Classical Music

WEILL Historical Recordings from Die Dreigroschenoper • various singers, conductors, orchestras • CAPRICCIO C5061, mono (2 CDs: 148:38)


& Excerpts from: Mahagonny, Der Zar lässt sich Fotografieren, Happy End, Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny, Der Silbersee . Various songs


This is an odd collection of vintage Weill recordings, one CD for Die Dreigroschenoper , another spread across a variety of works: at times fascinating, at other times, frustrating. Fascinating is the only word to describe the French and Danish singers who recorded four selections from Die Dreigroschenoper in the late 1920s and early 1930s—with especial note taken of Marianne Oswald’s very slow, apache -like Canon Song, and Odette Florelle’s Song of Pirate Johnny, sung very convincingly with the refrain in a fine chest voice. (Florelle was to portray Polly in Pabst’s thoroughly entertaining but heavily cut 1931 film version.) Frustrating is the fact that so much more was recorded at roughly the time from this opera in lands as far apart as Japan and Palestine, but none of that has yet been made available on CD.


Fascinating, again, is the term I’d use for Harold Paulsen’s four Homocord sides (1928). He was the original Mackie Messer. His thin, reedy cabaret voice is used with so much personality that nothing else matters. Not so the original Tiger Brown, Kurt Gerron, nor Carola Neher, who was scheduled to play the original Polly and took over the role in 1929. Gerron is harsh and grating (it’s his version of the Moritat that Ernie Kovacs used when he wanted to create a surreal atmosphere on his legendary comedy series), while Neher is clearly fighting the tempo and rigidity of her unnamed conductor.


Fascinating is the term for Klemperer’s recording of four selections from Die Dreigroschenoper for wind orchestra, arranged by Weill. These have a wonderfully pawky, poker-faced humor. Frustrating readily refers to the numerous cuts both from this opera and others of Weill included here that are simply band versions without singers. They’re typical uptight late 1920s “jazz” bands, too, where precision and speed took the place of improvisation and flexibility; but in any case, much of the pleasure in the songs comes from the wedding of words, music, and delivery, which you don’t get in these knock-off renditions. The nadir is probably “Marek Weber and his Orchestra” in a 1928 band version of the Alabama Song from Mahagonny , though the slurpy saxophone in the Tango Angèle from Der Zar lässt sich Photographieren runs it a close, nightmarish second.


More fascinating material: everything here with Lotta Lenya, most especially a dreamlike 1930 Homocord version of the Alabama Song with an unnamed female chorus, bizarrely accented English, and her trademark wispy upper range. Equally good are a series of six songs featuring Lenya with Weill at the piano, recorded in 1943, and a pair of songs with the same performers recorded for shortwave transmission to Germany. I’ll give a reluctant nod as well to Ernst Busch, whose pencil-thin voice is managed with energy and character in two selections from neglected Der Silbersee . (His conductor in 1933 is one Maurice de Abravanel, some years before he’d drop the “de” and make the Utah Symphony his own.)


Further frustrations follow, thanks to the transfers. The editing job removing ticks and scratches is, I’m sorry to write, one of the most amateurish I’ve ever encountered on a professional release, with numerous out-of-phase joins, and excisions large enough to regularly throw off the rhythms in several pieces. I’d rather have the scratches than the resulting audio bubbles where they were removed, or the places where the music skips a beat or two.


Great timings for both discs, and the liner notes are decent—though the note writer missed Symposium 1285 in claiming that the Electrola song compilation from Die Dreigroschenoper (excerpts from several pieces segued together) was presented here for the first time complete.


In the end, the pluses of this set win over the minuses, but I’ll admit that the botched editing nearly tips the scales for me the other way. There’s still room out there for a really good comparative compilation of Die Dreigroschenoper material, however, including a lot of non-German content that has yet to be released on CD.


FANFARE: Barry Brenesal

Classical Music

A festive concert of great voices, this Volkslied-Edition offers on 5 CDs the most famous and most beloved German folksongs, performed by well known singers like Hermann Prey, Peter Schreier, and famous choirs, especially boys choirs, such as the Dresden Kreuzchor, Thomanerchor Leipzig and the Regensburger Domspatzen. A well done edition for all friends of choir music offered for a verys special price!

Classical Music

The music of Baroque composer Johann Friedrich Fasch is more often heard on classical radio than in the concert hall, yet his works are engaging, with strong melodic interest. This album features two of his overture-suites and appealing concertos for a variety of wind instruments.

This soundtrack music from the film masterpiece directed by Fritz Lang has been newly recorded, using the original orchestral score by Gottfried Huppertz. Film music expert and conductor Frank Strobel delivers a full range of colors and emotions in this deeply impressive soundtrack.

Classical Music

Classical Music

A good opportunity to acquire this highly collectible disc which includes an as yet unrecognised masterwork of the era in marvellously authentic sound.

As is self-evident from the early recording date, this is a re-release. The disc was first issued in 1995 as Capriccio 10444, and is identical apart from the cover artwork, which, it must be said, is a considerable improvement on the gaudy original. Capriccio 10444 is still available on the internet on various commercial sites - in fact, the Naxos store at classicsonline.com offers a choice of either at the same download price. The original disc almost shades it in fact, thanks to the hilarious heading on the front cover which proclaims "Piano Concertos of the Beethoven Area"!

When this disc first appeared, it was one of few recordings of Dussek's music. Today, there are still shamefully few recordings, so this release offers a good opportunity to the music-lover to acquire this highly collectible disc, particularly as the sound quality is very good, both balance-wise and technically - putting many modern recordings to shame, in fact.

'Dussek' is an authentic spelling, by the way, in that it was the form used by Jan Ladislav, at least once he left Bohemia. The original Czech version of his name was 'Dussik', which nowadays would be spelt 'Dusík'. Further Dussek-related confusion may arise from the fact that his father was also a composer called Jan (1738-1818), and from other composers in this musical family to rival Benda or Stamic, including Dussek's brother FrantiŠek/Franz, his sister Katerina (1769-1833) - also known as Veronica, whose surname sometimes occurs in its Czech form Dusíkova, but was also known under her married name Cianchettini; his wife Sophia (1775-1847), whose surname became Moralt when she remarried after Dussek's death; and his daughter Olivia (?1798 - after 1841), whose music was published under the name "O.B. Dussek", the "B" standing for her married name Buckley.

In any case, there are 17 piano concertos in all by Jan Ladislav, including one for two pianos and an early work which has been lost. One published as op.66 is actually a cheeky alloy of the outer movements of one concerto and the middle of the B flat op.22. The publishing chaos of the time can be further illustrated by the fact that the G minor Concerto op.49 was also published as op.50. The Sufferings of the Queen of France op.23 was also published under "op.44" and again without opus number!

Dussek's monumental Piano Concerto in G minor, op.49, is an as yet unrecognised masterwork of the era in this genre. Though only four years separate Dussek and Mozart, and despite the fact that this work is initially redolent of Mozart's highly influential C minor concerto K.491, Dussek's piano writing by 1801, the year he wrote this Concerto, clearly belongs to a different time, with greater expressiveness, chromaticism, more adventurous chords and richer textures. Though structurally pretty much of its time - a long Allegro, followed by a shorter Adagio and a Rondo finale - this work peers harmonically and dramatically far into the century ahead as one of the pioneers of the Romantic piano concerto. The long, brooding first movement has a Sturm und Drang feel to it, as do the dramatic exclamations in the otherwise calm slow movement whose lyrical quality is reminiscent of Schubert. The final Rondo, marked Allegro non troppo, makes fine use of silence and ritenuti, but is otherwise a bustling, optimistic, ironically almost Haydnesque movement. Dussek waited nearly a decade before composing a final work in this genre - see review - although he did in the meantime write the one for two pianos.

The Piano Concerto in B flat, op.22 is a more exuberant, but also more modest and fairly conventional work: the orchestration is straightforward textbook Classical, the piano writing virtuosic though never tawdry. It sounds considerably more like a cross between Viennese Mozart and Beethoven, particularly the latter's own Concerto in the same key, the so-called Second that was in fact his first. As Dussek's work predates Beethoven's by two years, the direction of influence is all the more intriguing.

As an indisputable fortepiano virtuoso and expert on this period, Andreas Staier quite unsurprisingly gives a brilliant performance in both concertos, even at this relatively early stage in his career. Staier's decision to interpolate some of his own music at the start of the final movement of the op.22 Concerto on the grounds that "one becomes weary of the key of B flat major", which Dussek had unusually written all three movements in, is controversial and perhaps arrogant - but thankfully it is tastefully and seamlessly done, and does not detract from Dussek's fine music.

The fortepiano Staier plays here is both historically appropriate and a tribute to Dussek's own influence on the development of the instrument through his relationship with the Scottish manufacturer John Broadwood, whom he persuaded to extend its range in the early 1790s from five to five-and-a-half octaves and then again to six. The fortepiano used in this recording is in fact an 1806 Broadwood, and with the period instruments of Concerto Köln creates a marvellously authentic sound.

The final work on the disc is a real curio, and not just because the title of The Sufferings of the Queen of France is given in the track listing as Tableau "Marie Antoinette". What Dussek's original title was is not clear - the booklet gives no contextual information at all about the work, not even a hint as to why it has even been included on the disc - it is written after all for piano solo. The New Grove Dictionary gives only the Sufferings title and, moreover, makes no mention of a text or narrator. The most likely explanation is that Dussek himself made notes in the score.

Appropriately the text is recited in 18th-century French, with a strangely modern-seeming overlap in places of declamation and music. The text is printed in the booklet in modern French, which differs slightly, and there is a translation into German. Oddly there is no English version - though Capriccio is an Austrian label, the rest of the booklet does have an English section, so this looks like an omission. On the other hand, even with half-forgotten school-level French almost everyone should be able to follow the 'action'. And in any case, this is not a work that will likely appeal to all and sundry - whilst some will find it a well-written, imaginative tribute to an interesting historical figure personally known to Dussek, others will see it more as feeble melodrama. The ten brief sections are titled as follows:

1 Largo: The Queen is imprisoned
2 Maestosamente: She reflects on her former greatness
3 Agitato assai - andante: She is separated from her children - Final farewells
4 Allegro con furia: The death sentence is pronounced against her
5 Allegro innocente: Her resignation
6 Andante agitato: The situation during the night before her execution. The guards who must escort her to the place of execution arrives. They enter the prison
7 Lento - marche
8 Presto furioso: The angry tumult of the crowd can be heard
9 Molto adagio: The Queen prays to the Almighty at the moment of death. The Guillotine falls
10 Allegro Maestoso: Apotheosis

Dussek wrote the piece away from the turmoil of the Revolution in England, although whether or not he actually fled there, as some biographies claim (including the one in the New Grove Dictionary), is, like several stories attached to this larger than life figure, open to debate - by 1807 he was back working in Paris, where he stayed until he died. In any case, the piece is musically interesting both for its multiple modulations and for its rhetorical figurations which Dussek employs to great effect to create dramatic flourishes, sighs, tears, drumming, and the fall of the Guillotine blade.

The CD booklet is informative, with an interesting note by Christopher Clarke, who restored the 1806 Broadwood, on "Dussek and the English Piano". However, the translation of the notes on Dussek's music leaves a little to be desired; for example, the German "B-Dur" of Dussek's concerto becomes "B major" instead of B flat major in Staier's note explaining his decision to add a few extra bars. More ridiculously, "Dussek died of gout, mourned by musical society throughout Europe" is rendered as "Dussek died of gout, deplored by the musical society all over Europe". The punctuation and diacritics too are poor: random almost to the point of absurdity in places, especially in the French translation. Capriccio have had over fifteen years to correct the errors, which number in the dozens - there is no excuse for this.

Also, the biographies of Staier and Concerto Köln are now years out of date. Werner Erhardt, for example, described as the ensemble's "concert master and spiritus rector", left in 2005. Both Staier and Concerto Köln have grown in stature since this recording was made. At least two CDs featuring Concerto Köln have appeared in the last few months, both well received here. Staier has also stayed busy in the recording studio - last year alone Harmonia Mundi issued three discs featuring Staier: Bach's Goldberg Variations (HMC 902058), C.P.E. Bach Sonatas and Fantasies (7576302) and Schumann Sonatas for Piano and Violin (HMC 902048).

-- Byzantion, MusicWeb International

Included in Capriccio’s introductory 4-CD set, Liszt: Orchestral Pieces, released in honor of his 200th year in 2011, besides the famous Hungarian Rhapsodies Nos. 1-6 and Les Préludes are also less-frequently played Lisztian orchestral works such as the Dante-Symphony and the symphonic poems Hungaria and Orpheus. A trio of fine orchestras – the Vienna Philharmonic among them—and conductors add considerable luster to an already lustrous offering.

Classical Music

This triple disc set includes the most famous recordings of Alfredo Kraus, Lucia Alberti and Renato Bruson with arias by Bellini, Donizetti, Verdi, Mascagni etc. Also included are rare opera scenes such as Donizetti’s “Gemmy di Vergy” and Bellini’s “I Capuleti e I Montecchi. This is a highly recommended collection for fans of opera and these Belcanto artists; 38 beautifully sung selections in all!

Popular vocal and instrumental works and excerpts from the Baroque era through earlier 20th Century, all associated with the Winter season and Christmas. On 5 CDs.

Adam:
O Holy Night
Albinoni:
Adagio for Strings and Organ in G minor
Bach:
Air on the G string
Bruch:
Jubilate, Amen Op. 3
Bruckner:
Ave Maria
Corelli:
Concerto grosso Op. 6 No. 8 in G minor 'fatto per la notte di Natale'
Gabrieli, G:
Sacrae Symphoniae No. 2
Gounod:
Ave Maria
Grüber, F:
Stille Nacht
Handel:
Messiah: Pastoral Symphony 'Pifa'
Manfredini:
Concerto grosso in C major, Op. 3 No. 12 'per il Santissimo Natale'
Molter:
Concerto pastorale in G major
Mozart:
Laudate Dominum from Vesperae Solennes de Confessore, K339
Praetorius, M:
Kindelein zart von guter Art
Reger:
Mariä Wiegenlied, Op. 76 No. 52
Traditional:
Süsser die Glocken
O Jesulein Zart
Vivaldi:
The Four Seasons: Winter, RV297

Traditional choruses and excerpts of Christmas music from the Baroque era to the time of Saint-Saens. Performing groups include: Wiener Sängerknaben, Regensburger Domspatzen, Dresdner Kreuzchor, Thomanerchor Leipzig, Tölzer Knabenchor, Academy of London, Dresdner Philharmonie, Neues Bachisches Collegium Musicum Leipzig, Martin Flämig, Gerhard Schmidt-Gaden, Roland Büchner, Peter Marschik.

Selections include:
Bach, J S:

Ich steh an deiner Krippen hier, BWV469

Brahms:

O Heiland, reiss die Himmel auf, Op. 74 No. 2

Grieg:

Ave Maris Stella

Grüber, F:

Stille Nacht

Handel:

Messiah: Hallelujah Chorus
Tochter Zion, freue dich

Mendelssohn:

Von Himmel hoch: Vom Himmel hoch, da komm ich her

Ave Maria, Op. 23 No. 2

Saint-Saens

Christmas Oratorio (Excerpt)

Mozart:

Laudate Dominum from Vesperae Solennes de Confessore, K339

Reger:

Mariä Wiegenlied, Op. 76 No. 52

Traditional:

Maria durch ein’ Dornwald ging
In Dulci Jubilo
Adeste fideles
Stille, stille, lasst uns lauschen
Es ist ein Ros'
O Jesulein suss, O Jesulein mild

REVIEW:

Performances, as you would expect with such esteemed choirs at work, are mostly excellent; recording ambiences and quality are quite variable, but generally fine. The spare booklet contains no notes, texts, or information about the original albums these selections no doubt came from; all we get is titles, performers, and track timings. Still, if you’re a Germanophile or favor a boychoir kind of Christmas, this pleasant collection should enrich your holidays.

– American Record Guide