Atterberg's piano concerto, as I noted in discussing its previous incarnation on Sterling, comes perilously close to self-parody. The endless Romantic heaving and gesticulating, capped by a finale whose main tune sounds like a demented cross between two Tom Lehrer tunes ("Be Prepared" and "The Irish Ballad"), may well make it hard for some listeners to take seriously (believe me, Atterberg was dead serious). Still, if you just sit back and wallow in its billowing excess, there's much fun to be had, and this performance improves on its predecessor being better played by both soloist and orchestra, and better recorded. In particular, the slightly less frantic, but even more rhythmically emphatic approach to the last movement carries the music forward with every bit as much conviction and less suspicion of embarrassment. I also prefer the couplings: two very appealing (and gratifyingly concise) works for piano and orchestra (whereas its competitor featured a pretty awful rendition of the Violin Concerto). Indeed, the Ballad and Passacaglia, based on a Swedish folk tune, could very well become a popular hit. In short, this is another winner in CPO's ongoing Atterberg series. --David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

Includes work(s) by Georg Philipp Telemann. Ensemble: Michaelstein Telemannisches Collegium. Conductor: Ludger Rémy.

EBERL Piano Concertos: in E?, op. 40 1; in C, op. 32 2 • 1 Paolo Giacometti, 2 Riko Fukuda (fp); Michael Alexander Willens, cond; Cologne Academy (period instruments) • CPO 777354 (62:03)


One of these concertos, the C Major, is familiar to me through a 2000 Koch Schwann CD featuring pianist James McChesney with the Slovak Philharmonic Bratislava led by Karl Kemper. Comparison with the current performance is instructive because McChesney’s version is a modern-instrument affair, while this new one uses period instruments or copies thereof. A c.1810 fortepiano by Viennese maker Mathias Müller from the Edwin Beunk collection is pictured on the inside of the booklet’s front page, and since no other instrument is mentioned in the text, I assume this is the one that was used for the recording.


Anton Eberl (1765–1807) has thus far barely made inroads into our musical consciousness. A handful of his works on a couple of CDs has found its way into previous Fanfare reviews, one by Brian Robins, the other by yours truly. Poor Eberl, his music considered second-rate in our time for being too derivative of and inferior to Mozart’s, and considered too good in his own time to be by anyone but Mozart. He had to write a letter to a widely read newspaper assuring the public that he, Eberl, was indeed the legitimate composer of the misattributed works. I wonder if anyone believed him, or if they thought he was a publicity-seeking fraud. Most of his more than 200 works are said to have disappeared, but a number of chamber works, pieces for solo piano, and these concertos remain and have been recorded.


It’s immediately obvious that the two works on this disc follow the pattern of the late 18th-century piano concerto perfected by Mozart. But further listening reveals details in both the scoring for orchestra and the type of keyboard figuration that ought to be clues to the trained ear that Eberl is closer to Beethoven than he is to Mozart. In the matter of scoring, Eberl’s approach to the orchestra is on a grander scale, making particularly bold use of horns and trumpets to articulate entrances and exits. Listen, for example, to the trumpet flourishes at the end of the first movement of the E?-Concerto. Passages for winds are also more extensive and more elaborate.


In the matter of keyboard figuration, Eberl doesn’t fall back on Alberti-bass left-hand patterns as often as Mozart does, and Beethoven-like passages in octaves and thirds appear more often than they do in Mozart. It would be a mistake, however, to conclude that Eberl is somehow a missing link between Mozart and Beethoven, for both of his concertos performed here were completed in 1804, nine and seven years, respectively, after Beethoven’s Second and First concertos. Given that, it’s likely that Eberl heard Beethoven’s concertos and was more influenced by them than he was by Mozart’s, which by then already belonged to an earlier era.


These performances are absolutely wonderful. The fortepiano can sound a little opaque in the lower middle register and bass, but its upper range sparkles. Comparing Willens’s reading of the C-Major Concerto with Riko Fukuda to that by Kemper with McChesney, I am really surprised by the difference in interpretive approach. Kemper/McChesney is much faster in all three movements—too fast, I think—than Willens/Fukuda: 12:18, 8:42, 8:45 vs. 14:09, 10:20, 10:02. Ironically, this makes Kemper/McChesney sound more like Mozart and less like Beethoven than the other way around, because Beethoven’s concerto allegros are more allegro moderato and his andantes more adagio than Mozart’s. Even though the Kemper/McChesney is a modern-instrument performance, the Willens/Fukuda has a greater sense of gravity and purposefulness to it.


The comparison applies only to the C-Major Concerto, since the Koch Schwann CD doesn’t couple it with the E?-Major Concerto. Paolo Giacometti’s playing in the latter is every bit as spirited and satisfying as Fukuda’s in the C-Major Concerto. An excellent recording, as is customary for CPO, adds to the strong recommendation for this release.


FANFARE: Jerry Dubins

Italian Passion in Surround. The Munich Radio Orchestra now turns to the sensuous fascination offered by Ottorino Respighi's masterpieces - a logical and natural choice for this orchestra, which during the course of it's history of more than sixty years has developed into an ensemble with an enormously broad artistic spectrum and earned a firm place in the orchestral landscape precisely because of it's versatility. For Respighi familiarity with music history and the old masters was not only a sublime pastime but also a source of inspiration for his own compositional work, and he certainly also contributed a great deal to the now current concert practice involving the performance of early music with modern orchestras. His Antiche danze ed arie, free arrangements of arias and dances from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, enables us to rediscover forgotten rhythms and tones. While he alters the character of the music by introducing a rich array of instruments, all sorts of different orchestrations, and harmonic modulations of modern coloration, the art of the old masters remains untouched. These works are finely complemented by his Gli Uccelli (The Birds) suite. In 1927 he drew on various harpsichord and lute miniatures for this quasi-ornithological "Suite for Small Orchestra," producing picturesque snapshots here showing him from his admirable and remarkable side as a sensitive observer who discovers the pictorial element in all that he sees.

Includes cantata(s) by Georg Philipp Telemann. Ensemble: Accademia Daniel. Conductor: Shalev Ad-El. Soloists: Dorothee Mields, Klaus Mertens.

REVIEW:

Although the "golden age" of operetta has come and gone, composer Franz Lehár isn't in any real danger of being neglected so long as The Merry Widow continues to tread the boards of the world's stages. But as his first major "hit," and as an operetta stylistically limited by the constraints of contemporary fashion and tradition, The Merry Widow does not provide a full measure of the extent of Lehár's mastery as a composer. Zigeunerliebe (Gypsy Love) is a far better candidate for that qualification, and its first complete recording, now available from CPO, is reason for operetta fans to celebrate. Premiered in 1910, this three-act operetta is closer to being an opera and draws into the musical texture an odd admixture of influences ranging from Wagner to Richard Strauss to pop-styled Hungarian Romani music. Although no one would give credit to Lehár the distinction of being an "experimental composer," he does nonetheless present an experimentally conceived blend of styles here, confirming his own otherwise bewildering comment that "I have always experimented, reached out to something new, often enough against the intentions of directors and publishers." That the middle act is set out in the form of a dream, and that Lehár matches the story to a musico-stylistic pastiche that progresses in the same manner as a dream, shows how far Lehár was willing to go with his experimental ideas.

The music is ravishing, challenging, and extraordinary in every way, and we can be thankful that CPO's recording of Zigeunerliebe is close to ideal. The male singers are the weakest element, but these men are coming from a different tradition of singing related to grand opera and are not comfortable with the less forceful and vibrant requirements of operetta. The women are much better, with Dagmar Schellenberger, in the secondary role of Ilona, being excellent in particular, but Johanna Stojkovic is well more than just adequate in the important lead part of Zarika. The NDR Radiophilharmonie under Frank Beermann is splendid in every bar of this music, and this is important as Lehár's orchestration is in this case particularly ambitious and colorful. True operetta fans will so love Zigeunerliebe that even the relatively minor shortcomings of this set will not matter a great deal. If you have an operetta fan in your family who "has everything," CPO's Zigeunerliebe should probably move to top of one's potential gift list.

-- AllMusic

The Hamburger Ratsmusik – an ensemble looking back on a five-hundred-year history – teams up with the young countertenor Benno Schachtner on this recording of Georg Philipp Telemann’s Six Moral Cantatas. During the decades between 1720 and 1750 the middle class of the early Enlightenment sought moral education and ethical improvement deriving from human nature and reason as part of its never-ending quest for earthly happiness. It was with wit and charm that in his Moral Cantatas of 1735 Telemann set to music a poetic document conveying the spirit of this Enlightenment period. His only recently rediscovered Fantasies for Solo Viola da Gamba, published at the same time, are presented here in alternation with his Moral Cantatas, the title with which they were announced in a catalogue dating from August 1735. These two collections first performed together during a concert of the Hamburger Ratsmusik at the last Telemann Festival are now being presented here for the first time. These two works by Telemann were intended for professional and amateur musicians alike, and they seem to have met with special resonance among those interested parties who wanted to perform at home in smaller ensembles.

Dvorák’s quartets number among the gems of their genre. A new recording by one and the same ensemble is long overdue, and the fact that the Vogler Quartet has taken on this gigantic task is very good luck indeed. The Vogler Quartet is a phenomenon. Its membership has remained unchanged since 1985, and over the years the individual and team talent of its musicians has secured them a place among the world’s top chamber ensembles.

This month we are happy to present to you a great Passion oratorio that Johann Sebastian Bach in all likelihood pieced together for his last Passion service. He took a work by Carl Heinrich Graun, a composer whom he admired, and expanded it to produce a magnificent two-part Passion. To it he added compositions of his own authorship and others by his friend Georg Philipp Telemann. The result was a pasticcio, a new work consisting of set pieces. This practice was very common during Bach’s times. Both composers on whose works Bach drew were contemporary stars who did not at all object to this practice, especially since they occasionally operated in precisely the same way. The composer Georg Philipp Telemann saw no reason to complain about the reuse of his works. Although we do have quite a bit of background information about the Passion, the riddle surrounding it is only beginning to be solved. Accordingly, Bach scholarship can only hope that additional sources will be found and prove Johann Sebastian Bach’s authorship once and for all. The work perhaps even offers evidence pointing to one of his lost Passions, and it might even be his last Passion oratorio – which, as the current state of research knowledge sees things – can only have been written during the years following 1733.

A popular composer in Germany prior to World War II, Walter Braunfels (1882-1954) will be best known to music lovers thanks to Decca's recording of his very beautiful opera The Birds. This release builds on that favorable impression, and then some. Phantastische Erscheinungen eines Themas von Hector Berlioz (Fantastic Appearances of a Theme by Hector Berlioz) is a giant set of variations on Mephistopheles' "Song of the Flea" from The Damnation of Faust. And if this fact alone isn't enough to whet your appetite, then I'm not sure what will. Structurally the work has something in common with Strauss' Don Quixote--on LSD. The orchestral technique also is quite similar, recognizably German school, with luscious writing for violins and horns, occasional outbursts of extreme virtuosity all around, and a discerning but minimal use of additional percussion.


However, it's clear that Braunfels has given a good deal of thought to both the composer and the source of his theme. There's a healthy touch of humor, real grotesquerie in the quicker movements (No. 11 and the finale particularly), and the woodwinds frequently have the chance to snap and chatter in a recognizably Berliozian manner. Braunfels also includes an absolutely terrifying funeral march (third movement), followed by something that approaches Korngold in melodious luxury. He composed 12 "Erscheinungen" in all, though this performance omits No. 9, which the booklet tells us was standard practice back when the work was played (though it strikes me as something of a pity to leave it out on a recording). They are genuinely delightful, one and all, and the better you know your Berlioz (and Tchaikovsky, and Strauss), the more fun you'll have.


Certainly at nearly 49 minutes, there's plenty of musical invention on display, sumptuously scored and very capably played by Dennis Russell Davies and the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra. Special credit has to go to the orchestra's comedians, the contrabassoon and tuba, who have a lot of work to do and who not only play extremely well, but who have a conductor who is not afraid to give them the prominence that they deserve. As a coupling, the Serenade is more than a make-weight filler. It's a very attractive piece that once again demonstrates Braunfels' skill in writing what is without question very beautiful music, obviously of its time and place, but without sounding quite like anyone else. Like the music of his contemporary Emil von Reznicek, which CPO is exploring with similar success, this is music that ought never to have vanished from the concert stage, and I can't recommend this powerfully recorded, evocative release highly enough. Wonderful! [1/3/2005]
--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

Classical Music

The cpo label now completes its edition of the concertos of Kurt Atterberg with the Cello Concerto and the Horn Concerto, both written in the 1920s when Atterberg was already a very experienced musician known throughout Europe and active at home and abroad. More intuitive than analytical as a composer, one may understand the ‘movements’ of the Cello Concerto as representatives of ‘normal’ sonata form in which the motifs are reconfigured and then taken up again, whereas the Horn Concerto, despite its unusual but purposeful employment of forces, adheres to traditional form.

One may rightly claim that Johann Baptist Vanhal (1739-1813), who traced his roots to Bohemia, was one of the most productive composers of the 18th c. + He wrote a total of 1,377 (!) works; sixty string quartets having appeared in print through to 1787, with thirty-six others in manuscript or documented in catalogue entries. + Quantity aside, Vanhal quite early gained fame with the quality of his works. + For CPO, the Lotus String Quartet, which gained notice with its triumph at the Int’l Chamber Music Competition in Osaka, Japan in 1994, interprets a selection of these quartets.

Since recordings of Albéric Magnard’s hefty 1904 Op. 18 piano trio are few and far between, any new contender is bound to get attention. On balance, violinist Geneviève Laurenceau, cellist Maximilian Hornung, and pianist Oliver Triendl give us the most consistently satisfying version from both sonic and interpretive perspectives.

The sprawling first movement’s potentially murky low-lying passages emerge with uncommon textural clarity, while the pages and pages encompassing obsessive dotted rhythms of the Schubert and Schumann finale ilk unfold in long paragraphs that never bog down. The musicians sensitively address the Chantant movement’s delicacy and subtle harmonic sleights-of-hand and balance the huge climaxes so that the soaring string melodies and sweeping piano arpeggios interact rather than compete.

If the Valse isn’t ideally lightfooted, I still appreciate the pointed contrapuntal repartée and timbrally differentiated pizzicatos. By contrast, the finale is both forceful and transparent, characterized by the performers’ intelligently contoured counterpoint. They also avoid the easy temptation to inflate the chorale-like final pages with false grandiosity.

Laurenceau and Triendl more than hold their own among the Violin Sonata’s (relatively) more extensive catalog choices. They effortlessly and insightfully navigate the music’s formidable technical demands and acres of textural thickness. Listen, for example, to the inner voices and bass lines coaxed out of the long slow movement’s cascades of descending piano arpeggios, and notice the scrutiny with which Laurenceau and Triendl handle the compact and complex Scherzo’s imitative passages. Colorful shaping also helps to intensify the finale’s fugal writing. After such a workout, you’d expect a big ending payoff. But no, Magnard again goes for the quiet close. In other words, no immediate standing ovation! However, I heartily applaud these excellent performances of underrated works that both deserve and reward any serious music lover’s attention.

-- ClassicsToday.com

In recent years the young Swiss conductor Simon Gaudenz has made a name for himself, particularly as an interpreter of the Classical-era repertoire. A fresh, new approach against the background of historically informed performance practice characterizes his recordings and concerts. During this same time he was associated with the Odense Symphony based on the island of Funen (the birthplace of Hans Christian Andersen and Carl Nielsen!), serving as its principal guest conductor. This orchestra, one of Denmark's premier musical bodies next to the Danish Radio Symphony in Copenhagen, immediately felt that extraordinary things could be realized with this baton-wielding revolutionary. It was agreed that he and the orchestra take on Schumann, the results being this 2CD set of the complete symphonies.

Even before meeting they were dedicating hours of practice to Liszt’s Mephisto Waltzes. An international solo piano competition was coming up, and the two young pianists were scheduled to vie against each other with this work. Twenty-five years and dozens of successful competitions later, the same two pianists sat down opposite each other at two grand pianos to perform not as rivals but as a renowned duo. “We have decided to dedicate this CD recording to Franz Liszt’s original works for two pianos and to his versions of his own solo piano compositions for two pianos” (Genova & Dimitrov Piano Duo).

The countless compositions in Dowland’s style demonstrate the great importance attached by his pupil William Brade, and other composers of the time, to authentic sound in the redesign of the English pavan on the continent. Your ticket to exciting musical time-travel!

Classical Music

KLUGHARDT Violin Concerto. Symphony No. 3 • Golo Berg, cond; Mirjam Tschopp (vn); Anhalt P • CPO 777 465-2 (77:51)


Tired of listening to the Schumann symphonies? Not interested in still another newfangled maestro’s take on the Brahms symphonies? Find Spohr’s boring? Weber’s too bland? Bruckner’s too long? August Klughardt’s Third may be just your cup of tea. Likewise the Violin Concerto, custom-made for listeners who need a break from the Mendelssohn, Bruch, and Wieniawski examples.


Klughardt (1847–1902) retains a toehold in the classical record catalog almost solely on the basis of a woodwind quintet, and even that is not often heard. Now comes a significant addition to his tiny discography, two major orchestral works splendidly played, recorded in a vivid acoustic environment, and conducted with great verve and panache. In fact, these performances are so good they might well be even better than the music itself.


The opening seconds of the first track (the Violin Concerto) grab your attention equally for the attractiveness of the theme, the assertiveness of the playing, and the bright, natural acoustic environment. The 40-minute concerto, composed in 1895, is packed to the hilt with sumptuous melodies (the first movement’s second subject will melt your heart, and there’s one in the finale that brings to mind swaying palm trees and island breezes). It is hard to imagine any listener resisting this fine work, while soloists in search of a new concerto to add to their repertoire will find Klughardt’s eminently rewarding.


Swiss-born violinist Mirjam Tschopp certainly plays it as if she does, in a performance imbued with commitment, technical flair, and earnest musicianship. Here is still another extremely talented violinist with much to say to the world, yet I’ve never encountered her before. Curious to know what else this outstanding musician has recorded, I checked what there might be on ArkivMusic. My search turned up just two items from the past 11 years, both by composers even more obscure than Klughardt (Barry Brenesal warmly praised her account of Saygun’s Violin Concerto in Fanfare 29:2).


The Third Symphony, too, will bring much joy to listeners in search of traditional, four-movement Romantic symphonies, this one composed in 1879. Its key of D Major (like the Violin Concerto) almost guarantees that it is going to be an affirmative, joyful work, and that it certainly is. Its opening may bring to mind the opening of the finale of Brahms’s Second Symphony. The historian Hermann Kretzschmar described the third movement as being “like a merry ballad telling of olden times, of the mighty deeds of knights and heroes, of tournaments and courtly quests, of escapades and adventures.” If this begins to sound like Bruckner’s Fourth, you’re not far off, at least in spirit.


The Anhalt Philharmonic of Dessau is a first-class ensemble with a long history (the extensive bio traces its origins back to the mid 18th century). Conductor Golo Berg ensures clean, crisp rhythms, forward drive without force, and fine balance, resulting in performances of almost irresistible attractiveness. Ronald Müller’s fine program notes tell you everything you always wanted to know about Klughardt’s Violin Concerto and Third Symphony. This disc is definitely headed for my year-end Want List.


FANFARE: Robert Markow

“In 1912, when my second quartet was performed in Berlin, a tumult arose in the audience that was not far from a tussle. On the one side, shouts of amazement; on the other side, expressions of displeasure and boos. Even Schönberg, who attaches special value to flops, was envious of me because of this flop.” “…our generation too has fought for its ideals and had to wait long and often still is waiting to receive honest and full recognition of its efforts to produce a new musical language, which very often again became the basis for the new aspirations of the younger generation.” These words were not written by an anarchistic innovator but by the euphonious late romanticist Josef Suk. His second string quartet, however, is surely the most ambitious and ‘most modern’ work he penned. In the field of chamber music it also ranks as his most important. For cpo the Minguet Quartet has recorded Suk’s complete œuvre for string quartet – with Matthias Kirschnereit joining them for the early piano quintet.

LASSUS Prophetiae Sibyllarum. Omnes de Saba. Jerusalem plantabis. Sidus ex claro veniens. Cum natus esset Jesus. Descendit sicut pluvia. Mirabile mysterium. Verbum caro. Jubilemus singuli. Resonet in laudibus • Manfred Cordes, dir; Weser-Renaissance Bremen • CPO 777468-2 (64:44 Text and Translation)


The Sibylline Prophecies constitutes one of the most familiar works of Lassus. I know of 11 previous recordings, including one that Alpha has not sent for review, and most recently Walter Testolin ( Fanfare 31:2) was praised for his interpretation. Like several other versions, this one offers one voice to a part, unaccompanied (except for a harp) like the last five issues. But in a program unlike any previous version, the movements are sung in pairs with a motet inserted after each pair to break up the sequence, and all the motets include an instrumental ensemble. The motets are set for five to eight voices, and the parts are distributed in various combinations among the six singers and seven players. At one end of the spectrum, Jerusalem plantabis and Descendit sicut pluvia have one singer and four players, while Sidus ex claro veniens has five singers with harp and Jubilemus singuli has six singers with harp. The others are more elaborate. All are Christmas motets complementing the theme of the prophecies, which were written in the composer’s time as a Humanist revival of the Classical pagan sibyls, who had long been seen as pagan prophets of the coming of Christ.


Manfred Cordes suggests in his notes that the chromaticism of the main work does not wear well, militating against listening straight through, hence his decision to insert the relief provided by the contrasting motets. This is a good notion and it distinguishes this set from the competition. The first and last motets are the most familiar, and Cum natus esset Jesus was on a Hilliard Ensemble disc, but the rest may possibly be first recordings. Cordes has been giving us a dependable run of recordings on this label, including a recent Lassus disc (31:1), so there are probably readers already prepared to grab this one. The singing and playing are admirable.


FANFARE: J. F. Weber

Classical Music

BLOW Venus and Adonis & • Paul O’Dette, Stephen Stubbs, cond; Amanda Forsythe ( Venus ); Tyler Duncan ( Adonis ); Mireille Lebel ( Cupid ); Boston Early Music Fest Vocal/Ch Ens • CPO 777 614-2 (65:21 Text and Translation)


& Welcome, Ev’ry Guest. Chloe Found Amyntas Lying All in Tears. Ground in g


Venus and Adonis is an opera or masque (at the time, an opera intended for royal presentation) composed by John Blow in or around 1683. It isn’t the earliest English work of its kind to be set to music without spoken dialogue, though it is the first whose score is known to have survived. A tally of its predecessors yields much of interest. The great playwright Ben Jonson wrote that Nicolas Lanier’s setting of one of his masques in 1617 was completely composed, and in “stylo recitativo,” while William Davenant penned the libretto in 1656 for an all-sung opera titled The Siege of Rhodes , with music by Henry Cooke, Henry Lawes, and Matthew Locke. Two other operas composed around that time, Richard Flecknoe’s Ariadne Deserted by Theseus and The Marriage of Oceanus and Brittania , were also sung without spoken dialogue. Whether these or other operas furnished Blow with any English precedent to draw upon is impossible to determine, though the lack of any similar dramatic works in his career may indicate a commission or request of some kind.


The opera’s subject is well known, but here, too, a mystery arises. In other versions of the myth, Venus tries to persuade her lover Adonis not to go hunting; he refuses, leaves, then dies. Blow’s librettist, Anne Kingsmill, a maid of honor to the Duchess of York, reverses the roles, making it Venus who repeatedly demands that Adonis go forth to do battle via hunting, while Adonis wishes to stay with her. The reason for this inversion has never been explained, but that one existed is universally acknowledged. Royal masques (and French opera-ballet, such as Charles II enjoyed and occasionally took part in at Versailles while in exile) always operated at multiple propagandistic levels, and the little we know about the opera’s first performance is that it was performed at court with Mary “Moll” Davis, one of Charles II’s former mistresses and an actress of some ability, as Venus, while her daughter by the King, Lady Mary Tudor, was Cupid. (She would have been about 10 years old at the time of Venus and Adonis . Later she would marry three times, always into the nobility, and have four children, two of whom were hanged for treason as Jacobites.) About one of the opera’s subtextual political meanings we are reasonably certain, then: The presence of Mary Tudor amounted to recognition in her father’s eyes before his court. Beyond that, we can only guess about Venus’s harsh behavior. Charles II was known among other personal qualities for his great discretion, and his court records imitate their master in this.


This studio recording followed by almost a year the Boston Early Music Festival’s double-bill performance of Venus and Adonis paired with Charpentier’s Acteon . I saw that production in late 2008, with all the trimmings, scholarly and entertaining, that the BEMF bestows on its operatic productions. None of the visuals are available here, of course, but the production’s stylishness and vitality under the dual leadership of Paul O’Dette and Stephen Stubbs are palpable. Amanda Forsythe combines a radiantly focused soprano with excellent enunciation and a dramatic coloration of the text. Surely other fanciers of archival operatic performance besides myself would proclaim “My Shepherd, Will You Know the Art” a superb example of shading and phrasing if it were only hip-deep in tics, rumble, restricted frequency response, and scratchy background noise on an acoustical 78 rpm shellac disc. She is well matched in all respects by Tyler Duncan’s darkly suave baritone. His especially fine lower extension is heard to advantage in “You Who the Slothful Joys of City Hate.” Finally, there’s Mireille Lebel as Cupid, a relatively simple part as written, and suited to a talented 10-year-old probably trained in singing for several years. Lebel gives us characterization, a great deal of color, and I suspect more in the way of delicately executed figurations than Mary Tudor managed.


I can’t claim to have listened to all the available competition. Of those I’ve heard, Philip Pickett’s vigorous, sharply accented account (Decca 473713) is fortunate enough to have the rich-voiced Catherine Bott as Venus, though neither oratorio-like Michael George nor the harpsichord-laden continuo do much for me. Elizabeth Kenny/Theatre of the Ayre (Wigmore Hall Live 43) has a superior Adonis in Roderick Williams, but I find Sophie Daneman not as vocally or dramatically as interesting as either Forsythe or Bott, while Elin Manahan Thomas seems too hard-edged for Cupid.


Given its 50-minute length, the BEMF folks supply three additional pieces that were not sung live in the Chamber Opera series. Welcome, Ev’ry Guest is the opening number to Blow’s song collection Amphion Anglicus , published in 1700. Forsythe’s control of agility and dynamics come to the fore in this virtuoso piece.


Chloe Found Amyntas Lying All in Tears is a setting of a Dryden poem published in 1693. It is a mock pastoral: The shepherd Amyntas begs for a kiss from, and is ridiculed by, his Chloe, who requires three verses before she repents (with some risqué play on words). Blow has great fun portraying Amyntas’s quasi-pathos, complete with elaborate chromaticism and madrigalisms, and Chloe’s cruel, blithely uncaring response. The trio of two tenors and a bass-baritone produce a fine sound, with excellent intonation, and the slow, pointed skipping of Chloe’s rhythms by the continuo are highlights.


Finally, the Ground in G Minor spotlights the stylish and technically expert work of Robert Mealy and Peter Spissky. I can’t claim much familiarity with the latter, but Mealy is a fixture at many early-music festivals, as well as a professor of early music at Yale. He’s on several records, but seldom in any solo capacity—would that were to change, based on several instrumental concerts I’ve seen.


The sound is generally good and close for the vocalists, as it should be, though I note one oddity in Venus and Adonis : Forsythe’s microphone audibly diminishes in volume in the middle of her repeat of “hounds” on F in “Hark, Hark, the Hunters; Hark, Hark, the Hounds!” This should have been fixed before release.


That very minor blemish aside, this is a first-rate release in all respects. BEMF has yet another highly successful operatic recording to its credit.


FANFARE: Barry Brenesal

The magnificent Graz premiere of Joseph Marx’s Herbstsymphonie (Autumn Symphony) was held on 28 September 1922 under the expert conductor and sound specialist Clemens Krauss. It was a great triumph for Marx, and when Krauss selected this work for a concert program in Vienna in late May of the following year, the public went wild. The Herbstsymphonie is not so much a symphony in the traditional sense as a multimovement rhapsody of massive proportions, both in view of its huge orchestral dimensions and its performance length. For this reason this gigantic composition ranks as one of music history’s most lavishly instrumented works. Until now Joseph Marx has been known primarily as a composer of songs and chamber music. However, already in 1911 he had composed the sumptuously designed cantata Herbstchor an Pan (Autumn Chorus to Pan), a work that also in its choice of theme may be said to herald the coming of the Herbstsymphonie.

Classical Music