Classical Music

Classical Music

Complete Track List:

1. How great Thou art
2. Ode to Music
3. Sweet Hour of Prayer
4. The Long Day Closes
5. I'll Walk with God
6. Suddenly You're Older
7. Love at Home
8. I Walked Today Where Jesus Walked
9. The Windows of the World
10. One Voice
11. The Lost Chord
12. Danny Boy
13. Home on the Range
14. Nearer My God to Thee

Classical Music

I Gotta Right to Sing the Blues

This is an issue of considerable potential significance, the opening installment in what is planned as a complete recording of Telemann’s 1725/26 Harmonischer Gottes-Dienst, the first integral cycle of church cantatas for the liturgical year ever published. Ever the astute self-publicist, Telemann had first announced in the Hamburg press plans to publish a cycle of cantatas as early as 1723, but the late delivery of the texts by the poet, Pastor Michael Brandenburg, forced Telemann to turn to a new cycle, Harmonischer Gottes-Dienst. For this, he sought the help of various poets, but in the end employed texts that were mostly the work of a young Hamburg writer, Arnold Wilckens, who based them largely on the Epistle for the day.

Planned more with domestic than church use in mind, the 72 cantatas are chamber works scored for a single voice, an obbligato instrument (specified with characteristic pragmatism by the composer as “a violin, or oboe, or flute, or recorder”), and continuo. The earliest cantatas of the cycle, sold by subscription, were ready by the end of 1725, in time for the issue of the first in the cycle, the cantata for New Year’s Day. Numerous reprints and the number of published copies still extant testify to the success of the venture, a success that was doubtless responsible for Telemann issuing a second collection in 1731–32.

The first six cantatas to be issued in Toccata’s new series are all for high voice, and cover a wide range of the liturgical year. The claim that four cantatas (TWV 1:941, TWV 1:730, TWV 1:1502, and TWV 1:96) are first recordings is untrue, the first three being available in current recordings. Toccata has also got in a mess with their TWV numbering, giving Hemmet den Eifer the number of In gering (wrongly listed as TWV1:549) instead of its correct number, TWV1:730. Hemmet den Eifer is also erroneously listed on the cover as being for the First Sunday after Epiphany rather than the Fourth, although the booklet gets it right. Not an auspicious start for an ambitious series.

The form of each cantata is the same: opening and closing da capo arias framing a lengthy plain (or secco) recitative. The use of rhetorical gesture is a feature of the cantatas, either in obvious mimetic ways such as the graphic shakes on the word “regen” (“trembling”) in the opening aria of TWV1:1040, or with greater musical subtlety when the music of TWV 1: 1502’s first aria becomes disjointed to illustrate the impotence of mortal wisdom “to gain complete perfection.” Hemmet den Eifer starts in strikingly bold fashion with an aria demanding “Stifle your eagerness/banish revenge,” but the most dramatic music here is to be found in “Du bist verflucht” (“You are accursed”), the opening aria of TWV1:213 for the Fourth Sunday of Lent. Here a turbulent accompaniment underpins a colorfully declamatory text, the “voice of terror” inspiring a headlong chromatic descent in the voice, fearfully dogged by the recorder.

Mona Julsrud’s account of these six cantatas is generally very satisfying. She is a bright, agile soprano with a good technique that gets her around ornaments with ease, phrases musically, and sings with clarity and good diction. But on the debit side, the voice lacks distinctive color, and there’s a tendency for upper notes to sound “hooty.” She is well supported by the members of Bergen Barokk, although it might have provided greater interest had at least one of Telemann’s alternative obbligato instruments been employed rather than using a recorder throughout. Other than the solecisms noted above, the presentation is good, with a slipcase that includes the disc, and an informative 60-page booklet that deserves full credit for printing the relevant biblical text before each cantata. Good sound. Overall, this is a promising, if not perfect start to a project one wishes every success.

FANFARE: Brian Robins

PORTRAIT OF VON STADE

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Gregorian Chant: Paschale Mysterium

Samuel Barber and Aaron Copland remain among the most popular of 20th-century American composers, and the accessible, populist musical style that granted them much success with audiences is evident in this collection of their vocal works. Virgil Thomson, whose music also appears here, is less of a household name; his music, while equally (or more) conservative, has never entered the mainstream like that of his contemporaries has.
This disc is of great historical interest. All the works are heard in their premiere recordings, dating from 1950 to 1954. A young Leontyne Price gives the perfect rendition of Barber's 'Hermit Songs,' imperious, coy and despairing by turns. If Eleanor Steber lacks the naïve, wide-eyed wonder of more recent interpreters of 'Knoxville: Summer of 1915,' such as Dawn Upshaw, it is refreshing to hear a more dramatic performance that may indeed be closer to the composer's wishes. In Copland's folksy 'Old American Songs,' William Warfield sings with verve and complete authority. A special attraction here is that each composer is heard as a piano accompanist in his own works, and as an added bonus, the liner notes feature engaging reminiscences about the three composers by their younger colleague Ned Rorem.

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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

Soprano Georgine Resick's Visions Intérieures, is a survey of the development of the song cycle. Ms. Resick sings in German, Polish, French, Swedish, and Italian, in this two-CD tour-de-force which presents a superb selection of works and composers rarely heard today. The great flowering of the song cycle occurred in early nineteenth century Germany, with its greatest representations being the well-known cycles by Schubert and Schumann. These cycles inspired numerous imitations, many of which, while not attaining the depth and breadth of their models, are charming and integrated works. On Disc One, entitled The Early German Song Cycle, Ms. Resick is accompanied by Andrew Willis, performing cycles of Weber and Kreutzer on a copy of a Louis Dulcken fortepiano (Munich 1815-20). The duo then performs cycles of Cornelius, Thalberg, and Jensen on an original 1841 Bösendorfer. On Disc Two, entitled The Wanderer: The Song Cycle in Migration, Ms. Resick is joined by Warren Jones, performing late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century cycles on a Steinway D. In an interesting cultural crossover, The Wanderer presents songs by a Russian composer of French-Lithuanian descent setting Polish poems; a German-influenced Polish composer setting German poetry; a French influenced Italian, and French composers setting translations of texts from Persia and Denmark.Georgine Resick is an internationally recognized soprano in both the operatic and concert fields. Renowned for her Mozart and Strauss interpretations, she has sung a wide variety of leading roles with the Vienna State Opera, Chicago Lyric Opera, Paris Opera, Houston Grand Opera, and numerous others.

Classical Music

Classical Music

If Wagner's Tristan had lived in the 1940s instead of Medieval times, perhaps he would have crooned Ivor Novello's "Love is my reason for living" or serenaded his Isolde with Rudolf Friml's "Love me tonight." If these popular songs don't aspire to the transcendent rapture of Wagnerian opera, they do share a sense of absorption in sheer passion. Perhaps sensing this, Ben Heppner, acclaimed as the finest Wagnerian tenor of his generation, offers here a selection of the sentimental and nostalgic love songs sung on radio, stage and screen by earlier "crossover" stars such as Mario Lanza and Nelson Eddy.
Heppner, who sings even a demanding role such as Tristan emphasizing lyrical warmth, brings an appealingly direct quality to these songs, varying from the emphatic to the intimate in approach. If he misses the fun in some of the music (although he finds it in Mana-Zucca's swaggering "I love life") there is no doubting his affection for it, and the orchestrations by Jonathan Tunick are romantically enveloping without being schmaltzy. Familiar tunes like "I'll be seeing you" and Lanza's theme song "Be my love" are supplemented by appealing obscurities by Noel Coward and Eric Coates, among others, and Heppner's operatically supported high notes ring out in stirring celebration of these charming songs.
REVIEWS:
Opera News (2/2000) - "...Heppner's heroic good cheer and ebullient singing give a gilded edge to this album of old-fashioned favorites... reveling in their deep-purple lyrics and gloriously sentimental melodies ...he sounds as if he's having a wonderful time..."

Listen to only the first track of this recording, a heart-wrenching setting of Emily Dickinson's poem "I shall not live in vain" sung by Renée Fleming, and be immediately convinced that this compilation by Jake Heggie is a must for any lover of song. THE FACES OF LOVE testifies to Heggie's nimble sensitivity in setting words to music, as he draws from a wide range of poetry, while always seeming to find the most unforced and compelling means to make these lyrics sing.
As the San Francisco Opera's first CHASE Composer-in-Residence, Heggie has had the benefit of forming professional relationships with some of the world's greatest singers, a number of whom appear on this disk in songs written expressly for them. This intimate knowledge of individual voices and personalities has enabled Heggie to write unusually idiomatic vocal music for such distinctive singers as Fleming, Carol Vaness, Frederica von Stade, and Jennifer Larmore--the four most thoughtful collaborators on this disk.
REVIEWS:
Newsday (4/30/00, p.26) - "...The disc, which is an impressive calling card, makes it clear what these singers respond to...[Heggie's] melodies play out in floating, sometimes startling movements, like a breeze-tossed kite...Heggie can also be a delightful colorist, possessed of a natural, elegant eloquence..."

Presenting Vol.5 in the first complete recording of the 72 cantatas from Telemann’s collection Harmonischer Gottes-Dienst, published in Hamburg, 1726 – they were the first complete set of cantatas for the liturgical year to appear in print.

Classical Music

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.

RAVEL: TRIO DEBUSSY, RESPIGH

Why beat around the bush? This is one of the greatest vocal recitals ever recorded, comparable to the Callas Puccini and Verdi recitals, and belongs in the collection of anyone with an interest in the verismo repertory. Renata Scotto was at the height of her considerable powers, the voice under near complete control and her interpretive instincts honed to perfection. It is a special treat to hear her in roles that she never recorded complete. Both her Lauretta from 'Gianni Schicchi' and her Manon are distinguished creations. It is also good to hear her roles she never performed such as Magda in 'La Rondine' and the title roles in 'Iris' and 'La Wally.'
Not everything is perfect. Like many great Mimìs, Scotto attempted Musetta, both on recording and onstage with little success. Scotto recorded relatively few recitals. In addition to this one there are especially fine joint recitals with Placido Domingo and Mirella Freni. The excerpts from four of her complete Sony recordings is a welcome bonus (the uncredited Pinkerton in the second Butterfly excerpt is Placido Domingo).