Alphons Diepenbrock continues to number among the best-known Dutch composers of the turn of the 20th century. Hans Christoph Begemann and Otto Tausk have recorded Diepenbrock’s most important baritone songs.

Captivating verismo intermezzi. The focus [of this CD] is occupied by intermezzi from the famous operas of Giacomo Puccini, Pietro Mascagni, and Ruggero Leoncavallo and their masterfully instrumented music rich in emotions and ideas. Here three verismo works by these composers merit special mention: According to some music historians, the Rome premiere of Mascagni’s Cavalleria rusticana on 17 May 1890 signaled the birth of this special stylistic current. Ever since its Milan premiere on 21 May 1892 Leoncavallo’s two-act Pagliacci has become the perfect counterpart to the one-act opera by Puccini, who was six years his junior. Italo Montemezzi’s L’amore dei tre re (The Love of the Three Kings) developed the fundamental verismo concept in phenomenal fashion and into three gripping acts. This lesser-known opera was staged at the Teatro alla Scala considerably later, on 10 April 1913, when its composer was thirty-eight-years old. - cpo (Translated from German text.)

Orchestral works by August Klughardt "represents an impressive case on behalf of a composer to whom one simply cannot listen without becoming personally involved." - Klassik.com Vol. 1, Germany, [Nov. 9, 2013]

Klughardt’s symphonies were frequently performed during his lifetime, and his fifth such work displays a special compositional history. He composed it in 1892, the year during which he celebrated his twenty-fifth anniversary as a conductor in Dessau. In this early form, however, the work was not yet a Symphony in C minor but a String Sextet in C sharp minor, which unfortunately has not come down to us, so that we can no longer compare it to the later symphony. The frequent employment of a solo violin in almost all the movements nevertheless must surely be an inheritance from the original string sextet version. This highly animated, vital, and sonorous music and two overtures by this Dessau master are interpreted by the »home team,« the Anhalt Philharmonic, this time under the conductor Antony Hermus. - CPO, (Translated from German text.)

E. T. A. HOFFMANN Mass in d, AV 18. Miserere in b?, AV 42 • Rupert Huber, cond; Sibylla Rubens, Jutta Böhnert (sop); Rebecca Martin (mez); Thomas Cooley (ten); York Felix Speer (bs); WDR Radio Ch; WDR SO • CPO 777832 (62:01 Text and Translation)

Butcher, baker, candlestick maker? Well, not exactly, but it wouldn’t be off the mark to call E. T. A. Hoffmann (1776–1822) a polymath, for he was one of Germany’s greatest early Romantic writers of fantasy fiction and horror tales, a lawyer and a jurist, a draftsman and a caricaturist, and a music critic and serious writer on the art of music and its aesthetics. And, oh yes, by the way, did I mention that in his spare time he was a composer? His output includes a symphony, several stage works, a handful of piano sonatas, a piano trio, a harp quintet, and of course, the concerted choral-orchestral Mass and Miserere on this disc.

Hoffmann’s literary works are commonly cited as the inspiration for Schumann’s Kreisleriana and Offenbach’s The Tales of Hoffmann, but less often noted is that Hoffmann’s novella The Nutcracker and the Mouse King was the basis for Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker, and that Léo Delibes’s ballet Coppélia is also based on stories by Hoffmann.

Hoffmann’s literary works had more of an influence on 19th-century composers and the Romantic movement than his musical compositions did, for his abilities as a composer were judged to be more modest than his talent for the written word. Add to that his relatively small output, and it’s hardly surprising that there’s not a lot of E. T. A. Hoffmann’s music on disc. In light of this, what’s perhaps surprising is that this is at least the third recording of the Miserere I’m aware of. A performance on Koch-Schwann/Music Sacra with a different conductor and cast of vocal soloists, but the same chorus and, I believe, the same orchestra was reviewed by David Johnson in 12:4. And yet another recording, also on Koch Schwann, but this time with an entirely different cast of singers, players, and conductor—Rolf Beck, leading the Southwest German Vocal Ensemble and the Concerto Bamberg—was released in 1997, 10 years later.

Johnson was mightily impressed by the Miserere, calling it “a work of genuine, even astonishing power and beauty,” an assessment with which I wholly concur. The piece wasn’t published in Hoffmann’s lifetime, and the exact date of composition isn’t given. It can be deduced, however, that Hoffmann had to have completed it towards the end of 1806 or the beginning of 1807, for the work was to have been performed at the ceremonies earlier in 1806 when Archduke Ferdinand of Austria became the Grand Duke of Würzburg, but the score wasn’t ready in time. It didn’t receive its first performance until Good Friday, 1809.

It’s important to keep in mind when listening to this masterful piece of choral/orchestral writing that its date of composition coincides with that of Beethoven’s C-Major Mass, op. 86. Yet if I had to make a comparison to Hoffmann’s Miserere, it wouldn’t be to Beethoven’s chronologically contemporary Mass, but to a work of 17 or so years earlier, Mozart’s Requiem. Whether Hoffmann was consciously imitating the musical style of that work or not, it’s impossible to say, but the similarities are striking.

Listen to the sighs in the strings just seconds into the opening movement, and tell me you don’t expect to hear the mournful entry of the basset horns. Or tell me there isn’t a resemblance between the Miserere’s “Ecce enim in veritatem” and the Offertorium of the Requiem in the Süssmayer completion.

Understand that in no way am I diminishing Hoffmann’s effort. His Miserere is a gorgeous work, and there’s much in it that postdates Mozart stylistically, specifically the vocal solos, which tend to be more ornate and less liturgical sounding than what Mozart would have considered proper for a sacred setting of such a solemn text, and also in the more symphonic scoring and treatment of the orchestral parts. But as noted by Johnson, Hoffmann additionally takes great pains to fully demonstrate his contrapuntal skills, composing “grand choral double fugues that Bach, himself, could have found no fault with.”

However you hear Hoffmann’s Miserere—whether as an echo of Mozart, a sympathetic vibration with Beethoven, or a precursor to Verdi—it doesn’t matter, as long as you hear it, because it’s a stunning work, which really ought to spark a reassessment of E. T. A. Hoffmann’s output in general.

The Mass in D Minor is a little earlier than the Miserere, dating from between 1803 and 1805, but it’s composed on an equally grand scale. The solemn introductory measures followed by a running fugue is reminiscent of the type of Baroque overture one hears at the beginning of Handel’s Messiah, and simultaneously anticipatory of the overture to Mendelssohn’s Elijah.

As in the Miserere, Mozart looms large over major portions of the Mass. Listen, for example, to the Kyrie, which once again reverberates with recollections of Mozart’s Requiem. But now Haydn takes a bow in the joyful Gloria. Yet through it all, a new Romantic spirit infuses Hoffmann’s work. It’s not as daring as Beethoven’s adventures of the same timeframe, but then whose were?

One thing that deserves some criticism, in my opinion, is Hoffmann’s over-reliance on fugue. At first, one marvels at his aptitude for counterpoint, but when a fugue appears in practically every movement, not only does one begin to wonder if Hoffmann isn’t short on arrows in his quiver, but the recurring fugal textures begin to become a bit tiresome. Remember Saint-Saëns’s dictum: “A fugue is a piece where the voices come in and the audience goes out one at a time.”

Koch-Schwann seems to have taken more than a passing interest in E. T. A. Hoffmann back in the 1990s, for in addition to the above-cited recordings of the Miserere, the label also released a recording of this Mass in 1999, featuring the chorus and orchestra of the Capella Cracoviensis, led by Roland Bader. Unfortunately, I haven’t heard that one either, so I have no basis for comparing different versions of the works on this disc. CPO, however, rarely disappoints in its releases, and the soloists, chorus, and orchestra heard in these performances sound secure in execution and thoroughly engaged in the moment of the music. The recording, too, is excellent—open, spacious, bright, and detailed, without any reverb to muddy the singers’ diction. Very strongly recommended.

FANFARE: Jerry Dubins

Kolja Lessing, one of the most versatile musicians of our time, has energized music culture with significant impulses as a violinist and pianist who combines interpretive and scholarly work. For cpo he has now recorded two violin sonatas by Carl Czerny. After producing several violin and piano sonatas Czerny wrote his grand Sonata Concertante in four movements in 1848, the year of the failed revolution. The contrast to his first Violin Sonata of 1807, a work of his youth, could hardly be greater: reconsideration of Mozartian rhetoric and compositional technique mark this work pulsing with astonishing kinetic energy and with a concertante character for the most part embodied by the piano, while the violin part instead is assigned more the role of brilliant commentary or pointed interaction. Kolja Lessing himself wrote the booklet text and expresses the greatest thanks to Anton Kuerti – not only for his tireless research, investigation, and revival of Czerny’s colossal oeuvre but also just as much for his meticulous transcription of what in part are Czerny’s difficult-to-decipher manuscripts into modern notation. “Accordingly, Anton Kuerti, as Czerny’s real rediscoverer, shall have the last word with a deeply felt statement about these treasures that have now been unearthed: It is a rare privilege to find music that has been so inexcusably neglected and now brought back to life.”

This release follows the album containing Robert Fuchs’ Piano Concerto, Op. 27, and includes two symphonies. After reaching fame after his first serenade, Fuchs was held in high regard by Brahms, and taught composers such as Mahler, Sibelius, and Strauss. This recording features the WDR Sinfonieorchester Koln, conducted by Karl-Heinz Steffens.

At a time when the majority of German composers turned from the opera to the singspiel and its considerably smaller dimensions, Franz Lachner continued the tradition of the grand historical opera with Catharina Cornaro. Lachner’s once so very successful opera, last performed in Munich in 1903, was forgotten for many decades, but a few years ago the editor Volker Tosta of Stuttgart prepared a new edition of this work, its first published version, especially for the concert performance by the Munich Radio Orchestra. The action of the tragic opera is based on the true-life story of the Queen of Cyprus. Political intrigues and great passions distinguish the plot. It is difficult to believe that this musically so very appealing work, which captivated the audience at Munich’s Prince Regent Theater already with its highly atmospheric overture during the performance on which this album is based, ever could be forgotten. “With this opera the German school has been enriched with a dramatic work that has to be counted as one of the most genial and magnificent of the works belonging to it.” This is what the Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung wrote after the premiere, and Max Zenger’s Geschichte der Münchner Oper of 1923 documents the pathbreaking effect of this opera when it states that Catharina Cornaro had “quite literally become Munich’s hallmark, like the two towers of the Cathedral of Our Lady.”

WEINBERG Piano Trio. 1,2,4 Sonatina for Violin and Piano. 1,3 Sonata for Solo Bass 5 • 1 Elisaveta Blumina (pn); 2 Kolja Blacher (vn); 3 Erez Ofer (vn); 4 Johannes Moser (vc); 5 Nabil Shehata (db) • CPO 777804-2 (68:23)


The music of Mieczys?aw Weinberg continues to be issued, and continues to impress. Like his British counterpart, York Bowen, Weinberg was a composer trapped in time and place, and it is good that their very different musics are now coming to the fore with such regularity. One of the wonderful things about this disc, aside from the committed, intense playing of the instrumentalists, is the sound: crisp and clear, with only a very little reverb, which brings the sound of the instruments into sharp focus and makes the listener pay attention to the music.


Like Bowen, Weinberg was largely a tonal composer, although heavily influenced by Bartók and his personal friend Shostakovich. Unlike Shostakovich, however, Weinberg seldom engaged in whining, overwrought musical breast-beating; his aesthetic was geared at bringing out intense personal feelings, but always with good taste and a less mocking or posturing tone. The piano trio that opens this disc is a perfect example. Weinberg immediately grabs our attention with a strident forte tremolo on the violin, and this sets the pace for the musical marvels that follow. The intensity of this piece was inspired, so the notes suggest, by Weinberg’s sight of Polish mothers with their children hugging the legs of Russian horses, begging the Soviet soldiers to let them come over because the Nazis were after them. It was that horrible, that terrifying, and the first movement of this trio reflects that mood. So, too, does the raw power of the ensuing Toccata, which builds up to a powerful fugue; and even the slow movement (“Poem”), which begins softly, still has an undercurrent of menace and unrest, which breaks out in the middle of the movement into an ostinato piano figure, receding in volume and intensity to a quiet, almost submissive ending with the violin playing soft, muted passages. The finale does not toy with a fugue, as did the second movement, but builds up through its quiet opening into a really complex and powerful fugue—oddly enough, based on entirely different thematic material from the opening, which sounds like a Bachian fugue theme. This is clearly one of Weinberg’s masterpieces.


Where do we go from here? To the sonatina for violin and piano from 1946, a piece that sounds like the diametric opposite of the trio. Set primarily in D Minor, but vacillating in and out of F major, the sonatina has touches of melancholy about it, but is primarily a lyrical work with what may be termed episodes of sadness. Here, too, some of the melancholy passages sound related to Jewish folk music without ever really using genuine themes. But ever and anon, Weinberg holds your interest through his amazingly creative sense of construction (would that many of our modern-day American wunderkind composers listen to his work and pay heed to what he does). Nothing in Weinberg’s work is ever flippant, thoughtless, or peripheral; he thinks in terms of the whole picture without sacrificing the detail of internal episodes.


One should be forgiven for thinking in advance that to end this disc with a solo sonata for the rather lugubrious-sounding double bass would be a bit of a downer; after all, solo bass sonatas don’t exactly grow on trees. Yet, after an almost predictably slow first movement, Weinberg becomes much more involved in writing music and not necessarily just writing for the bass, if you know what I mean. His creative forces flowed in one direction, which was towards the creation of fascinating musical forms, and never towards empty virtuosity or just “filling space” with his music. Thus the potential interpreter needs to stay focused not so much on the technical challenges (and there are many in this sonata) as on the musical progression and what it means in terms of expressive content. (I fond it interesting, in the notes, to read that bassist Shehata thinks of it as more “similar to a suite in which each movement is structured very clearly thematically.”) I also noted that, aside from its musical marvels, Weinberg manages to elicit some very interesting sounds from the bass, including percussive effects that almost make it resound like an organ—or, in the last movement, pushing it up into the cello range.


The playing of each musician on this disc, from pianist-director Blumina to double bassist Shehata, is simply astonishing, so deeply rooted in the music that it seems to be an extension of the notes on the page, not an extension of a virtuoso who says to the listener, “Look at me, I’m wonderful!” It is virtuosity that consistently serves the composer and his message, not the ego of the performer. This is a truly great disc.


FANFARE: Lynn René Bayley

Today nothing remains of Ignaz von Beecke's former renown as apianist and composer. The early music lexicographers Gerber and Lipowsky were among those who celebrated his renown, but his many works have all been forgotten. And yet he created music of great originality very much absolutely worth getting to know again in the concert hall and on sound carriers. This release, featuring Beecke's piano concertos is a genuinely pioneering effort inasmuch as it represents one of the first commercial releases wtih works by this composer. Beecke's early works continued to be obliged to early classicism, while his late oeuvre of the 1790's began opening the door wide to romanticism. During the 1750's he initially served as an officer and in 1759, he made his way to the Wallerstein court as an adjutant to Hereditary Prince Kraft Ernst von Oettingen-Wallerstein. It was also here that he celebrated his first successes as a pianist and wrote his first compositions.

At the suggestion of Freiberg’s cathedral music director Albrecht Koch, CPO here releases sacred music from the Freiberg Latin School Library on Freiberg instruments from the time of this repertoire’s composition (16th c.), thus rendering audible a practically unknown and forgotten sound world. The Te Deum of Rogier Michael, one of the leading Saxon chapel masters prior to Heinrich Schütz, is the concert’s highlight. The program is complemented by more music collected and preserved in Freiberg.

The Koelner Akademie under the conductor Michael Alexander Willens presents a compelling interpretation of the Christmas Oratorio by Johann Wilhelm Hertel. The former “Court and Chapel Composer” at the court of Duke Friedrich von Mecklenburg-Schwerin, Hertel composed this cantata between 1777 and 1783 for its sacred concerts. The oratorio came across well and in the introduction by Franziska Seils to the score published by the ortus musikverlag, we read: “Along with the harmonically highly expressive opening chorus and the simply set chorales on familiar melodies from Christmas songs, the angelic proclamation radiating in trumpet splendor and the fully dimensioned, eight-part concluding chorus certainly also contributed to the popularity of the work […] areas of influence interact in Hertel’s Christmas cantata: the tradition of the popular lyrical pastoral idyll and the dramatic oratorio, the baroque philosophy of the emotions and the will to symphonic design.”

Following the great success of Gerhard Weinberger’s new and most comprehensive recording ever of Bach’s organ works (German Record Critics Prize, 2009), Mr. Weinberger and CPO now turn to a new edition featuring the organ compositions of Max Reger in performances on selected magnificent organs surviving from Reger’s period. The composer’s overall oeuvre for the organ enabled this instrument to gain new prestige. Vol. 1 contains works offering eloquent testimony to Reger’s veneration of Bach.

Classical Music

This is a hybrid Super Audio CD playable on both regular and Super Audio CD players.

Gradually and fortunately, for some years now the extensive and highly significant oeuvre of the Polish-Russian composer Mieczyslaw Weinberg has also been discovered and recognized in the West – a process also documented on our internationally highly regarded cpo recordings. During the 1960s Weinberg’s reputation was not only restored but also soared on high – at least in the Soviet Union. Interpreters of the rank of Rostropovich, Gilels, Kondrashin, Leonid Kogan, and the Borodin Quartet joined David Oistrach in his enthusiastic propagation of Weinberg’s music. The Symphony No. 10 is the most stylistically advanced and experimental composition among his purely instrumental works. In conjunction with her research on Dmitri Shostakovich’s life, the Polish violinist and composer Evelina Novicka’s attention was also drawn to the composer Weinberg. Impressed by his compositions, she has recorded several premieres of his works, including the Concertino op. 42 and Rhapsody op. 47 heard on this most recent CD. She herself has arranged the lost version of the Rhapsody on Moldavian Themes for violin and orchestra. - cpo (Translated from German text.)

Classical Music

EBERL Piano Sonata in g, op. 27 . 12 Variations in D. 10 Variations in E? • Marie-Luise Hinrichs (pn) • CPO 7776052 (53:27)


Present-day appreciation of the music of the prolific Viennese composer Anton Eberl (1765–1807) probably lags behind our awareness of his friendship and musical association with Mozart, and, for a time, his public rivalry with Beethoven. Eberl’s Symphony in E? was favorably compared by at least one Vienna critic to the “Eroica,” which was composed around the same time, and premiered on the same concert.


Eberl’s Grand Sonata in G Minor, op. 27, was published in 1805, a few months prior to Beethoven’s “Waldstein,” and dedicated to Cherubini. It’s an ambitious work whose first movement sounds almost nothing like Mozart‘s keyboard music—though its key and dramatic mood show the influence of the 40th Symphony—and not essentially like Beethoven’s, though each movement’s large dimensions may reflect his influence. Rather, the sonata’s textures, which are thicker than Mozart’s, along with its frequent, quick changes between major and minor, and its overall lyrical impulse, remind me a great deal of Schubert’s early piano sonatas, which it predates, as well as the more harmonically experimental passages in some of Dussek’s. In fact, it’s a better piece than the sonatas that Schubert composed before 1817, operating on a grander scale, and holding consistent interest throughout its three movements. The second movement operates like an early Beethoven slow movement, with florid lines that look toward Weber. The work’s high quality is maintained in its third movement, a large form, one of whose motives echoes the Haydn B-Minor Sonata, but whose sweep looks forward to Mendelssohn, with a dose of Beethovenian humor at the close. This is not to say that the music feels derivative. Repeated hearing of the piece has increased my respect for it, and especially in the first movement, Eberl is a composer with something of emotional import to impart, in a voice that’s his own.


The Variations recorded here are a set of 12 in D, based on an appealing theme by Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf, the Arietta Freudin sanfter Herzenstriebe , and a set of 10 in E? based on a similarly good-natured theme by the Singspiel composer Ignaz Umlauf, Zu Steffen sprach im Traume , the latter set supposedly held in great esteem by Mozart, and attributed to him many early editions. Here Eberl’s assured keyboard writing might be mistaken for Beethoven’s in many of his early variation sets. Eberl’s variations stick close to the original themes. The music is cheerful, workmanlike, but not terribly interesting. (Come to think of it, that description fits most of Haydn’s keyboard variations, excepting the F-Minor set, the majority of Mozart’s, and Beethoven’s, before he began to experiment with thematic transformation.)


The advocacy of a pianist who plays as well as Marie-Luise Hinrichs is just what is needed to elevate a second-rank composer like Eberl into the category of one whose music should be heard. Her playing is flexible, sensitive, tasteful, and persuasive in every way. She has the ability to communicate warmth of feeling, and if there are other Eberl works that are on the same high level as the G-Minor Sonata, I would enjoy hearing her play them. There’s a 3-CD set of Eberl’s keyboard music that includes the G-Minor Sonata, played by John Khouri on Music and Arts, the recorded sound of whose fortepiano does the music no favors. CPO provides Hinrichs’s modern instrument with flattering sound.


FANFARE: Paul Orgel

One of the nicest organ recordings I’ve heard.

I’ve been aware of Charles Koechlin for a very long time, having played flute pieces of his for almost as long as I can remember. It’s only relatively recently however that his name seems to have been cropping up more in the CD catalogues, with fascinating and remarkable works such as the piano cycle Les Heures Persanes showing previously little known aspects of the composer. Organist Christian Schmitt has here recorded a representative sample of organ works by Koechlin, and as many of these are première recordings this disc will add considerably to our supply of Koechlinalea.

Koechlin himself was more of a pianist than an organist, and the conventional nature of earlier works such as the Choral in F minor develops into further extremes of contrapuntal extremity as evidenced by the later opus numbered Choral Final du Requiem, which pushes canonic techniques into a labyrinthine elegy. If you like Hindemith’s organ sonatas, then the three Sonatines which Koechlin wrote during 1928-29 occupy comparable melodic and harmonic territory. Koechlin’s fascination and deep study of Bach comes through strongly in the Finale of Sonatine III, and the first and second of these pieces contrast with the rest of the programme in also having lighter Pastorale movements. There is also a good deal of melodic charm in the Quatre Chorals, produced as a by-product of the composer’s own composition classes.

This programme contains what is apparently Koechlin’s last work, the eccentric Pièce pour orgue, Op. 226, which shows the composer exploring the essence of his own expressive palette in what the booklet notes describe as “sketchy textures.” More monumental is the extended Fugue Op.133 II originally written for “a symphonic string apparatus”, and with seemingly impossible chromatic lines. More gentle and improvisatory is the Adagio pour Grand-orgue Op.201, which nonetheless builds a remarkable structure in which one can become totally immersed.

The recently rebuilt 1950s Marktkirche organ is a tremendous instrument, and very well suited to this music. A more nasal French sound might arguably be more appropriate, but whether consciously or not the organ sound here points to the universality of Koechlin’s expressive world and to my ears is both appropriate and highly enjoyable. The CPO recording is very rich and deep even in plain stereo. As an SACD multi-channel experience it really is of demonstration quality. This is one of those inspiring releases which anyone keen on organ music and 20 ^th century repertoire should have around. The organ music of Charles Koechlin should hold no fears for anyone attracted by the romantic worlds of Widor and Duruflé, and indeed it often harks back to more ancient worlds in its sometimes antique style and use of the models of Bach. This organ sound is woodsmoke and nostalgia to me, and has restored my faith in its qualities as a truly expressive instrument. Superbly performed and produced with useful booklet notes, it is one of the nicest organ recordings I’ve heard for a long time.

-- Dominy Clements, MusicWeb International

You know him from cpo’s recordings of his chamber music (the piano trios) and his Prize Symphony. With this release cpo chose a selection from Schumann’s more than 60 arias and lieder with selected piano compositions. Many of his piano works are considered "songs without words" and serve as excellent compliments to this song edition.

Includes work(s) by Francesco Antoni Rosetti. Ensembles: Bavarian Chamber Philharmonic, German Chamber Academy Neuss. Soloist: Lajos Lencsés.

CPO’s annual tradition of releasing freshly produced alternatives to Bach's Christmas Oratorio during the fall season when Christmas is just around the corner continues with this release of three cantatas by the Bach pupil Johann Agricola (1720-74). + After receiving instruction in composition from Bach, Agricola became a chamber musician and court composer under King Frederick II and later Prussian court chapel master following Carl Graun's death. + His compositions, mainly oratorios, cantatas, songs, and operas, display influence from composers such as Hasse and Graun.

AUBER La Muette de Portici • Antony Hermus, cond; Diego Torre ( Masaniello ); Oscar de la Torre ( Alphonse ); Angelina Ruzzafante ( Elvire ); Wiard Witholt ( Pietro ); Anhaltische PO & Op Ch • CPO 777694 (2 CDs: 135:09 & French only) Live: Dessau 5/24–26/2011


Hard for us to believe nowadays, but in its time Daniel-François-Esprit Auber’s opera La Muette de Portici (The Mute Girl of Portici) was to the Belgian fight for independence what Verdi’s Nabucco was to become a dozen years later for Italy—possibly even more so, since its Brussels premiere led directly to a public revolution on the very night the opera was given. The rebel leader tossed his red Jacobin cap into the air at the sight and sound of every appearance of the rebel Masaniello and his followers onstage; immediately after the performance, huge, unexpected mobs formed in the streets and marched into the office of the government newspaper Le National, smashing windows. All night long the victorious rebels loudly sang the passage from the opera declaring that nothing is more glorious than dying for one’s fatherland. Talk about a wildly successful premiere!


Very briefly, the plot concerns Alphonse, son of the Spanish Viceroy of Naples. He is in love with the mute girl Fenella, sister of a fisherman named Masaniello who becomes the leader of the peasants’ revolt (this is based on real events of 1647), but his father coerces him into marrying the more socially acceptable Elvire. Yet Fenella, imprisoned by Alphonse’s father, manages to escape and begs Elvire to help her. Fenella witnesses Alphonse’s marriage and is stunned to discover that Elvire is the bride, but the latter keeps her promise to help her and Alphonse, still in love with Fenella, also helps her escape. Masaniello and his fishermen plan for the revolution; when Alphonse and Elvire are captured, she begs the rebel leader to help them escape, and he does so before learning who they really are. When his actions are discovered, Masaniello is considered a traitor by the rebels and poisoned by his rival leader, Pietro; but this must be a rather odd, weak, and slow-acting poison, because Masaniello doesn’t die but just goes mad. Oddly enough, the peasants still trust him to lead them into battle, which he does. Fleeing from him this time, Elvire tries to convince Fenella to escape with her, but the mute girl learns that her brother was killed by his own men when he tried once again to protect Elvire and takes her own life.


Listening to the opera, especially as well and tautly conducted as it is by Antony Hermus, one is continually struck by the impressive and original music with which Auber graced this plot. Unlike so many Auber opera arias I’ve heard (think of “L’eclat de rire” from his Manon Lescaut ), this music demands that rare combination of vocal agility and flexibility with dramatic declamation. And let me tell you, this music is hard to sing: just listen to Elvire’s act 1 aria, “O moment enchanteur,” and you’ll hear what I mean. Angelina Ruzzafante, like so many of her soprano sisters nowadays (think of Barbara Frittoli or Patricia Racette), has a good enough technique to cope with the music’s difficulties and acts very well with the voice (a real necessity in this opera), yet has an inconsistent and sometimes acidic tone in the upper register (which does improve tonally as the performance goes on). This, however, is not entirely a detriment to a role which, like the opera itself, calls for drama over sheer vocalism, and the almost relentless drive of Auber’s music, in this opera at least, is a major factor in determining the prescribed style in which it is to be performed.


Tenor Oscar de la Torre, as Alphonse, has slightly tight voice production but superb phrasing, excellent declamation, and high notes in abundance—and he needs every last one of them, as they are written into the score and not optional. The other tenor, Diego Torre as Masaniello, has a similarly light, bright voice, and to my ears a more even tone production. Both are excellent in what they do. In fact, the only really poor voice in the cast is that of Masaniello’s rival, Pietro, sung by baritone Wiard Witholt.


The only other complete commercial recording of this opera that I could track down was the one made in September 1996 (EMI) with a considerably over-the-hill Alfredo Kraus and, though she was much younger, an already over-the-hill June Anderson (who also had, in my estimation, ZERO excitement as an interpreter); this is therefore clearly the better of the two recordings. (Since Kraus wanted to sing Masaniello’s famous aria, “Du pauvre seul ami fidèle,” he took that role, giving the equally cruel tessitura of Alphonse to a good but not great tenor, John Aler.)


There are two negatives, only one of which really affects us as listeners: 1) the stage production seems to have been updated to represent a gang war, as Masaniello is wearing a do-rag and a sleeveless T-shirt with “FSBN Bulldogs” proudly printed on it, and 2) the libretto is in French only. Other than that, this recording is a must-get for any lovers of truly dramatic opera of the ottocento period. This music is so great as to almost beggar belief, driving forward with an impulse that is sheerly visceral and practically irresistible. After hearing it, I almost wanted to go out and smash a government newspaper window myself! Go for it!


FANFARE: Lynn René Bayley

Classical Music

TELEMANN Lukas Passion • Hermann Max, cond; Veronika Winter (sop); Anne Bierwirth (alt); Julian Podger (ten); Clemens Heidrich, Matthias Vieweg (bs); Rhenish Kantorei; Das Kleine Konzert • CPO 777 601-2 (2 CDs: 91:32 Text and Translation) Live: Magdeburg 3/13/2010


The incredibly prolific Georg Philipp Telemann (1681–1767) is known to have composed no fewer than 46 oratorio passions, of which 22 are still extant. Among those, the St. Luke Passion presented here dates from 1748 and is the 27th in order of date of composition, matching the 27 years that the composer had served to that point as music director of the city’s five principal Lutheran churches. Since most of the lost (or at least undiscovered) passions are from the earlier years, this is by default one of the earliest known examples of his art in this genre, despite being more than halfway through the total and composed at age 67. Although by that time Telemann had long incorporated various foreign influences, particularly the French galant , into his “mixed” compositional style, here at least he adheres somewhat more to a traditional Germanic musical vocabulary, even if the melodic and rhythmic contours (particularly the use of skipping dotted eighth figures) are more closely akin to Handel than to Bach. The overall musical structure, however, is closer to that of a Bach passion, though there are significant differences. For Telemann the chorus plays a considerably smaller role, with the chorales being fewer and more modest in scope. Instead, the soloists assume a greater share of the commentary beyond their arias in sections titled accompagnato ; these are extended dramatic declamatory passages with intermittent instrumental accompaniment, penned in irregularly rhymed and metered verse, more melodic than straightforward recitative passages but lacking the formal symmetry and development of regular arias.


The addition of any Telemann oratorio to the relatively few so far recorded is an occasion for rejoicing, and all the more so when it involves the redoubtable Hermann Max and his veteran vocal and choral ensembles, the Rhenish Kantorei and Kleine Konzert. Recorded here in concert at the annual Magdeburg Telemann Festival, he and they deliver performances according to their customary superlative degree of excellence, leaving nothing to be desired on their part. I am somewhat less enthusiastic about the soloists, who are solid but not distinguished. Both Clemens Heidrich as Jesus and Matthias Vieweg as soloist for the bass arias have rather light and somewhat dry baritonal voices; the tenor of Julian Podger is a bit grainy; alto Anne Bierwirth simply does not have a distinctive profile; and even the usually first-rate Veronika Winter is not quite at her best. None are bad or even unsatisfactory, but they are definitely a step down from the stellar solo quartet Max assembled almost 20 years prior for the set of Wilhelm Friedemann Bach cantatas reviewed by me elsewhere in this issue. The recorded acoustic has a rich and slightly reverberant ambience, and not a whisper of noise from the audience is to be heard. Booklet notes are provided in German, English, and French, and the libretto in German and English; unfortunately the librettist is not identified, let alone discussed. One also wishes that either the short timing for a full-priced two-CD set had been fleshed out with another of Telemann’s sacred choral works, or else that the cost had been discounted. Despite this complaint, and the minor caveats about the soloists, this release is unhesitatingly recommended to all fellow lovers of Baroque sacred music.


FANFARE: James A. Altena