A delightful opera by a forgotten composer; if you like Handel, check out Cleofide.

Recorded back in 1986, and reissued several times in different forms, including a new reissue, Hasse’s Cleofide is a very odd bird. At nearly four hours, this opera features only high voices: sopranos and counter-tenors. This gives a strange tone to the work; one is used to hearing a variety of voices in Handel’s operas, which are contemporary with Cleofide. But in Cleofide it seems as though something is missing.
 
Robert Hugill reviewed a single disc of excerpts of this opera in 2009 ( review). I agree with Robert’s comments about the quality of the cast, and the variety of the singers. But with nearly four hours of music, this opera is certainly taxing. While it contains much fine music, and many attractive arias, the recitatives are even more uninteresting than usual. When watching an opera on DVD, the recitatives are important, but for recordings, I find them to be relatively useless and distracting. In addition, some of them are overly long, making for a tough listen.
 
So, the solution is to simply not listen to them. After ripping the CDs, I removed the recitatives from the recording’s playlist, and was down to a mere 2 hours and 46 minutes, a nice amount of time to listen to this music. There are 33 recitatives for a total of 1 hour and 4 minutes. With this approach, what was a marathon becomes an evening’s listen, and an inviting one indeed.
 
One can easily appreciate this early William Christie recording with Capella Coloniensis, a group originally formed in 1954 (!) to perform baroque works in historically informed performances. Christie masters this orchestra well, and the playing is impeccable. The casting is excellent, including some of the great singers of the time: Emma Kirkby, in her prime, Agnes Mellon, Dominique Visse and David Cordier, among others. There is even a male soprano, Randall K. Wong, a rare type of singer indeed.
 
The music is delightful. And some of the arias are as long as nine minutes, with some of the longer arias near the end of the work. The singers perform very well, as do the orchestra, and the recording itself is very clean and precise. The only odd thing about it is the fact, as I mentioned earlier, that only sopranos and counter-tenors sing in this work. After a while, I longed to hear a tenor or bass, just for variety.
 
One can compare this opera to Handel’s oratorios and operas; Cleofide is from 1731, and Handel, around that time, had already written such great operas as Rinaldo, Agrippina, Giulio Cesare and Rodelinda. So this type of music was well known, and Hasse was clearly influenced by it. Hasse wrote several dozen operas, and very few are available on disc today. This is a shame, because Cleofide shows that Hasse was a composer to reckon with; not quite up to Handel, but not far away.
 
If you like Handel’s operas, and want to discover an unjustly forgotten composer, Cleofide is worth checking out. It is an entertaining opera - though long; just ignore the recitatives - full of delightful, happy music, performed by excellent musicians and soloists.
 
-- Kirk McElhearn, MusicWeb International

Nearly every music lover is acquainted with Der Freischutz, but the fewest are aware of Euryanthe. In the light of the musical quality of the opera, the disdain for it does not seem fitting. Euryanthe was Carl Maria von Weber’s most ambitious project, one that anything but backfired. The composition may certainly be termed ground-breaking and truly deserves more attention. “A chain of glittering jewels from the beginning to the end. All witty and ingenious,” (Robert Schumann in his critic about Euryanthe.) The present release features a live recording of the work, which was taken in December of 2018 and features the Arnold Schoenberg Chor and the Orf Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, as well as a group of brilliant soloists.

To browse more of Josef Labor's chamber music recordings available on the Capriccio label, click here.

During his lifetime, Josef Labor was a pianist and organist recognized throughout Europe and a celebrity of the Viennese music scene. At the age of three, he lost his sight due to smallpox. Up to now, Josef Labor has been little researched in musicology. Labor was not an expressive musician along the lines of late Romanticism, who made his own life into the starting point of his art. Nor was he a musical innovator, nor simply a conservative. The linking principle is classicist aesthetics, setting great store by clear formal structure and balanced proportions. In this adherence to the ideals of Viennese Classicism, he shows himself to be unimpressed by the vehement conflicts of the time between New Germans and supporters of Brahms. During his lifetime and in his generation Labor was an outsider as a composer, a kind of musical solitary, who positioned himself in a very special way, independent of the spirit of the age.

REVIEW:

If you’ve never heard of Josef Labor (1842-1924), you’re not alone. I only learned about him because he made what is considered to be the rarest piano recording in existence, containing a portion of the Beethoven Op. 10 No. 3 sonata slow movement. Labor’s very free yet intensely expressive playing provides a tiny glimpse into what Beethoven interpretation might have been like in the mid-to-late 19th century. Blind from the age of three due to smallpox, Labor studied at the Vienna Conservatory and befriended Brahms and Richard Strauss. Violinist Joseph Joachim greatly admired Labor, and collaborated with him during the 1860s. King Georg V of Hanover appointed Labor as Royal and Imperial Court Organist. After the King’s death, Austria’s wealthy Wittgenstein family (including the famous brothers Ludwig the philosopher and Paul the pianist) became Labor’s principal benefactor, and arranged for his compositions to be published.

One can describe Labor’s compositional style as the ultimate in fake Brahms and fake Schumann. You won’t get memorable tunes, yet Labor’s sophisticated handling of intricate textures, deft rhythmic interplay, and splendid ear for harmonic detours hold more than passing interest. The Quintet’s Andante stands out for its long melodic lines supported by full-bodied pizzicato underpinnings (the use of double bass gorgeously fills out the bottom end), and for the way in which the ideas evolve into more sustained, contrapuntally involved realizations by the end. Each work’s outer movements aspire to and achieve symphonic grandeur, propelled at times by soaring string unisons and momentum-generating pedal points.

The musicians may not be advertised as a collective group, yet the performances sound impressively polished and integrated in regard to scrupulous ensemble, impeccable solos, and passion at every turn. In other words, these interpretations reflect (and forgive my terrible pun) a “Labor of love”. A must-have release for collectors drawn to the chamber repertoire’s obscure-yet-worthy byways.

– ClassicsToday (Jed Distler)

Classical Music

Anton Bruckner began the revision of his Third Symphony after completing the Fifth on 16 May 1876 and continued working on it sporadically until 28 April 1877. Then, after the Vienna Philharmonic rejected the Symphony for a third time, Bruckner's friend, Hofkapellmeister Johann Herbeck, took matters into his own hands. He arranged to conduct the work himself on the concert series of the Society for the Friends of Music [Gesellschaftskonzerte] on 16 December 1877. After Herbeck passed away unexpectedly, Bruckner was forced to conduct the symphony himself. The performance proved to be one of the worst debacles of his career. The players were rude and unreceptive, and the audience left the concert hall in droves. Despite the public fiasco, Theodor Rattig, one of the few people who stayed, offered to publish the symphony. Two other people who were there at the end, Gustav Mahler and Rudolf Krzyzanowski, prepared a piano four-hand reduction for Rattig's publication which appeared at the end of 1879. It was the first publication of a Bruckner Symphony.

Anton Bruckner finally received the award of an honorary doctorate of the University of Vienna on 11 December 1891. For Bruckner, receiving the doctorate fulfilled a long-time wish. He had spent most of his life pursuing academic credentials and applied for honorary doctorates at Cambridge University in 1882 and at the Universities of Pennsylvania and Cincinnati in 1885. Two days later, Hans Richter conducted the Vienna Philharmonic in the first performance of the second or so-called “Vienna” version of the composer’s First Symphony, which he had dedicated to the university in gratitude for the degree. The changes Bruckner made in the revised version of the First Symphony are not as extensive as those he made to the Third, Fourth, and Eighth Symphonies during the late 1880s and early 1890s. His revisions to the First Symphony did not affect the overall form of any of the movements. He changed many details of orchestration, articulation, and phrase length, some of which are difficult to notice on first hearing. The 1891 autograph score is, nevertheless, the composer’s final word on how he wanted his First Symphony to be performed and understood.

“Since Beethoven, nothing has been written that even comes close!”

The great conductor Arthur Nikisch made this remark to Bruckner’s former student, Joseph Schalk and also his fellow conductor, Hermann Levi, described the piece as “the most significant symphonic work since Beethoven’s death.”

Arthur Nikisch conducted the first performance in the Stadttheater, Leipzig, on 30 December 1884, with Bruckner in the audience. While the performance was not a total triumph, it brought the sixty-year-old composer significant international recognition for the first time. During the composer’s lifetime, the Seventh, especially its Adagio, was his most popular symphony, and it remains among his most beloved and frequently performed works.

Ernst von Dohnányi was interested in various inventions throughout his life, so it is not surprising that around 1909–1910 he became one of the main promoters of pianos with a semi-circular keyboard. At that time, they had long been experimenting with creating the most comfortable keyboard possible, with all its parts being at the same distance from the pianist, and being able to play it with the same body and hand position at the bottom, middle or top of the keyboard range. It seems that the Viennese Ludwig Bösendorfer started making pianos with a concave keyboard (Bogenklaviatur) only in 1910, and Dohnányi used them exclusively in the territory of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. After Dohnányi moved home to Budapest at the end of 1915, one of his own pianos was the short Clutsam-Bösendorfer, which is currently owned by the Budapest Museum of Music History. This CD offers the first recording of this special instrument after a long time restoration.

Bruckner’s Third Symphony had always been something of a problem child among Bruckner’s symphonies, from its disastrous first reception (an enthused youthful Gustav Mahler notwithstanding) until well into the 20th century. In its original form, it is the longest, most Wagnerian of his symphonies – and often considered, rightly or not, the first truly Brucknerian symphony. While some cherish the uncompromising originality of the first version, Bruckner himself wanted the third, much tightened Edition performed, finding it “incomparably better”. It is that final version that is here recorded – and listeners can now easily decide for themselves.

By his own reckoning, Bruckner began his career as a professional composer when he was thirty-nine years old. With a mere exercise for a symphony under his belt – the unnumbered one in F minor – he was now ready to write his first true symphony. The world was not. First performed in 1868 in Linz – badly – the work flopped and was put aside until nine years and five symphonies later, when it was gently adjusted. A subsequent performance in 1884 was Bruckner’s “most successful Viennese performance to date”, prompting, perplexingly, a thorough revision that would be the 1891 “Vienna” version. This recording uses the unadulterated 1868 “Linz” version.

Miklós Rózsa feared that success as a film composer might overshadow his reputation as a composer of classical concert fare. He was right. Three Oscars and 17 Academy Award nominations tends to do that. The two worlds were strangely incompatible and forced Rózsa into what he called his “Double Life” – the title of both a film for which he won an Oscar and that of his autobiography. The three orchestral works presented here, from his early, middle and late phases, provide a charming introduction to his alternative side.

REVIEW:

Works like the ones on this album ought to appeal to lovers of any of Rosza’s many film scores; the musical language is not that far off. The orchestra, an underrated regional group, gives crisp performances under conductor Gregor Bühl on a release that should appeal to both film buffs and fans of 20th century music generally.

— AllMusic.com (James Manheim)

Among Bruckner’s Symphonies, the Fifth is his contrapuntal masterpiece; the grandest until the Eighth. The tour-de-force of a finale gives us an idea of what the finale of the Ninth might have been like. Its magnificent dark and halting opening with the descending bass line – so effectively recalled in the finale – is inimitable. Although long available only in a disfigured version by Franz Schalk, it is also distinct for never having been the subject to revision or, perhaps, even doubt on the part of Bruckner – who never heard it performed with an orchestra. And yet, when Bruckner wrote this masterpiece, he was still far from establishing himself as a composer in Vienna and his spirits were as low as ever, writing a friend that “my life has lost all joy and delight – in vain and for nothing.” A radiant pinnacle from amid darkness.

It was never even an unofficial club of composers like the Russian “Mighty Handful” or the French “Les Six”. And yet, there are striking commonalities among a group of Soviet composers all born in the 1930s. They were hailed from ethnic minorities in the Russia-dominated Soviet Union and they defied the cultural-political directives which eventually led them to find a post-ideological musical language – guided by a personal faith – that enchants listeners to this day with its unique beauty. Giya Kancheli, born in Tbilisi in 1935, is one of them. A fellow composer called him “an ascetic with the temperament of a maximalist – a restrained Vesuvius.” The works on this disc – for and with the piano – display exactly that side of his: To be able to make time seemingly stand still… while continuing to dance.

In celebration of the 150th Anniversary this Album focus on still less-known but exceptional sensitive and impressive Choral Symphonic and Orchestra songs by Max Reger. With these works, Reger entirely adhered to the trend of the time; the large-scale idea, which would have had no place in the operas of the period, is transferred to the concert hall, so to speak, and is as far removed from the "simple" orchestral song as some of Mahler's Rückert-Lieder. The Hebbel Requiem, Op. 144b includes audible parallels with Johannes Brahms‘s German Requiem and was Reger’s memorial for the German soldiers killed in the war.

For more than a century, the members of the Tcherepnin family shaped European music history. All started with Nikolai Tcherepnin (1873-1945) followed by his son Alexander (1899-1971) and finally Ivan (1943-1998) who continued the family tradition of composing already in the third generation. Influenced of their time but still in a traditional and innovative way, these recordings show us the different characteristic styles from late romantic to modernity.