Anne Kingsmill, a maid of honor to the Duchess of York, reverses the roles, making it Venus who repeatedly demands that Adonis go forth to do battle via hunting, while Adonis wishes to stay with her. The reason for this inversion has never been explained, but that one existed is universally acknowledged. Royal masques (and French opera-ballet, such as Charles II enjoyed and occasionally took part in at Versailles while in exile) always operated at multiple propagandistic levels, and the little we know about the opera’s first performance is that it was performed at court with Mary “Moll” Davis, one of Charles II’s former mistresses and an actress of some ability, as Venus, while her daughter by the King, Lady Mary Tudor, was Cupid. (She would have been about 10 years old at the time of Venus and Adonis . Later she would marry three times, always into the nobility, and have four children, two of whom were hanged for treason as Jacobites.) About one of the opera’s subtextual political meanings we are reasonably certain, then: The presence of Mary Tudor amounted to recognition in her father’s eyes before his court. Beyond that, we can only guess about Venus’s harsh behavior. Charles II was known among other personal qualities for his great discretion, and his court records imitate their master in this.
This studio recording followed by almost a year the Boston Early Music Festival’s double-bill performance of Venus and Adonis paired with Charpentier’s Acteon . I saw that production in late 2008, with all the trimmings, scholarly and entertaining, that the BEMF bestows on its operatic productions. None of the visuals are available here, of course, but the production’s stylishness and vitality under the dual leadership of Paul O’Dette and Stephen Stubbs are palpable. Amanda Forsythe combines a radiantly focused soprano with excellent enunciation and a dramatic coloration of the text. Surely other fanciers of archival operatic performance besides myself would proclaim “My Shepherd, Will You Know the Art” a superb example of shading and phrasing if it were only hip-deep in tics, rumble, restricted frequency response, and scratchy background noise on an acoustical 78 rpm shellac disc. She is well matched in all respects by Tyler Duncan’s darkly suave baritone. His especially fine lower extension is heard to advantage in “You Who the Slothful Joys of City Hate.” Finally, there’s Mireille Lebel as Cupid, a relatively simple part as written, and suited to a talented 10-year-old probably trained in singing for several years. Lebel gives us characterization, a great deal of color, and I suspect more in the way of delicately executed figurations than Mary Tudor managed.
I can’t claim to have listened to all the available competition. Of those I’ve heard, Philip Pickett’s vigorous, sharply accented account (Decca 473713) is fortunate enough to have the rich-voiced Catherine Bott as Venus, though neither oratorio-like Michael George nor the harpsichord-laden continuo do much for me. Elizabeth Kenny/Theatre of the Ayre (Wigmore Hall Live 43) has a superior Adonis in Roderick Williams, but I find Sophie Daneman not as vocally or dramatically as interesting as either Forsythe or Bott, while Elin Manahan Thomas seems too hard-edged for Cupid.
Given its 50-minute length, the BEMF folks supply three additional pieces that were not sung live in the Chamber Opera series. Welcome, Ev’ry Guest is the opening number to Blow’s song collection Amphion Anglicus , published in 1700. Forsythe’s control of agility and dynamics come to the fore in this virtuoso piece.
Chloe Found Amyntas Lying All in Tears is a setting of a Dryden poem published in 1693. It is a mock pastoral: The shepherd Amyntas begs for a kiss from, and is ridiculed by, his Chloe, who requires three verses before she repents (with some risqué play on words). Blow has great fun portraying Amyntas’s quasi-pathos, complete with elaborate chromaticism and madrigalisms, and Chloe’s cruel, blithely uncaring response. The trio of two tenors and a bass-baritone produce a fine sound, with excellent intonation, and the slow, pointed skipping of Chloe’s rhythms by the continuo are highlights.
Finally, the Ground in G Minor spotlights the stylish and technically expert work of Robert Mealy and Peter Spissky. I can’t claim much familiarity with the latter, but Mealy is a fixture at many early-music festivals, as well as a professor of early music at Yale. He’s on several records, but seldom in any solo capacity—would that were to change, based on several instrumental concerts I’ve seen.
The sound is generally good and close for the vocalists, as it should be, though I note one oddity in Venus and Adonis : Forsythe’s microphone audibly diminishes in volume in the middle of her repeat of “hounds” on F in “Hark, Hark, the Hunters; Hark, Hark, the Hounds!” This should have been fixed before release.
That very minor blemish aside, this is a first-rate release in all respects. BEMF has yet another highly successful operatic recording to its credit.
FANFARE: Barry Brenesal
Winter Journey / Glynn, Williams
Celebrated soloists Roderick Wiliams and Christopher Glynn perform a new English translation of Franz Schubert’s Winterreise. Composed in 1827 whilst in the grip of the illness that would ultimately kill him, Schubert’s setting of Wilhelm Muller’s poetry takes on an added tragic interpretation as it follows the narrative of a spurned lover travelling through a cold and barren landscape. Christopher Glynn writes on this new recording: “We hope this Winter Journey can offer English-speaking listeners a way to experience the story’s sense alongside the music’s sound, with something of the same directness that Schubert surely intended when he sat down at the piano in 1827 and sang these songs for the first time to his friends.” This release is the first in a series of three English language programmes of Schubert’s song cycles. Future releases include The Shepherd on the Rock (Der Hirt auf dem Felsen) and The Fair Maid of the Mill (Die schöne Müllerin).
Handel: Alceste / Curnyn, Crowe, Hulett, Foster-Williams, Early Opera Company
It’s just that Crowe so completely embraces, embodies, and possesses her music, her voice so captivating, every phrase delivered with the natural, unmannered purity that comes with consummate technique and comprehensive textual understanding. For her, a climactic high note (as at the close of “Come fancy empress…”) is not an objective but a thing to savor in the context of the whole line, indeed of the whole song; and the reams of twirling runs are a means, albeit a free-spirited and fancy means, through the vibrant, verdant harmonic texture. Ah, but that high note—and also those many earlier passages of leaping intervals—are so perfectly sung, all the more affecting because they are so fleeting, uncatchable, and as a consequence, inevitably repeatable. And those signature Handelian runs—no one sings these with such ease, unencumbered as a bird in flight.
To be sure, there’s lots more to savor on this disc, including Christian Curnyn’s absolutely spot-on direction, keeping things moving with his superb orchestra at a theatrically cheerable pace, even without the actual “theatrical” bits of the original play to define the action (whatever it was). Who cares, when the music is this typically, engagingly Handelian? My only reservations are the usual ones in Handel’s vocal music: the tenor and bass, who both have very fine voices and an excellent sense of style, manage their melismatic passages via the “ha-ha-ha” school of vocalism—which is not only distracting (I would even say irritating), but technically faulty and musically unjustifiable. They are by no means serious offenders—but the mannerism is noticeable; however, for the pure pleasure of Crowe’s singing, these are distractions that you can easily overlook, or skip over. This is one not to miss.
-- David Vernier, ClassicsToday.com
Alceste was planned as a lavish collaboration between the impresario John Rich, the celebrated set-designer Servandoni and the rambunctious author of Roderick Random, Tobias Smollett, but it never made it to the stage. Notes by the librettist Thomas Morell hint that the play may have been cancelled owing to Handel’s incidental music being too difficult for the cast. However, it seems that Rich may simply have decided that an adaptation of a drama by Euripides was too risky a venture. This was, after all, a period in which the tastes of the London audience were as volatile as the explosives that had destroyed Servandoni’s Temple of Peace during the Green Park performance of Handel’s Music for the Royal Fireworks.
Christian Curnyn’s delicious recording of the surviving score is amplified with a sinfonia from Admeto and a passacaglia from Radamisto. These fizzy, sexily swung orchestral additions emphasise the parallels between Handel’s incidental music and Purcell’s music for King Arthur, The Fairy Queen and The Tempest.
Though Alceste was written in 1749-50 and features one aria that could only date from that time (the exquisite lullaby ‘Gentle Morpheus, son of night’), it observes the contours of a Restoration masque. Alcestis’s journey to the Underworld is enchanting, with Curnyn’s fleet strings, intimately proportioned chorus, and polished soloists, soprano Lucy Crowe, tenor Benjamin Hulett and bass-baritone Andrew Foster-Williams. The choral writing marries the pastoral delicacy of Handel’s Acis and Galatea with stylings from Purcell’s Odes to St Cecilia, showing Handel’s feel for local tastes, and Curnyn’s perceptive approach to Handel.
Performance: 5 (out of 5); Sound: 5 (out of 5)
-- Anna Picard, BBC Music Magazine
Williams: String Quartets Nos. 1 & 2 - Holst: Phantasy Quartet / Tippett Quartet
SOMM Recordings celebrates the 150th anniversary of Ralph Vaughan Williams’s birth with insightful, deeply felt accounts of his String Quartets Nos.1 and 2, coupled with Gustav Holst’s Phantasy Quartet, by the Tippett Quartet.
This major release sheds new light on one of the enduring friendships of 20th-century British music, Vaughan Williams and Holst having first met at the Royal College of Music in 1895. Vaughan Williams’ early interest in chamber music was fired by lessons with Max Bruch and Maurice Ravel, which prompted his String Quartet No.1 in G minor in 1908, later revised in 1922. It reveals Vaughan Williams, as Robert Matthew-Walker’s authoritative booklet notes suggest, “at his subtlest and most varied: lively, intense and rhythmically delightful… Nothing quite like this had appeared in English chamber-music up to that time”. His last but one chamber work, the A minor String Quartet No.2 (dedicated to Jean Stewart, violist of the Menges Quartet who gave its premiere in October 1944) gives prominence to the viola. Colored by wartime experience, it is a work of “turbulence and angst… an unemotional contemplation of bleak vistas” that movingly gives way to consoling serenity. Holst’s attractive Phantasy Quartet from 1917, heard here in Roderick Swanston’s edition commissioned by the Tippett Quartet who gave its first performance on BBC Radio 3’s In Tune, is based on four British folk-songs and offers “easy-going charm as well as much playfulness and warmth”.
The release continues the Tippett Quartet’s championing of British chamber music on SOMM, most recently with Dedication which focused on Ruth Gipps’ clarinet-led music (SOMMCD 0641) and was “recommended” by Gramophone. Their coupling of string quartets by William Alwyn and Doreen Carwithen (SOMMCD 0194) merited a five-star BBC Music Magazine review and was praised by The Strad for its “radiant insight and affection… utterly captivating”.
A Christmas Celebration / Bell, Halle Choirs
One of the best parts of the Halle Christmas celebration is the inclusion of the entire Halle family- the Halle and Halle Choir, as well as Halle’s Youth Choir and Children’s Choir. This lovely collection of popular, rare, and newly discovered holiday gems will bring festivity to all of your holiday gatherings. Compositions include works from film composers such as John Williams and Nigel Hess, as well as choral superstars like John Rutter and John Gardner. Especially notable is the orchestral showpiece Noel!, which was written specifically for Halle and conductor Stephen Bell by Roderick Elms, and is receiving here its world premiere recording. “A lovely festive celebration and a reminder of what Christmas is all about” (Oldham Chronicle)
-----
TRACKLIST/PERFORMERS:
A Christmas Overture - Nigel Hess
O Holy Night Adam - arr. Battiwalla *
Tomorrow Shall Be My Dancing Day - John Gardner ^
In Dulci Jubilo - arr. Pearsall *^
Noel - Roderick Elms
Somewhere in my Memory - John Williams ~
Fairytale Sleighride - Adam Saunders
Angels’ Carol - John Rutter *
Waltz, Winter Bonfire - Sergei Prokofiev
Personent Hodie - arr. Gustav Holst *
The Holy Boy - John Ireland
Jesus Christ the Apple Tree - Elizabeth Poston ^
A Christmas Carnival - Richard Bissill
In The Bleak Midwinter - Harold Darke/Christina Rossetti *^
Dance of the Tumblers - Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov
Christmas on the Beach at Waikiki - Marta Keen arr. Alwyn Green ~
Sleighride - Leroy Anderson
We wish you a Merry Christmas *^
Conductor
Stephen Bell
Soloists/Artists
Hallé Choir *
Hallé Youth Choir ^
Hallé Children's Choir ~
Hindemith: The Long Christmas Dinner
Hindemith conducted the first English performance of the opera at the Juilliard School in New York just nine months before his death in December 1963. For the libretto he persuaded Thornton Wilder (1897-1975) to collaborate with him in adapting his own one-act play of the same name that he had written thirty years previously. Wilder remains a cornerstone of the American literary and theatrical establishment but was notoriously unwilling to allow his works to be used for alternative theatrical or musical use. Hence although The Matchmaker did make it to the stage as Jerry Herman's Hello Dolly, he refused permission for his most famous works; Our Town and The Skin of our Teeth. The latter was mooted as a musical by Bernstein - which the author accepted - but when that venture collapsed he rejected Bernstein's further approach to make it an opera. According to the liner written by Tappan Wilder - Wilder's nephew and literary executor - he was extremely well versed in music in general and opera in particular as well as many languages. Skills, one imagines, that must help the collaborative process between composer and librettist a lot.
The dramatic conceit behind this highly compressed work is essentially a simple one. The drama is presented in a single fluid sequence of Christmas dinners in one household over a period of ninety years. There is no significance with it being Christmas except that it is a day that brings families together so the audience witnesses the succeeding generations in the same setting. Apparently Orson Welles credited the original play as the inspiration behind the famous 'breakfast-montage' sequence in Citizen Kane where the audience witnesses the changing/decaying relationship between Kane and his first wife. Hindemith writes in a similarly fluid style - there is little division between scenes. He uses recurring motifs to signify the passing years. Wilder's libretto revisits moments of perfunctory conversation that will be familiar to every family; "how many years have we lived here?", "you were missed at church today", "I remember when ..." With such conversational text it comes as no surprise that Hindemith writes in an arioso/recitative style - this reminded me in technique if not style of that used by Vaughan Williams in his equally compact and dramatically potent Riders to the Sea. There are few if any arias or indeed ensembles. That being said a highlight of the score is a dramatically moving and technically brilliant sextet where Sam, one of the central family's sons is on leave from the army. He tells his family to act exactly as normal so he has memories to treasure and over their prattling inconsequential small talk he sings a touching counter-melody chorale-like song; "I will hold this tight! I shall remember you!"
To give some sense of the dramatic compression at work: Sam exits; "and so good-bye", the next line of the text laments his death in the war "He was only a boy, a mere boy ... What can we do ... only time can help " and the line following that has moved the plot forward by some years and introduces another character on another Christmas day. Memory, memorial and how we live through the actions and memories of our relatives past and future lie at the heart of this work. The house is the unchanging focal point - although the closing line of the work is "And they're building a new house" but it is the lives of the inhabitants of the house that count.
Not because the text is convoluted or opaque this is an opera that requires considerable concentration if you are not quite literally to lose the plot. Fortunately the entire libretto - in English and Hindemith's own German translation - is included. Layers of potential confusion are added by the fact that - as with many families - certain names are passed down hence we have two Lucias and two Rodericks. Even more confusion comes from the fact that the same singer sings both Lucias and another sings two different roles. Seen live, this might be clear through transitions of costume or setting - with only the ear to guide — blink (in an auditory sense) and you will have dropped a decade. My sole observation with this as a piece of theatre is, I wonder if the compression prevents the audience becoming engaged with any individual character - they simply do not inhabit the stage long enough. That being said, Wilder's drawing of character is so searching and well-observed that I think most of us would recognise personality types and scenarios from our own experience that give weight and resonance to these precisely-drawn sketches.
Hindemith makes no attempt to place the music in time or place. Just the opposite in fact - his chamber orchestra includes a rather anachronistic harpsichord. This was surely the right decision - with such an express journey over the best part of a century it would end up a patch-work of pastiche. Neither does he make any particular significance of it being Christmas except for the work's brief Prelude//Introduction which is a rather curdled and harmonically dense take on "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" - which is about as un-merry as it is possible to imagine. In the essay accompanying the disc by Joel Haney he describes the work as one "which ponders the experience of time as a condition of human possibility and limitation -'the bright and the dark' - through the rise and decline of an American bourgeois family". The brilliance of both authors lies in the way they tie this sense of continuity across time - Hindemith's is a slightly subtler skill because he uses fragments of melody and motif which burrow into the subconscious so by the second or third listen the ear begins to pick up on the connections the music is making with recurring characters situations or text. Hence, this is the work of a master-craftsman. As so often, I find the accusation of Hindemith being a dry or dusty composer wholly without justification. No, he does not write big arching overtly emotional melodies. Rather he points to subtler, more 'real' scenarios which have resonance and truth for the engaged audience member.
So to this performance; Leon Botstein and his American Symphony Orchestra clearly thrive on the discovery and performance of little-known and under-appreciated works. In the past with some of the grander-scale and overtly Romantic works I have found Botstein's approach to be a degree clinical and unwilling to unbutton. Here the precision and measured emotion of Hindemith's score seems to chime perfectly with his aesthetic. This is a recording of a single live performance which given the ensemble complexities and unfamiliarity of the piece is remarkably good. There is no audible audience noise - my only sorrow is that the hall ambience is cut off very quickly at the end of the work - to preclude applause one supposes. The orchestra play very well - the engineering places the instruments quite closely behind the voices which occasionally obscures the text. All of the singers are of a very high standard and fortunately most of the text is sung with commendable clarity. Of particular brilliance is the beautifully light and clear singing of Kathryn Guthrie as Leonora. Indeed the entire cast are excellent both in ensemble and individually. None make any attempt to 'age' their voices with their characters - something perhaps an actor in the original theatrical version might.
Bridge present this single CD in a double CD case - presumably to allow for the thicker than usual liner/libretto. As well as the text the liner includes the usual performer biographies as well as two useful essays about the work. The disc runs for less than fifty minutes but so concentrated and complete in itself is the work that a filler would seem inappropriate and unnecessary. A fascinating and rather moving work. It reveals Hindemith and Wilder as masters of the slow-burn potent theatrical experience which lingers in the memory for the power of its insight into the human condition.
-- Nick Barnard, MusicWeb International
