Includes verse(s) for organ by Anonymous. Soloist: Gustav Leonhardt.

Two CD set. Fritz Lehmann became conductor of the Händel Festival in Göttingen in 1934, and held numerous conducting posts, the last one in Göttingen (1946-1950). He subsequently was a teacher at the Hochschule für Musik in Munich (from 1953). a consummate conductor, he led notable performances in Oratorio, opera, and symphonic literature, ranging from the Baroque period to the 20th century. He died at age 52 of a heart attack during a performance of Bach's St. Matthew Passion. Especially noted for his Bach and Handel interpretations, he made numerous acclaimed Bach cantata recordings for DGG. He left no studio recording of the St. John Passion so we are fortunate that this live performance, with the highly experienced soloists Julius Patzak as the Evangelist and Gerard Souzay as Christ, was taped.

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Gregorian Chant: Paschale Mysterium

Innocence

HONEGGER Jeanne d’Arc au bûcher • Helmuth Rilling, cond; Sylvie Rohrer ( Jeanne d’Arc ); Eörs Kisfaludy ( Fr. Dominique ); Karen Wierzba ( La Vierge ); Letizia Scherrer ( Marguerite ); Kismara Pessatti ( Cathérine ); Jean-Noël Briend (ten); François Le Roux (bs); Stuttgart College Boys’ Ch; Gächinger Kantorei Stuttgart; Stuttgart RSO des SWR • HÄNSSLER 098.636 (2 CDs: 84:30 & French only) Live: Stuttgart 4/2–3/2011


Here is, truly, an unusual release: the little-known but extremely powerful dramatic cantata by Arthur Honegger, Joan of Arc at the Stake, conducted by one of the world’s leading baroque specialists, Helmuth Rilling. This combination, which seems on the surface a mismatch, in fact results in one of the most emotionally powerful and musically atmospheric realizations on record in my entire memory.


The drawback, of course, is that the libretto is in French only. Certainly one is aware enough of Joan’s story to be able to follow what is going on in generalizations, yet the highly literate subtleties of Paul Claudel’s libretto are lost on the non-French speaker. Thus we must rely on the few words we can pick out of the booklet and rely on the emotional and dramatic power of the speakers, singers, chorus, and orchestra. Even within those parameters, this is pretty powerful music. Behind the spoken dialogue, at one point, the chorus enters singing strophic lines in almost Stravinsky-like neoclassicism, which then leads directly into a baritone solo with choral interjections. Honegger’s orchestra slashes and burns throughout: sometimes as an undercurrent, at other times in the foreground, moving from staccato brass chords to stabbing or swirling figures, underlining the drama of the situation—confined to the time of Joan’s trial and execution—in the most dramatic terms possible.


Conductor Marin Alsop has given us this synopsis of the oratorio at npr.org/2011/11/05/142021891/arthur-honeggers-joan-of-arc-for-the-ages:


“Claudel wanted to look at Joan’s life in a series of flashbacks—starting at the end. The piece opens with darkness setting over all of France. Is this the France of 1400 or the France of 1935? Perhaps that’s the point. Joan meets Frère Dominic in the afterlife and recognizes him, at which point they look back on what led to her trial and death. When Joan asks, ‘How did this happen?,’ Frère Dominic replies, ‘It was a game of cards that decided your fate,’ alluding to the political quagmire in which Joan, an illiterate peasant teenager, found herself immersed. The adjudicator at Joan’s trial was aptly named Cauchon (pig), and Claudel goes wild with the possibilities. The assessors are all depicted as animals, with the ass leading the pack and sheep commenting on the proceedings. And then there’s Honegger’s instrumentation, which creates a vibrant and unique sound world. He includes three saxophones plus an ondes martenot —a spooky-sounding instrument, invented in 1928, that sounds like its cousin the theremin. Honegger and Claudel’s collaboration brings Joan to life in a vivid and emotional drama that concludes with the line, ‘There is no greater love than the person who gives his life for a friend.’”


Alsop, as well as other commentators, allude to the “cinematic” quality of this opera-oratorio, mentioning that Honegger was also a film music composer. But if this is film music, it is extremely dominant in mood and structure, which to my ears is far too aggressive a composition to work well in that mode. Yet there is a certain “cinematic” structure to the work, which in effect makes it a “movie for the ears.” (One constantly hears nowadays that we “listen with our eyes,” so why not at least one piece where we “see with our ears”?) Alsop conducted a live performance of this work at the Barbican in 2011, but according to one online commentator the program notes for that performance were also spotty and indistinct.


I’ve been unable to track down an English translation of the text anywhere online. From what I can judge, between the French-only text and my slight grasp of the language, the actors in this recording are all extremely good, bringing out Joan’s combination of confusion, defiance, and fear perfectly. Much of the credit for this goes to Sylvie Rohrer, whose reading of the text is both dramatic and natural-sounding—a rare combination indeed. The singers are all excellent in both vocal quality and—more importantly—diction, as is the chorus itself. Despite being German, Rilling is to be highly commended for his persistence in bringing out the proper idiomatic Frenchness of the music as well as his insistence on clarity of pronunciation.


Particular credit for the success of this recording goes to engineer Friedemann Trumpp for capturing such incredible 3D sound.


There appear to be three other recordings available on CD: Supraphon 11 0557/58 featuring narrators Nelly Borgeaud and Michel Favory, sopranos Christiane Château and Anne-Marie Rodde, alto Huguette Brachet, and the Kühn Children’s Chorus, Czech Philharmonic Chorus and Orchestra conducted by Serge Baudo; a single-disc version (meaning under 80 minutes) with narrators Anne-Marie Ferrière, René Piloy, and Madeleine Joris, sopranos Marthe Dugard and Ria Lenssens, tenor Frédéric Anspach, and conductor Louis de Vocht (Opera d’Oro 1223); and another one-disc version conducted by Siegfried Heinrich (VMS Musical Treasures 152), none of which I’ve heard. I have, however, heard the recording by Sonia Petrovna, Michaël Lonsdale, Christian Papis, Anne-Marie Blanzat, other soloists, the Choeur de Rouen-Haute-Normande, and Orchestre Symphonique Français conducted by Laurent Petitgirard on Cascavelle OSF 49008/09. This was also a live performance, given on June 26 and 27, 1992 at the Salle Wagram in Paris. I could only find references to this recording on French CD sites like Price Minister and Amazon.fr. The sound quality is also excellent, and this performance, too, is wonderfully atmospheric, but none of the actors are recorded particularly well—they sound like they’re behind the choir. The actress playing Joan (Petrovna) is good, but does not declaim her text with as much feeling (perhaps she was an excellent actress visually, but on CDs you can’t see her). A very good performance, then, but this new Hänssler release is just as fine musically, better in the placement of the actors, and of course much easier to obtain, making it well worth getting. With the odd running time of this work, one could possibly combine it with the equally excellent but seldom-heard L’Amore de tre re of Montemezzi for a superb evening of dramatic works that will challenge and not just entertain you.


FANFARE: Lynn René Bayley

Classical Music

When this two CD set was originally issued in 1986, here is what William H. Youngren said about it in The Christian Science Monitor: "...I can think of no better introduction to Toscanini for a listener who is curious to know why so many considered him the greatest conductor of his time." If that does not say it all, I do not know what does.

As Mendelssohn's successor of the Berlin Cathedral, Nicoli composed the Mass in D major, a sacred work well worth discovering and an important contribution to 19th century church music. Consono presents several other choral works which with their varied scorings show the diversity of Nicolai's sacred compositions.

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Over the centuries thousands of musical treasures came to be through the choral tradition of the British cathedrals and universities. Some of the most beautiful motets and anthems have been recorded here in their original language by the figuralchor koln and Richard Mailander. Notable composers such as William Byrd, Thomas Tallis, and Charles Villiers Stanford are contributors to this lineup of English sacred choral music which travels through the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries.

Verdi: Messa da requiem - Rossini: Stabat Mater

GREGORIAN CHANT, Vol. 2

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One of Andre Campra’s best known works, the Messe de Requiem was frequently performed during the 18th century at notable memorial services and funerals. This release pairs the Messe de Requiem with Campra’s De profundis, which displays the composer’s theatrical abilities. The ensemble performing these works, ensemble3, grew out of the Internationale Chorakademie im Dreilandereck, and is conducted here by Hans Michael Beuerle.

English born conductor F. Charles Adler was a student of Gustav Mahler and a devoted Bruckner enthusiast. Presented here on this 5 CD Music & Arts release are the fabled SPA and Unicorn studio recordings of 1952-56 as well as a live broadcast performance of Anton Bruckner's Symphony No. 6. These works have been expertly restored and re-mastered in 2014 by Aaron Z. Snyder. At least two previously Music & Arts releases devoted to Mr. Adler, one exclusively Mahler, the other given over to both Mahler and Bruckner, have been warmly welcomed back to the catalog, resurrecting the important recordings of an ardent, early supporter of these once controversial, now universally-admired composers.

On this recording there is Early Baroque Advent and Christmas Music of Eccard Praetorius, Schein, Hammerschmidt, Rosenmuller et al. The Baroque orchestra Les Favorites plays on early baroque instruments.

SCHÜTZ Cantiones Sacrae , Op. 4 • Hans-Christoph Rademann, cond; Dresdn C Ch • CARUS 83.252 (2 CDs: 108: 31 Text and Translation)


The fifth issue in Rademann’s projected complete works of Heinrich Schütz, this publication of 1625 has already been recorded complete three times. Rudolf Mauersberger used a large choir of men and boys with instrumental ensemble; the Eterna recording was once available on Telefunken LPs but, in a Berlin Classics set of 10 CDs of Schütz’s music, never came for review. Manfred Cordes ( Fanfare 20:5) got a rave review for rendering one voice to a part, unaccompanied except for motets that required continuo. Matteo Messori (30:5) also used one voice to a part with organ continuo throughout. The new version has a vocal ensemble of 18 with continuo.


One might wonder why this collection of Latin-texted motets, written over a period of years (some of them were certainly sung for the Emperor Matthias when he visited Dresden in 1617) is not heard as often as the German-texted Geistliche Chor-Musik of 1648, which has been recorded complete 10 times. In a very informative note here, Oliver Geisler shows that Carl von Winterfeld (1834), Philipp Spitta (1894), Joachim Moser (1936), and most recently Clytus Gottwald have singled out the treasures that are to be discovered here, beginning long before the revival of interest in the greatest German composer of the 17th century. The last-named lamented that 20th-century church music has been modeled on the 1648 book instead of this expressionist music that would have led composers in more adventurous directions. It would seem that the music is more admired than loved. Rademann sets out to make it loved.


To read Cordes’s notes is to imagine that, foreseeing this new recording, he was arguing against it in his insistence on one voice to a part without the “rigid sound” of the organ, but his real reference was to Mauersberger’s pioneering set. Rademann shows how light and flexible his singers can sound in this madrigalian music, and the continuo is so discreet as to fade out of hearing. (Indeed, I cannot hear it at all in at least one piece, “Dulcissime et benignissime Christe.”) I find the two versions equally appealing, appreciating the one I am hearing before switching to the other equally impressive performance. My head tells me that Cordes argues persuasively, but my heart tells me that the warmth of Rademann’s multiple voices is unarguable. These Scriptural texts in Latin are not madrigals, after all.


At least six conductors have assembled partial collections of this music to fit a single disc. The largest was two LPs under Helmut Rilling, both issued here on Musical Heritage Society, probably a projected complete set that was never finished. The most recent, a full CD by Erik van Nevel (15:5), was commendable when the only complete set was Mauersberger’s, but van Nevel never made the rest of the book. It should be noted that I referred in that review to “41 motets;” the correct count is 40, since “Pater noster” is printed twice as the secunda pars of two motets. If you have not discovered the marvels of this book, I urge you to hear Rademann. He promises to give us a commendable complete works.


FANFARE: J. F. Weber

Classical Music

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Henri Du Mont first made provision for the performance of a number of his compositions by women's voices in his Cantica Sacra (1652) and thus made it possible for these works to be sung in convents. This recording includes not only the motets intended for these institutions but also one of the Messes Royales in plainsong and several organ pieces from his Meslanges composed for the Dames religieuses qui touchent l'orgue. This recording is the second in a systematic exploration of the several collections of music by Henry du Mont that were published in Paris. The first recording in this series was devoted to the Cantica Sacra and was released in 2010 to mark the 400th anniversary of the composer's birth.

While Igor Stravinsky is known for his exciting and ground-breaking words The Rite of Spring and The Firebird, it would be reductive to view him solely through the prism of those works. Threi is his longest, most ambitious and complex score and probably one of the peaks of his career. A work like the Requiem Canticles goes even further in this direction: the composer's last masterpiece, summarizing in itself the evolution of an entire lifetime. In this album, Philippe Herreweghe reveals with conviction his love for the composer's music and under his sure, inspired direction, the Collegium Vocale Gent and the Royal Flemish Philharmonic reveal their pure poetry.

Many questions persist surrounding J. S. Bach’s Mass in B minor, one of the master’s most frequently performed vocal works, enigmas and problems that musicologists and performers continue to research or grapple with, including early performance, textual and revision issues. The present new live 2015 recording by the combined forces of the Gächinger Kantorei, Freiburger Barockorchester, conductor Hans-Christoph Rademann and vocal soloists rigorously follows – in the Kyrie and Gloria – Bach’s own meticulously configured “Dresdner Stimmen” [Dresden parts] and is therefore based, for the first time, exclusively on the musical text that emanated from Bach’s pen. Additional movements with marked deviations from the familiar version are accessible as variants as bonus material on Disc Two. Renowned Bach and Mozart scholar Ulrich Leisinger, upon whose new edition of the work this recording is based, also prepared the notes in the accompanying booklet. The Deluxe version also contains a bonus DVD with additional material: Film: Bach’s Secret Legacy – Hans-Christoph Rademann in search of the true B-minor Mass. Also: Bach’s Manuscript: The “Dresden Parts“ of 1733 in PDF format.

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Battle Cry Of Freedom