Ljuba Welitsch Recital

Drawing on the romantic spirit in music, Schubert’s moving setting is of a poem by Goethe which compares a rushing waterfall to the soul of man, while Strauss’s gorgeous Mittagsruhe depicts the peace of a summer noontide. Narrative vocal traditions are heard in Sibelius’s nationalist Vapautettu kuningatar, Bruckner’s heroic Helgoland, and Grieg’s Landkjenning, which tells of the 10th-century Norwegian king Oleg Tryggvason. Das Liebesmahl der Apostel anticipates the religious ecstasies of Wagner’s Parsifal, while Debussy’s early cantata Invocation resonates with Gallic sparkle.

Wagner: Lohengrin (Sung in Italian)

To celebrate Verdi's 200th birth anniversary Dynamic is featuring a fascinating collection of performances recorded during the best period of Maria Callas' artistic career. Some moments of the greatest poignancy can be listened in Forza del Destino and Ballo in Maschera where the American born Greek soprano's interpretative art is expressed with it's full beauty.

Following five critically acclaimed and immensely popular recordings for AVIE, the Brook Street Band embarks on their most ambitious project to date: a recording with the estimable student Choir of the Queen’s College, Oxford, that pairs — for the first time ever — the two settings of the Dixit Dominus written by Alessandro Scarlatti and George Frideric Handel. On this recording the massed forces are joined by five of Britain’s brightest young singers: soprano Elin Manahan Thomas, mezzo-sopranos Esther Brazil and Sally Bruce-Payne, tenor Guy Cutting, and bass-baritone Matthew Brook.

Classical Music

Includes cantata(s) by Gottfried H. Stölzel. Ensemble: Michaelstein Telemannisches Collegium. Conductor: Ludger Rémy. Soloists: Dorothee Mields, Jan Kobow, Christian Immler.

Classical Music

"The trick to mastering counterpoint lies in mastering it completely...herein lies the glory of this magnificent, essential release. The balance of seriousness with humanity comes through as much as the balanced voices...Patterson clearly has genius in selecting just the right tempos and dynamics...serious, winning, and convincing. If we have ever had a finer Palestrina recording available, I've not heard it."
—Heuwell Tircuit, In Tune Magazine

"They [Gloriae Dei Cantores]have demonstrated a polished musicality, combined with a versatile command of a wide-ranging repertoire of literature and styles...the richness and sonority is almost hypnotically beautiful. Palestrina was, after all, one of the great composers of music for grouped human voices, and there is no reason why we should not enjoy such luscious, expansive (yet stylistically sensitive) realizations of his music. Good notes; full texts and English translations. Alike to the Palestrina collector or the lover of wonderful choral sound, this release is warmly recommended."
—John W. Barker, American Record Guide

STÖLZEL Quadri di Dresda e Bruxelles • Epoca Barocca • CPO 777 764-2 (51: 09)


Back in 24:1 and 24:5, Brian Robins passionately took up the cudgels of advocacy for Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel (1690–1749) in interviews with conductor Ludger Rémy, undertaken in conjunction with releases of two CDs comprising the composer’s Weihnachtsoratorium . Apart from that, there is still only one entry for the composer in the Fanfare Archive, for a single quartet from a baroque anthology disc. Finding listings of CDs of his works available domestically presents a serious challenge, as the search function on the normally reliable ArkivMusic website has something seriously askew in his case, alternately producing either only one entry, or else a list of 100 entries that are mostly for J. S. Bach instead, with the handful of genuine Stölzel items randomly intermixed. (For a proper list, visit my favorite European website, jpc.de). Apart from the five releases that Rémy has produced for CPO, the only other Stölzel CDs I can find in print are another version of the Weihnachtsoratorium on the MDG label, a disc of chamber music on the Ambitus label, and now this new CPO release of the composer’s Quadro Sonatas.


The continued obscurity of Stölzel is, at first sight, difficult to understand, given the considerable reputation he enjoyed in his own lifetime. Born in the small town of Grünstädtel, southeast of Zwickau and near the northwestern border of the modern Czech Republic, he came from humble circumstances; his father, the son of a miner, was the local schoolteacher and church organist. Although his parents gave him some musical training, they did not want him to pursue a career in that field, and upon graduation from secondary school in Gera he obediently enrolled as a student in theology at the University of Leipzig. However, once there he was soon entirely absorbed into the city’s thriving musical scene, becoming a copyist for Melchior Hofmann, a pupil of Emanuel Kegel, and a devoted friend of Johann Friedrich Fasch. By the time he moved to Breslau in 1710 he was composing his first opera in addition to some instrumental music. Shortly afterward he moved on to Halle and then, after rejecting offers of employment from the courts at Gera and Zeitz, went to Italy to further his musical education, where he met among others Antonio Vivaldi, Alessandro Marcello, Johann David Heinichen, and Domenico Scarlatti. Late in 1714 he went back north to Prague, and—after a brief stay in Bayreuth in 1717, plus rejection of a lucrative offer of employment at the electoral court in Dresden, probably because his strong Protestant convictions made a post at a Catholic establishment uncongenial—returned to Gera to become the court music director. In November 1719 he assumed what would prove to be a lifelong position as Kapellmeister for the ducal court in Gotha. Highly esteemed by his contemporaries, he was, for example, admitted to membership in the Correspondierende Societät der musicalischen Wissenschaften (Corresponding School of Musical Science) of the renowned Leipzig scholar Lorenz Christoph Mizler (1711–1778) several years before the application of J. S. Bach was accepted. Mizler also composed a funerary ode to Stölzel upon the latter’s death. For his part, Bach paid a minor tribute to Stölzel by including a Partita in G Minor by him (with the addition of a trio of Bach’s own devising) in his Klavierbüchlein für Wilhelm Friedemann Bach.


While Stölzel was a prolific composer of stage works, oratorios, masses, cantatas, and various instrumental works, little of his output has survived; for example, only 12 of his 85 known secular cantatas, and fragments from only 10 of his 442 sacred cantatas, are extant. At least 18 orchestral suites and over 90 vocal serenatas are completely lost. Part of this is due to the fact that his music quickly became unfashionable after his death; his successor at Gotha, Georg Benda, explicitly stated that he thought only select works of Stölzel’s compositional corpus were worth preserving, ones that he weeded out from what he termed “useless junk.” The rest was consigned to leaky attics, where depredations of weather and hungry rodents soon took their toll. In the case of the nine quadros presented on this CD, eight are taken from the musical archives in Dresden (assembled primarily by Georg Pisendel) and the ninth is preserved in an archive in Brussels. They are unusual not only for their inclusion of the horn, but also for using it as an equal partner at a time when, outside of music for hunting and martial occasions, it was usually assigned to a strictly subordinate role of reinforcing instrumental climaxes. The limitations of the valveless horn of that period necessitated that F Major be the predominant key of all of these quadros.


This is my first exposure to Stölzel’s music. Not having heard either the Weihnachtsoratorium or the Brockes-Passion that so roused the enthusiasm of my colleague Brian Robins, I have neither a basis nor desire to gainsay his highly positive judgment of those. However, I can say that, based on these works, I do not share his enthusiasm. Imagine, if you will, nine knock-offs of Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 1 by a modestly talented pupil who lacks his master’s genius and artistry, and you will have the results presented here. They are pleasant and genial, and make for moderately enjoyable listening, but their commonplace thematic material prevents them from being anything more than that. I find no fault in either the sterling performances by Epoca Barocca, which presents these pieces in their best possible light, nor in CPO’s typically excellent recorded sound and lavish booklet notes. Based on this slender acquaintance, I am not about to make any general pronouncement on Stölzel’s merits as a whole; I will say that this disc is a purely discretionary rather than obligatory acquisition for the devotee of baroque instrumental music. If you choose to buy it, this disc will provide you with pleasure, but don’t expect it to bowl you over.


FANFARE: James A. Altena

GOUVY Oedipe à Colone • Joachim Fontaine, cond; Christa Ratzenböck ( Antigone ); Joseph Cornwell ( Polynice ); Stephen Roberts ( Thésée ); Vinzenz Haab ( Oedipe ); Kantorei Saarlouis; La Grande Société PO • CPO 7778252 (2 CDs: 93:05 Text and Translation)


Back in 34:3 I reviewed a premiere recording of Louis Théodore Gouvy’s secular oratorio Iphigénie en Tauride , conducted by Joachim Fontaine. While admiring the composer’s “usual fastidious craftsmanship and superior technical command of orchestration and of vocal and instrumental part-writing,” I expressed reservations about “a lack of dramatic contrast and real passion” and added: “The music is too cultivated for its often harrowing subject....Instead, one elegant and decorous set piece follows another, all inhabiting a temperate emotional climate zone that fails either to inflame or chill. There is also a certain stasis and lack of flow from one number to the next.” Having had a similar reaction to another one of the composer’s oratorios, Électre , I speculated that “Gouvy may deliberately have been cultivating a degree of emotional restraint in these works in order to convey a stylized sense of classical antiquity that would have fit 19th-century sensibilities.”


Fontaine now leads the same choral and instrumental forces, though with mostly different vocal soloists, in the premiere recording of yet another oratorio by Gouvy on a mythic Greek subject, Oedipe à Colone . What a difference from Iphigénie ! Here there is no such emotional restraint or stasis; the beautiful and inventive music positively surges with genuine dramatic contrast and intense passion. While still remaining mostly within the melodic and harmonic bounds cultivated by Mendelssohn, Schumann, and Max Bruch, the richness of orchestration reflects Gouvy’s expressed admiration for the masterful orchestration (though not the vocal writing) of Wagner. This is by far the finest oratorio I have heard (and I’ve listened to a fair number) from the half-century interval between Mendelssohn’s Elijah and Elgar’s Dream of Gerontius . At its premiere in Leipzig on December 6, 1881, it enjoyed a tremendous success—indeed, to such a degree that Gouvy told his sister that it was the happiest day of his entire life. While it received further performances during his lifetime, upon his death it immediately fell into the same neglect that all his works have, until recently, so unjustly suffered.


The libretto of Oedipe has a somewhat complex lineage. As with Iphigénie , Gouvy once again did not write or commission an original libretto, but instead borrowed and adapted an existing one penned by the 18th-century librettist Nicolas-François Guillard (1752–1814). In this case, the original tragedy of Sophocles was first adapted by the great 17th-century tragedian Pierre Corneille (1606–1684). Guillard then turned it into a libretto for a tragédie lyrique by the composer Antonio Sacchini (1730–1786), premiered in 1785 at the royal court in Versailles.


The action of the plot, divided in the oratorio into three parts, is subsequent to that of the better-known Oedipus Rex . Oedipe (the French name for Oedipus), having blinded himself after learning that he had unwittingly fulfilled the prophecy that he would kill his father and marry his mother, was exiled from Thebes with the consent of his sons Etéocle (Eteokles) and Polynice (Polyneikis), to wander as an exile with his daughter Antigone as his guide. In Part 1, the citizens of Colonus offer sacrifices to Poseidon in thanksgiving for the safe return of their king, Thésée (Theseus), who brings with him Polynice. The latter, having lost out in a power struggle with Etéocle for the throne of Thebes and being now also an exile, is filled with shame and remorse for having spurned his father. He has gathered a band of armed supporters and hopes to launch an attack to regain the Theban throne. The two men kneel before the altar to discern the will of the gods and implore their favor, but are answered first by ominous silence and then by a thunderstorm that extinguishes the altar’s sacred flame and terrifies the people.


In Part 2, Oedipe and Antigone approach Colonus, which the gods have prophesied is where the blind refugee shall at last find rest. Oedipe longs for death, while Antigone pleads for him to live. The exiled king experiences a terrifying vision of being pursued by the Eumenides, and curses Polynice for betraying him, before Antigone brings him back to his senses. The two of them unknowingly trespass on the sacred precincts of the temple; Thésée confronts and denounces them for sacrilege. Antigone begs for mercy and reveals the identities of herself and her father. The people react with horror and demand that the accursed pair be driven away, but Thésée angrily opposes the mob and, taking pity on the duo instead, offers them refuge.


In Part 3, Antigone and Polynice are reunited. Antigone brings her brother to their father so that Polynice can confess his guilt to Oedipe, beg forgiveness, and seek support for his scheme to dethrone Etéocle, offering to restore his father to the throne instead by way of atonement. Oedipe, however, rejects him and curses both of his sons, whereupon Polynice flees in horror. Oedipe then declares to all that the hour of his death has come, as he will descend to a secret burial place at the banks of the river Acheron. Antigone begs to be allowed to join him, but is commanded to live instead. Thésée leads Oedipe away as the people implore the mercy of the gods for the exile’s final moments.


In reviewing Iphigénie , while I was a bit cool toward the work itself, I thought it received a fine performance from a very good, though not great, quartet of soloists. Here, to my considerable frustration, the situation is reversed: I am unabashedly enthusiastic for the music, but have reservations about the solo quartet. Easily its best member is the one holdover from the recording of Iphigénie , Vinzenz Haab, whose soft-grained, mellow bass-baritone makes a most sympathetic figure of Oedipe, even if it lacks the granitic timbre needed to make the most of the passages of imprecation. While all of the other singers are sensitive interpreters who capture all the varied dimensions of their roles, they all have problems with control of vocal production. Baritone Stephen Roberts as Thésée has a persistent unevenness to his vibrato that verges on a full-scale wobble; tenor Joseph Cornwall as Polynice has an attractive voice that repeatedly becomes unsteady when he attempts to push and swell a note for intensified expression; soprano Christa Ratzenböck lacks vocal sheen and turns both harsh and squally to some degree in her upper register. None of them is so defective as to be unlistenable, but compared to their predecessors in the recording of Iphigénie they are collectively a disappointing step downward. By way of compensation conductor Joachim Fontaine, who I previously said “has a conscientious command of the score, though I can imagine podium maestros who would give the work considerably more punch,” here delivers a first-rate interpretation that combines and balances elegant lyricism and dramatic urgency in equal measure. As before the orchestra and chorus are excellent, and CPO once again provides its trademark excellent recorded sound, detailed booklet notes, and a trilingual French-English-German libretto. Despite my reservations about some of the soloists, this recording is enthusiastically recommended, especially as another version is unlikely to appear any time soon.


FANFARE: James A. Altena

Classical Music

Clinically speaking, Mark Applebaum does not suffer from any mental disorders. It's not for want of trying though! On this his 9th Innova release, he attempts to illustrate psychological disorders in sound. Asylum takes the form of a bipolar octet, an obsessive-compulsive trio, a narcoleptic quartet, an attention-deficit hyperactive quintet, a paranoid flutist, a catatonic horn player, an anti-social guitarist, a narcissistic contrabassist, a dependent violist and a Tourette's octet.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

In 1440 King Henry VI of England founded simultaneously two educational establishments to show his devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary. These were ‘the College Roialle of our Ladie at Eton beside Windsor and….the College Roialle of our Ladie and St. Nicholas of Cambridge.’ Thus were established what became two of the most venerable seats of learning – and of liturgical music – in England: Eton College and King’s College, Cambridge.

At Eton, where the college actually opened its doors in 1443, evening devotion to the Virgin was prescribed in the statutes from the start, with the singers required to sing in the chapel an antiphon in her honour every evening – in Lent it was always to be the ‘Salve Regina’. Over the years a corpus of music was assembled at Eton and by the early sixteenth century a significant amount of it had been copied into that remarkable treasury of music, which survives to this day, the Eton Choirbook.

The Choirbook contains a substantial amount of music. Some composers are represented by just one piece, whereas John Browne has no less than fifteen of his pieces preserved in it. From this vast collection Stephen Darlington has chosen five pieces, all of them quite substantial and all of considerable interest. Music from the Choirbook has been recorded by many ensembles, not least by The Sixteen, but here Darlington offers us the authentic experience of hearing it sung by an all-male church choir which is just a little larger than the Eton establishment of the time: the Eton choir consisted of sixteen choristers and ten lay clerks while for this recording Christ Church’s choir comprised eighteen trebles, four altos and five each of tenors and basses.

Just before discussing the performances, it’s appropriate to note the reason for the well-chosen title of the CD. Stephen Darlington tells us in the booklet that in 1515 an Italian visitor to Eton described the singing he heard there as ‘more divine than human’.

I’m unsure if the music is presented in chronological order in the programme. Indeed, little is known about many of the composers whose music is included in the Choirbook, still less is it possible to date with precision the date of composition of individual pieces. However, to judge from the dates of birth and death of the featured composers, it seems plausible to suppose a rough chronology. Furthermore, the pieces do seem to grow in complexity and intricacy as the disc progresses. So listening to the contents of the disc in the order in which they’re presented makes a lot of sense, I think. It was interesting to come to this disc hot on the heels of reviewing a disc by the choir of Edinburgh Cathedral devoted to the music of John Taverner. Taverner’s music was probably written a little later than anything on this present disc and his output represented the high water mark of the English florid style. There’s nothing in this programme to match the sheer exuberance of Taverner’s music though one can sense that trait developing as the pieces succeed one another. Interestingly, Darlington’s choir are not as unbuttoned and open-throated as their Edinburgh peers – that’s not an implied criticism – and their smoother, more mellifluous style is appropriate, I think, to the slightly more sober, though no less interesting music that they have recorded here.

John Fawkyner’s name was completely new to me and, it seems, nothing is known of his life. Gaude rosa sine spina is one of two pieces by him in the Choirbook. It’s not a particularly elaborate piece. I think I’d describe it as patient music, since it makes its effect cumulatively. Stephen Darlington’s fine choir sing it with suitable patience too and build it up well so that the final, affirmative stanza makes the proper effect.

There were two composers named William Cornysh, the second (younger?) of whom died in 1523. It is thought that this setting of ‘Salve Regina’ is by the earlier Cornysh, who can claim a footnote in musical history as the very first informator choristorum at Westminster Abbey. His five-part ‘Salve Regina’ shows an advance on Fawkyner’s piece in that the music is richer in texture and harmony and the polyphony is more intricate. It’s also a very beautiful composition. The present performance is a splendid one. Not only is the music very skilfully sung but a fine sense of atmosphere is generated. Listening to it, I found it quite easy to conjure up a mental picture of a candlelit evening rendition in the Eton chapel.

Walter Lambe’s ‘Magnificat’ is an alternatim setting This is a fine piece in which the polyphony frequently sounds celebratory. Stephen Darlington leads a strong performance.

Equally successful is the account of Richard Davy’s In honore summe matris. This is a luxuriantly expansive piece. The technical aspects of the music are very clever for we read in Timothy Symons’ good notes that the piece contains passages for no less than nine different combinations of two-part writing. These are all well done and the sections for full choir are no less impressive. Towards the end, leading up to and during the closing ‘Amen’, Davy employs triplets in some of the parts. In my experience this rhythmic device is not that common in music of this period and it makes an exciting effect.

Finally we hear Browne’s ‘Stabat Mater’, one of the jewels in the Choirbook. As befits the text, the tone of the music is quite sombre at the start but the music opens up as it unfolds and much of the full choir writing is texturally rich. It’s an imposing piece, which becomes ever more impressive as it progresses, and the concluding ‘Amen’ is quite magnificent. The choir perform it splendidly, sustaining the long lines, which are musically and mentally taxing, expertly.

There’s some marvellous music here. Throughout this fine disc the singing of the Christ Church is cultured and very impressive. They display excellent control and the tone is full and consistently pleasing to hear. There’s always good clarity in the delivery of the part writing, no matter whether a small group or the full choir is singing. It’s obvious that they’ve been expertly trained by Stephen Darlington. The recorded sound is atmospheric and reports the choir with clarity and presence.

-- John Quinn, MusicWeb International

The Irresistible Karita Mattila

Includes work(s) by Healey Willan. Ensemble: Elora Festival Singers. Conductor: Noel Edison. Soloist: Matthew Larkin.

Classical Music

Schock/Otto/Ksirova/Walter/Rias-Unterhaltungs orchester.

Seraphic Fire has assembled a collection of music with which the ensemble has a visceral, tenacious connection. This self-titled recording contains Seraphic Fire signature works that have brought the ensemble to prominence eleven seasons after it's founding. Led by Founder and Artistic Director Patrick Dupre Quigley, Seraphic Fire brings the best ensemble singers from around the country to perform repertoire ranging from Gregorian chant to newly commissioned works.

This stunning recording by Grammy-nominated Seraphic Fire is an expertly informed collection of some of Western music’s purest compositions.

Chris Williams: Songs of the Coromandel Coast

Following a critically acclaimed recording of music from the Eton Choirbook, More Divine Than Human (AV 2167), The Choir of Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford returns with a second volume from the vast collection of 15th-century English sacred music, Choirs of Angels. The works range from John Browne's richly scored eight-part O Maria salvatoris mater, the first piece in the Eton Choirbook, to William Cornysh's exquisite miniature Ave Maria mater Dei, the choirbook's shortest work. The compositional range in the Eton Choirbook demands extraordinary virtuosity from its performers, and Stephen Darlington and his choir of men and boys do this glorious music tremendous justice. "hugely appealing ... natural, spacious, rich, expressive performances." - The Sunday Times "They do a fantastic job and the soundworld is terrific." - BBC Music Magazine