Simply unmissable for any fans of this opera, Anglophone or not, Mackerras balances the songful and the sinister with absolute sureness. There is not a weak link in the cast, with Rebecca Evans in particular showing how her voice has bloomed in recent years. Jane Henschel is a frighteningly credible witch: she could be your smiling next-door neighbour.

-- Gramophone [9/2007]


This new Opera-in-English set of Engelbert Humperdinck's wonderful Hansel and Gretel goes straight to the top of the list of recorded performances, along with the Schwarzkopf/Karajan. Charles Mackerras leads a most beautiful reading, fully aware of Humperdinck's debt to and love for Wagner but with a warmth that makes the glorious orchestrations and easy, lovely, folksy melodies flow naturally and gracefully. This is not to say that there isn't excitement--the "Witch's Ride" is thrillingly lumpy and aggressive. Mackerras offers a terrific piece of storytelling in music, and the big burst when the Witch is pushed into the oven is a fine cataclysm, handsomely captured by Chandos' engineers.

David Pountney's translation is always comfortable and mostly understandable, and the cast is blessed with natural actors. Jennifer Larmore at times has been faulted for her hard-edged tone; here, as Hansel--sure of himself, boyish, and charming--she's just right. Rebecca Evans sounds nothing like Larmore and portrays a Gretel both spunky and spooked out. If the children's Evening Prayer ever has been sung more beautifully I certainly don't remember it; absolute obedience to dynamics and an ideal blend of voices make it a few moments of sheer bliss. Jane Henschel's Witch is the tour de force this role had better be, and while she may not be the absolute best on CD (that honor goes to Christa Ludwig on an old RCA recording, a set marred only by Anna Moffo's weird Hansel), she's a master of altering her tone, from cajoling to menacing to utter loathing.

I prefer a lighter-toned Sandman, but Diana Montague cannot be faulted vocally or for her gentle singing, and Sarah Tynan's Dew Fairy is lovely. Rosalind Plowright's Mother is strong (she might have made a good Witch) and Robert Hayward sings the Father's music brightly (Mackerras leads his entrance "Tra-la-la-las" nice and quickly). Orchestra and chorus are superb. This set is a pleasure--the ideal Hansel in English, and perhaps in any language.

--Robert Levine, ClassicsToday.com

Humperdinck: Hänsel und Gretel

HANSEL & GRETEL

Classical Music

Agreeable geniality: benign, attractive melodically with gloriously yearning themes.

There are a number of composers who are best known almost exclusively for writing one particular work from a substantial compositional output. The principal names that spring to mind are Gustav Holst for The Planets; Max Bruch for his First Violin Concerto and Carl Orff for Carmina Burana. Falling into this category is the German late-Romantic composer Engelbert Humperdinck who is really only known for his much loved opera Hänsel und Gretel composed in 1891/92. Based on the Brothers Grimm fairytale the composer described his score as a Märchenoper (Fairytale opera- based on Brothers Grimm). The richly scored opera has become inextricably associated with children and families, and is traditionally performed at Christmas time.

Humperdinck wrote a considerable number of works in several genres including a number of stage works but none have come anywhere close to attaining the popularity of Hänsel und Gretel. I am told that the Königskinder (The King’s Children) is sometimes staged but I have never come across it. Contained on this CPO release are six chamber scores the majority of which were composed in the 1870s and only published in recent years with the exception being the String quartet in C major from 1919/20.

The earliest work on the release is the single movement Menuet in E flat major for Piano Quintet marked Allegro composed in 1872 as an alternative for a Christmas programme. Bearing a dedication to Johannes Degen, a judge and amateur violinist, the substantial String Quartet Movement in E minor was written in 1873. With regard to completing the score Humperdinck got as far as sketching out another two movements. Cast in three movements, the Piano Quintet in G major was completed in 1875. It seems that it was played by Johannes Degen music group in which Humperdinck would sometimes stand in as the pianist. The score of the central Adagio bears an inscription to the memory of Humperdinck’s sister Ernestine who died aged only seventeen. In the concluding Allegro Humperdinck blends a Scherzo with a Rondo. The String Quartet Movement in C minor takes around 7 minutes. Humperdinck won the Frankfurt Mozart prize with the C minor score. The Notturno for Violin and String Quartet in G major is marked Andante tranquillo. After its completion in October 1879 Humperdinck before the ink was almost dry prepared an alternative arrangement of the score for violin and piano doing away the quartet. Cast in three movements the String Quartet in C major was written some thirty years after Hänsel und Gretel and is Humperdinck’s final chamber score. Humperdinck explained that the central Gemächlich (Leisurely) is a contrasting combination of a slow movement and Scherzo.

Irrespective of the tempi indications Humperdinck’s undemanding writing tends to inhabit a similar mood. The prevailing character of the slow movements is one of agreeable geniality: benign, highly attractive melodically with gloriously yearning themes. The outer movements, although occasionally squally and moderately windswept, offer more of the same but with a quicker speed. There’s no whiff of German Sturm und Drang or late-Romantic Wagnerian or Straussian excess in any of Humperdinck’s chamber scores. Owing to the lack of stylistic, melodic and dynamic contrast one can understand why these scores have remained neglected for so long. Out of the six Humperdinck works the String Quartet (1919/20) with its catchy central movement Gemächlich is certainly agreeable as is the Notturno for violin and string quartet but it is the Piano Quintet that I consider to be the finest. Without plumbing great emotional depths I also greatly enjoyed the central Adagio of the Piano Quintet for its tender yearning quality; serving as a fine tribute to Humperdinck’s deceased sister Ernestine.

The Diogenes Quartet is a Munich based ensemble and was founded in 1996. The Diogenes number the Amadeus and La Salle quartets amongst their teachers. I couldn’t fault the beautiful playing of the Diogenes who adopts a straightforward unadorned style that feels wholly convincing. Glorious string tone and impeccable ensemble are trademarks of this first-rate quartet. For the Piano quintet in G major and the Menuet for piano quintet the Diogenes are augmented by pianist Andreas Kirpal who makes a terrific contribution sharing this music with tightly matched teamwork. The Notturno for violin and string quartet in G major is a real find with the Diogenes joined by Lydia Dubrovskaya who takes the solo violin part. With assurance and refined musicianship Dubrovskaya plays this nocturne quite beautifully. I can easily imagine this score becoming quite a hit on a Classic FM Relaxing Classics programme.

The recording was made at the August Everding Saal, Grünwald on the outskirts of Munich and the sound quality is spectacular. It’s vividly clear and superbly balanced too which is something that I rarely encounter where piano and string quartets are concerned.

-- Michael Cookson, MusicWeb International

Classical Music

Classical Music

Engelbert Humperdinck exemplifies the destiny of the “one-hit wonder” like few others. His opera Hänsel und Gretel, premiered in 1893, has remained a mainstay at opera houses throughout Germany and the world ever since. But this single international hit drew attention away from the rest of his oeuvre – which remains underappreciated to this day. After all, this supposedly good-natured “Märchenonkel” (“fairytale uncle”) was still a modern, cosmopolitan figure who ranked among the great musicians of his time. Humperdinck won the coveted Mendelssohn Award for composition in Berlin at the age of 25. He was an assistant to Wagner in Naples, Venice, and Bayreuth, studied Spanish and Arabic culture on prolonged scholarly travels, and taught at the conservatory in Barcelona, where he wrote a theory of harmony in Spanish. He was also a member (and, for a time, vice president) of the Royal Academy of the Arts in Berlin, honorary member of the Académie française and the Academia Santa Cecilia in Rome. And his works were included in the repertoires of the likes of Weingartner, Kleiber, Brecher, Blech, and Strauss – the greatest conductors of his time. Most of his catalogue remains largely unknown: not only his greatest works, such as his depth psychology-inspired fairytale opera Die Königskinder (which was premiered at the Metropolitan Opera in 1910), but also the stage pieces created for Max Reinhard’s Deutsches Theater in Berlin, his chamber music and a great many art songs from every period of his career. These are original pieces, subtle post-romantic art song with Humperdinck’s characteristic, often surprising, expansive harmonies. Of roughly 100 documented songs for voice and piano, about one third have disappeared, while many have not been published and only exist today as manuscripts. Save for a few scattered pieces on so-called “motto CDs,” there are no recordings of Humperdinck’s songs. And virtually no one performs them today. We intend to close this gap with the 29 pieces offered here. Covering a period of nearly 50 years, they are intended to show the breadth of his song-writing spectrum.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

If it's Hansel-in-English you're looking for, this set clearly is your choice...Here we get a lovely pair of kids in Suzanne Mentzer and Heidi Grant Murphy, their voices so utterly un-alike that the listening experience is vivid for that alone--but besides that, their interplay is credible and they both make wonderful sounds. Mentzer's dark-hued mezzo is suitably boyish, while Murphy's little-girl tone is charming. Judith Forst, hardly in the first bloom of her career, is a vicious Witch, smacking her lips and exuding spite and malice--and her diction is quite good too, unlike Murphy's, just to offer one comparison. Janice Taylor's portrayal of the mother is very fine, but her tone is wobbly; Robert Orth is a sympathetic, burly father; and Anna Christy's double-duty as Sandman and Dew Fairy is impressive. Conductor Andreas Delfs favors slowish tempos, bringing out the rich, symphonic aspects of the score and always making clear that Humperdinck was heavily influenced by Wagner. The Milwaukee Orchestra is excellent, with playing both atmospheric and grand from the brass section in this live performance (no audience is discernible). I guess it's nice to hear the opera in English even if much of it can't be understood, but--not to pick nits--why would a child say toil" when he can say "work"? The sound is better than good--rich and colorful." --Robert Levine, ClassicsToday.com

In 1908, Maurice Maeterlinck wrote his play The Blue Bird (L’Oiseau bleu). Having proved a good source of operatic subjects before (Pelléas et Mélisande, Ariane et Barbe-Bleue), it is no surprise that composers jumped at the opportunity to write music to this latest. The French composer Albert Wolff made an opera of it that, though premiered at the MET, has since been forgotten. But even before that, in 1912, Max Reinhardt put it on as an adapted Christmas play in Berlin and he had none less than Engelbert Humperdinck write the incidental music to it. The music was never published until Steffen Tast found the score and salvaged it for us to hear. A sweet story and sweeter still music by Humperdinck newly discovered? Why, that’s in and of itself as though it was Christmas!

REVIEW:

Steffen Tast really deserves credit for restoring this work to the repertoire and for giving such a fine and dedicated traversal of the music. One only has to listen to the stately but regretful theme as the children take leave of their grandparents in the land of memories to get a sense of Mr Tast’s rapport with the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin. This music bears a strong resemblance to Mahler, but just until the solo violin takes over with a sentimental theme that is lusciously played by the un-named concertmaster. Tast elegantly shapes the beautifully sketched musical themes for Bread, Fire, Water, and Milk, who all become characters in the play. The Rundfunkchor Berlin gets to briefly display their talents in a Christmas carol arranged in two parts, and then later in a wordless chorus for the expectant mothers welcoming their unborn children. Overall Tast skillfully reveals the richness of Humperdinck’s orchestration in an carefully judged reading of this important score.

-- MusicWeb International

Hänsel und Gretel brought Humperdinck worldwide fame but his tragic fairy story "Königskinder" (‘The King’s Children’) offers a stark contrast to it and has only begun to be revived in recent years. The doomed love of a goose girl and a prince – as they battle prejudice and are obstructed by magic – ends in their loving deaths, and with it a rebuke to the villagers who rejected them. This acclaimed production by the renowned German director Christof Loy features the award-winning singers – tenor Daniel Behle and Ukrainian soprano Olga Kulchynska.

HUMPERDINCK Königskinder • Sebastian Weigle, cond; Daniel Behle ( The King’s Son ); Amanda Majeski ( The Goose Girl ); Nikolay Borchev ( The Musician ); Julia Juon ( Witch ); Magnus Baldvinsson ( Woodchopper ); Martin Mitterutzner ( Broom-maker ); Franz Mayer ( Councillor ); Dietrich Volle ( Innkeeper ); Chiara Bäumi ( Innkeeper’s Daughter ); Frankfurt Op Ch; Frankfurt Op & Museum O • OEHMS 943 (3 CDs: 166:00 & German only) Live: Frankfurt 9–10/2012


Engelbert Humperdinck’s Königskinder, like Auber’s Muette de Portici and Weber’s Euryanthe, was one of those operas on my “bucket list”—works I had heard about, and perhaps knew one or two excerpts from, but had never heard complete. As it turned out, I loved the Auber opera but found the Weber interminably dull except for the famous Overture, the latter an opinion (I learned) shared by legendary opera critic Herman Klein. As for Königskinder, which despite its translation as King’s Children is better known as “The Goose Girl” (anyone who has seen them will never forget the photos of Geraldine Farrar leading her geese across the Metropolitan Opera stage), it has often been described as dull music or, at the very best, not half as good as Hänsel und Gretel. I beg to differ. The music is entirely different—more fully developed, at some points almost symphonically, longer of course, and a bit darker as the opera progresses since, unlike Hänsel, it doesn’t have a happy ending—but I found it a work of excellent quality. To my non-child-like mind, in fact, I found it superior as a musical and dramatic experience to Hänsel und Gretel.


But I am only discussing the music here. Reading the booklet, and looking at the photos of this production, given in Frankfurt during September and October 2012, one is horrified by what one sees. The plot, for those who don’t know it, is this: The goose girl is really a princess under the spell of a witch, with whom she lives. The witch forces the goose girl to bake cursed, deadly bread daily, but the latter puts a blessing on it so that whoever eats it will not die but see beautiful visions. A king’s son (a prince) suddenly appears: he has left his father’s castle to learn about people and the world. The pair meet and fall in love, but after he leaves the witch, sensing that a man has been in her house, locks the goose girl up. She escapes. There is a sub-plot in which a minstrel, a woodchopper and a broom-maker ask the witch to help them find a king, but that need not concern us. The goose girl enters the town square at noon with a crown on her head; when the prince arrives, she puts the crown on his head; but the people, thinking they have been made fools of, angrily chase them out of town (and accidentally break the minstrel’s leg). Later, it is winter; the prince and goose girl, cold and hungry, eventually arrive at the witch’s hut. They discover that the witch was burned at the stake and the minstrel lives there now. The prince gives the woodchopper his crown in return for some old bread to eat. They don’t realize that this is one of the pieces of cursed bread; they eat it, and die in the snow.


Well, so far, so good. But if you flip the booklet back a few pages, you’ll see pictures of a threadbare stage with young people, dressed almost in rags, either starving or on the verge of death. In one picture, the word “Hellawald” is written in large chalk letters across the front of the stage; in another, decapitated, angry pigs’ heads surround two men in black uniforms with the words “Hölle Stadt” (Hell City) painted on the backdrop. This isn’t a fairy tale any more. Flip back a few more pages, and they explain this to you. Fairy tales are for saps, and the non-happy ending of this one indicates, to the director of this production, a dark, surreal quality based on Freud’s references to “the world of imagination of the fairytale” which “framed the agony of the genre.” Some people “even said that the fairytale died long ago … buried somewhere, perhaps in a mass grave.” Further reference is made to Brundibár, Hans Krása’s fairytale-children’s opera, “performed over 50 times by Jewish children in the Theresienstadt concentration camp,” thus becoming the memorial work for “all children who died in the Holocaust….The children were deported to the east after the performance and gassed; so was the composer.” Thus we now have poor Humperdinck’s opera made an example of the horrors of the Holocaust he never lived to witness (he died in 1921). Say goodbye to Gerry Farrar’s jolly little goose girl costume. This is now pretty gritty stuff.


I’m not sure if a DVD of this production has been released—at least, I haven’t seen one yet—but personally, I’d recommend getting this audio-only recording, ripping out the photos in the booklet referencing the harshness and gritty reality of gassed children, and take it on its own merits. Because this is an absolutely splendid performance of the music, and that, in essence, is what carries the story, not storm trooper-directed pigs’ heads or starving children in “Hell City.” Sebastian Weigle is quite obviously a master conductor; he moves things at a splendid pace, shaping and enlivening the music with so much pointing, and a tremendous range of orchestral colors that alternately lighten and darken the mood of the music, that in the end I found it as miraculous a conducting job as that of Rudolf Kempe in his 1956 recording of Meistersinger. Moreover, he has an absolutely splendid cast to work with. Soprano Majewski as the goose girl has a splendidly youthful, bright-sounding voice, almost like Geraldine Farrar but with a piquant flicker-vibrato that I found to be extremely attractive. Tenor Behle has one of those light tenor voices that one hears as extremely fine but quintessentially German, like the similar voices of Georg Maikl or Peter Schreier. One might not ideally want to hear Behle sing Italian opera, regardless of the suitability to his vocal size, but in anything German he sounds ideal. Borschev, as the musician, has an equally lovely baritone voice, sounding a bit like a younger, lighter-voiced Bernd Weikl.


Another point in this recording’s favor is the excellent vocal acting if the principals. I, like a few other critics at Fanfare, have complained of the modern tendency of singers to sing everything correctly as per the score but give almost nothing in terms of characterization. This tendency, by the way, is not accidental; it is often bred into singers as a way of making them more versatile for whatever kind of production a crackpot director can come up with; but here, despite our Pigs ‘n’ Nazis Holocaust stage settings, the singers all act out their music with wonderful attention to the words. I only wish that Oehms Classics had provided an English translation of the libretto; but nowadays we should be happy they give us any words at all.


But best of all is the way the music simply tumbles out of your speakers. It is as if no effort whatsoever went into the rehearsals, as if everyone—principal singers, secondary singers, the orchestra, even the children’s chorus—had simply learned this music so well that they could play and sing it in their sleep. The flow of the opera is continuous; you are never bored for so much as one minute. It all keeps moving, and flowing, and changing in mood and color, and you as a listener are completely swept away by it. Yes, Virginia, there are good fairy-tale operas!


The only other recording of this work I’ve heard, at least in part, is the 2008 one with Juliane Banse as the goose girl, Klaus Florian Vogt as the prince, and Ingo Metzmacher conducting. Vogt has one of the most remarkably beautiful voices of our time, but is not much of an interpreter. Banse has a very nice voice, but one with just a touch of dryness in her tone which Majewski avoids; more to the point, conductor Ingo Metzmacher is merely routine, whereas Weigle is spectacular in his range of colors and moods. There is also a 2005 recording conducted by Fabio Luisi on Profil, with soprano Dagmar Schellenberger and tenor Thomas Moser, and a 1952 radio broadcast on Gala 530 with a young Fischer-Dieskau as the musician, Peter Anders as the prince, Käthe Möller-Siepermann as the goose girl, and the excellent conductor Richard Kraus, but I haven’t heard them. (A 1976 Helen Donath-Adolf Dallapozza-Hermann Prey-Heinz Wallberg recording was also available once on EMI CDs, but I couldn’t find it still listed as available online.) The great tenor Jonas Kaufman also has a DVD performance available on Decca 1744909, but even though he still has Tamino in his repertoire, both roles are too light for his present-day voice (he started out in lighter roles, but by the mid-2000s had moved into Florestan and other bigger parts), and Metzmacher is again the conductor.


You can’t go wrong with this recording; it is, quite simply, one of the greatest I’ve ever heard of any opera, regardless of genre. Another point in its favor: perhaps because the singers were generally motionless onstage, either dying or being tortured by concentration camp guards (and their pigs), there is almost no stage noise to be heard in this performance. Forget the dreary photos of Hellawald and Hölle Stadt—just put the CDs on and enjoy!


FANFARE: Lynn René Bayley