This recording is no longer available on cassette.

With beautifully pointed and rhythmically resilient playing, Pritchard consistently conjures up a genial, winning tone of voice. Cotrubas and von Stade convey freshness and childish innocence, while exercising the most sophisticated vocal control.

I had remembered the Wagnerian bite and power of Solti's reading, but the warmth of Pritchard's is much more apt for this lovely work, and comes out all the more sympathetically on CD. With beautifully pointed playing from the Gurzenich Orchestra, rhythmically resilient, conveying the impression of performers who know the piece in the theatre, Pritchard is the one who consistently conjures up a more genial, more winning tone of voice. I even find Pritchard's relatively relaxed reading of the Witch's Ride—prompting the one reservation made by LS over the conducting in his very favourable original review—has points of advantage over Solti's fierceness... In particular I have been struck even more than before how delicately Ileana Cotrubas and Frederica von Stade characterize the two children, conveying freshness and childish innocence, while in fact exercising the most sophisticated vocal control...

As LS said, there is not a weak link in the Pritchard cast, with a very distinctive Witch from Elisabeth Söderström, strongly characterized, even caricatured but without the grotesqueries of such a traditional mezzo as Anny Schlemm on Decca. The element of rawness in Christa Ludwig's singing as the Mother gives an apt bite to the character, while Nimsgern is an upstanding Father, firmer, less middle-aged than most... Some of the most ravishing singing of all comes from Dame Kin Te Kanawa as the Sandman.

-- Gramophone [11/1988]

Haydn's concertos for Lira organizzata, a manually pumped harmonium, are heard in this recording arranged for flute, oboe and orchestra.

GREATEST HITS OF 1721 RICHARD

GREATEST HITS OF 1720 RICHARD

Selections arranged by Arthur Harris.

After experiencing Koyaanisqatsi twice, I thought I was inoculated against Philip Glass. However, a friend, who knows the opera – and very few do – insisted that Satyagraha was different, and good. Since his tastes are more conservative than mine, it was a recommendation to act on. He was absolutely right: Satyagraha is amazing!

The opera deals with M K Gandhi’s experiences in South Africa in 1906, when India was part of the British Empire. At the time, Gandhi was a lawyer in a three piece suit, dutifully embracing the image of Edwardian idealism. He mixed with other liberals, who believed that colonialism could be changed by earnest discussion and writing letters to the newspapers. But Gandhi realised that words weren’t enough for real change. Gradually he developed the concept of Satyagraha, a raft of ideas which were a complete antithesis to the materialism and power politics of Empire. Instead of challenging Empire on its own terms, Satyagraha presented a far more fundamental alternative. Ultimately, by rejecting the colonial power game, Gandhi was able to win Indian Independence.

Gandhi's inspiration came from Ancient Sanskrit texts. . . . The printed word was important, and Gandhi’s journal Indian Opinion was widely read. . . . “Action”, says Gandhi, is a form of “spiritual exercise”. The Satyagraha movement revolved around simple living, focussed on idealistic communes where humble tasks were shared by all, regardless of race or status. In colonial society that was revolutionary and profoundly subversive. No wonder the authorities reacted violently, with savage racial laws. . . .

Satyagraha is a spiritual experience because of its subject matter, but that alone doesn’t “make” an opera. Much has been made of the fact that the text is in Sanskrit, but I believe that is a deliberate part of Glass’s method. Of course few can understand the language, but that’s the whole point. When you read a Buddhist sutra, it’s not “what” you are reading that counts but what you learn from absorbing the spirit of the texts. Words are just beacons in a wider mental journey. It’s not nearly as important to understand the exact words as they are sung, but to understand their overall portent. This is completely different to what we’re used to, just as non-violence was a complete reversal of authoritarian power. Words here become an extension of the very concept behind the subject. . . .

Even Glass’s minimalist technique seems to work in this particular context. The very repetitiveness of it means that a listener doesn’t need to focus on every note. Instead, the imagination can float “over” the notes, so to speak, the better to concentrate on meaning. It’s very similar to Buddhist chanting where single sounds are repeated over and over until they blend into the subconscious, freeing the mind from temporal concerns. It’s not a technique unique to Buddhism, of course, but it works. On closer examination though, Glass’s music is surprisingly natural, rather like the normal rhythm of breathing. Accordingly, the vocal parts, while demanding, are not forced. Indeed, some sections are quite beautifully lyrical, such as the long aria (if you can call it that) for Gandhi in the Final Act. I don’t like minimalism for its own sake, and find a lot of Cage, Reich and Glass soporific. In the case of Satyagraha, however, minimalism makes sense because it’s used in support of what is essentially minimalist, oblique subject matter. In the first act, the conflict between two opposing worldviews is expressed though contrasting string and woodwind passages.

In the final act, cadences rise ever higher, “climbing a ladder” aspirationally, just as the Martin Luther King character does on stage. It’s also tricky music to perform, as missing a bar, or fluffing a note would disrupt the organic flow. . . .

-- Anne Ozorio, MusicWeb International [reviewing a 2007 English National Opera production]

"Salonen offers some 17 numbers in all, all those included in the suites plus various other shorter pieces. The orchestral playing is excellent, the style idiomatic and anyone investing in this collection with Barbara Hendricks and the Oslo Philharmonic Chorus is unlikely to be disappointed. The recording is of very good quality."

-- Penguin Guide [2003/4 Edition]

"The recording quality is pleasantly warm and homogenious. The orchestral playing is first class, as is the choral singing, while Barbara Hendricks sings with distinction."

-- Gramophone [6/1989]

ECHOES OF LONDON JOHN WILLIAM

Best known for his opera Andrea Chénier, Giordano is often dismissed as a composer who weaves some memorable, sweeping tunes into lengthy passages of basically banal verismo music. Fedora , admittedly, has a crazily disjointed plot and cannot claim to be great music, but it does not deserve to be totally discounted. This Fedora is a Sony re-release of the CBS recording first issued in 1986, which neatly coincided this year with Carreras’s performances in the role of Loris at Covent Garden. Carreras colours the second-act show-stopper ‘Amor ti vieta’ with vivid, even raw tenor sound, and in the wonderful duet with Marton’s luscious Fedora, both singers reveal a deliberately weighty and driven quality which they maintain throughout the three acts. The sumptuous orchestral score – redolent of Puccini, even Mussorgsky at times –with its occasional bizarre touches, is expertly delivered by the Hungarian orchestra under the late Giuseppe Patanè. The supporting roles are adequately sung by an all-Hungarian cast. Olga and de Siriex are something of a curate’s egg, but are generally convincing in their exchanges with the tragic heroine. If you are one of the legion of Carreras fans, then this Fedora is a must.

-- Elise McDougall, BBC Music Magazine

This is a seminal score, and the Act 2 finale is quite simply one of the best sustained ensemble passages in Italian opera.

The new Poliuto is older in its origins than the Latham-König one on Nuova Era taken from performances given at Rome in 1988 and reviewed last year. That had certain textual advantages, most notably the inclusion of Poliuto's solo "Fu macchiato" following the recitative "Veleno e l'aura" in Act 2, where for the first time the hero's character has some musical life. In other respects this version, recorded in the Vienna Konzerthaus in 1986, is distinctly preferable. Even in textual matters, such as the inclusion of the fine trio for Poliuto, Paolina and Nearco, it can offer reasonable competition.

The recording is also said to be live, though apart from cheers and applause at the end of acts, one would not know it. The Rome recording was altogether too live, with clatter and chatter, comings and goings and various other customary and tiresome signs of life. Recorded sound was an updated version of the kind of thing older collectors probably remember from the so-called "Golden Age of Opera" series on the 'private' EJS label. That is to say, it was sometimes startlingly vivid and sometimes frustratingly remote. The singers of the Rome performances gained some respect but, as recorded, rarely gave pleasure. In short, the Nuova Era issue was welcome for want of a better, and now a better has come.

The sound is clear and well-balanced, orchestral and choral work have some refinement and the soloists vary from adequate to distinguished; the best is Ricciarelli. Memories of Elizabeth Connell in the Nuova Era recording caused quite unnecessary alarm and despondency; Ricciarelli softens the role, turns it inward, imparts an anxious tenderness. Notes that are loud and high are fewer than remembered. Passages such as the Act 1 aria ("Di quai soayi lagrime") and "Ah! fuggi da morte" in the Prison scene become exceptionally beautiful. The baritone and bass, too, are remarkably good, Juan Pons and the noteworthy Laszlo Polgar both singing with finely concentrated tone and plenty of authority. As for Carreras (this was before his illness), the performance is interesting principally as it shows, still more clearly than other recordings did, the direction his career was taking. His recent Eleazar in La juive shows him still pursuing this, with broad passage-notes, the heroic forte varied with a separate head-voice for piano, a tendency to lose quality when the higher notes are under pressure. Characterization seems not to go much beyond a generalized sincerity, but that may also be a limitation of the role itself: I have never quite understood why tenors have found it so attractive.

On the other hand, it becomes ever more easy to see why the opera survives. Despite some banalities, it's a seminal score: Verdi, for instance, must have known it and had it working inside him from (at least) Il trovatore to Aida. There are many fine things in it, and the Act 2 finale is quite simply one of the best sustained ensemble passages in Italian opera.

-- Gramophone [3/1990]

BUSONI: VIOLIN SONATA, VIOLIN

Brass in Berlin

If Maurizio Arena's lively and sympathetic account of Adriana Lecouvreur for RCA demonstrates that the opera still has stageworthy potential, and not just as a vehicle for an old-fashioned prima donna (for to tell the truth his donna, Raina Kabaivanska, is a rather small-scale Adriana, the voice not always under perfect control), James Levine's sumptuous CBS reading makes an even stronger case for it, and his donna is decidedly prima. It is Levine's Adriana Lecouvreur as much as Renata Scotto's, indeed, and some listeners may find his affectionate moulding of the score, his underlining of its every expressive detail and his leisurely speeds (he adds a full 15 minutes to Arena's timing) rather over-done.

His approach strikes me as an admirable one, rooted in a real love for the score (he has a distinct talent for making you think again about supposedly second-rate Italian operas: he is a first-rate conductor of Zandonai, for example) and in great consideration for his singers. I suspect that Kabaivanska would have made more of the title-role with support from Levine's supple phrasing, so well attuned to the way Cilea's phrases lie for the voice and to a singer's need to breathe, to approach a climactic note at the voice's own pace. Scotto certainly responds to this, and makes a part that might have seemed a size too large for her (there are one or two brief moments of strain) thoroughly her own, with a range that extends from caressed murmur to splendidly melodramatic hauteur.

Domingo is in ardent voice and fills out the rather thinly sketched Maurizio admirably (Arena's elegant tenor, Alberto Cupido, is rather over-parted) and both baritones, Milnes for Levine and Arena's Attilio d'Orazi make a sympathetic figure of the soft-hearted Michonnet. Obraztsova's fans will not mind too much that she makes the haughty Princesse de Bouillon sound like Azucena or Ulrica (one quite expects her to offer balefully to tell Adriana's fortune) but Arena's Alexandrina Milcheva, a very similar Slavonic voice, does much the same. nut this opera stands or falls on whether the soprano can convince you that she is both a grande dame and touchingly vulnerable, and on whether the conductor realizes how much more than an accompanist he needs to be (Cilea was a cunning builder of dramatic tension, and an imaginative orchestrator). On both counts this set succeeds finely, and it is beautifully recorded.

-- Gramophone [3/1990]

The Suite is sprightly and consistently romantic in stance, while the performances of the two principals are impeccable.

Perhaps this work should have been called 'Suite for jazz piano and flute', because it is Claude Bolling who stays very much at the centre of events, bridging, as it were, the separate elements, with Rampal's flute performing an important yet slightly subsidiary role. Indeed, MM implied something very similar when (in May 1979, page 1945) he reviewed Bolling's Suite for violin and jazz piano (with Pinchas Zukerman). The suite with Rampal was actually recorded earlier and released in the US in 1975. It is divided into seven movements: "Baroque and blue" contrasts the classical and jazz components, then sets out to unify them; "Sentimentale" begins sensuously, with a theme for flute, then has a brisk middle section; "Javanaise" in 5/4 time, opens with a brusque sequence of Ellington-ish piano chords; "Fugace", as its title suggests, has much to and fro between flute and piano; the lilting "Irlandaise"—in 3/4—suggests a folk-song (the theme's final bars even sound a bit like Greensleeves); "Versatile", with Rampal shifting to bass flute, lives up to its title, while "Veloce" is suitably propulsive. Playing-time is about 34'.

The Suite is sprightly, consistently romantic in stance, possibly a trifle lightweight for repeated listening. As you might expect, the performances of the two principals are impeccable. The bassist and drummer—the same as those who play on the LP with Zukerman—are competent but get kept very much in their place, as part of a traditional rhythm section. It would be interesting to hear players of the calibre of, say, Charlie Haden and Max Roach involved in a project of this sort.

-- Gramophone [3/1981]