Includes work(s) by various composers, Walther von der Vogelweide. Ensemble: Estampie. Conductor: Graham Derrick.

If you bring together a Spanish youth orchestra, a cast of young Spanish and Italian opera singers and a distinguished editor of Rossini’s music then a recording of Cavalli’s second opera would not be the most obvious outcome. But this live recording from the 2004 Festival Mozart at La Coruña has done just that.

The opera is Gli amori d’Apollo e di Dafne, which was Cavalli’s first collaboration with Busanello, the librettist of Monteverdi’s L’Incoronazione di Poppea. Gli amori was first performed in 1640 at the Teatro S. Cassiano in Venice. The plot is the usual rather free mixture of mix-ups between gods and goddesses. The main thread running through the opera is Apollo’s pursuit of Dafne. But along the way we encounter Titone - immortal but no longer young - and his youthful wife Aurora, who is cheating on him with Cefalo, whose wife Procri is distraught. Venus, in her turn, is upset by Apollo and Jove suggests using Amore to remedy things; this is the main engine for the Apollo/Dafne plot. In amongst these are the comic moments, mainly relating to the old lady, Cirilla, who is played by a high tenor (Jose Ferrero).

The opera’s music only survives in a single manuscript, which seems to be lacking four scenes, two each from the ends of Act 1 and of Act 2. But editor Federico Agostinelli, in his illuminating note, suggests that these final scenes may perhaps have not been set. We have no way of knowing, but the opera works as it stands.

In common with most operas of the period, in the manuscript the vocal lines are notated with just a bass line plus some figuring. Instrumental lines are specified just for the ritornelli, sinfonias and balli. Some commentators suggest that in the commercial theatre of Cavalli’s day, this apparently bare instrumentation reflected the small scale of the performances. That the grandiose instrumental ensembles of such operas as Orfeo reflect the deep pockets of the aristocratic patrons. Agostinelli belongs to the other camp and his edition of the opera includes additional instrumental lines. This is perhaps sensible as it enables the work to be performed in larger theatres by more traditional ensembles.

Zedda has taken this to its logical conclusion and produced a performance perfectly tailored to his essentially non-period forces. It is inevitable that compromises must be reached when performing 17th century opera in the atmosphere of a 19th century opera house, but in recent years great strides have been made in bridging the gap. ENO’s recent performances of Orfeo were notable in this respect.

Zedda defends his decisions in a slightly combative essay entitled The Musical Baroque: Beyond Historicism. But perhaps the best way to judge his editorial decisions and the resulting performance is with our ears.

From the opening sinfonia, the Orquesta Joven de la Sinfonica de Galicia sounds remarkably well upholstered. Also the rich string section plays very definitely with bows on strings, so the resulting sound is rather 19th century. After a number of listenings, I realised what the sound-world of this disc reminded me of – Respighi’s Ancient Airs and Dances. The singers are accompanied by a lively and accomplished continuo group but in the arias and little melodic flowerings, we get attractive instrumental additions.

The result is undoubtedly attractive and the orchestra plays well, provided you don’t mind hearing Cavalli filtered through more recent ears.

The singers all belong to the generation that seems to be relatively comfortable flitting between baroque music and more modern opera. But the careers of Mario Zeffiri (Apollo) and Marianna Pizzolato (Dafne) seem to be very strongly centred on 19th century opera. Their performances here are dramatic and accomplished. They are adept at suitable ornamentation and they make much of Cavalli’s ariosi and declamati, but to my ears it all sounds filtered through 19th century sensibility. This is emphasised by the way that most singers utilise vibrato and their way with phrasing. The openness of their vocal projection and their way of shaping the music seem to owe something to later performance practice.

Perhaps this is inevitable in a performance that has been adjusted to allow it to be performed in an ordinary opera house. I have no problems with this and welcome the way traditional theatres are expanding their repertoire. There is also the added issue here, that the orchestra is a training institution and these performances enabled them to experience the 17th century operatic repertoire. It is just that I am not completely convinced that this is a desirable source of a recording.

For me the most problematical aspect of the entire project is Mario Zeffiri’s voice. He sings with a forward, bright tenor. The part of Apollo lies quite high and the result is at times rather edgy, over-bright and over-projected. It reminded me of some old LPs I have of Nicolai Gedda singing early Italian Baroque arias. You admire the technique but feel that something is amiss.

If this feeling of a 17th century opera filtered through 19th century sensibility does not bother you, then there is much to enjoy here. Act 1 finished with a glorious lament for Procri (Assumpta Mateu) as she bewails her husband’s infidelity. This is the sort of thing that Cavalli does well, the long flexible structures full of melodic flowerings. They are a long way from the more formalised operatic structures of the later 17th and 18th centuries.

But all is not gloom of course. Jose Ferrero copes well with the comic role of Cirilla and Amore (Soledad Cardoso) has a delightful dance-based number in Act 2. The young cast are very hard working, many singing multiple roles, and within the parameters which the performance sets itself, all the singers are successful. Zeffiri and Pizzolato get the most extended dramatic opportunities and they make the most of them, breathing life into the dramatic structures of Cavalli and Busanello.

This is a welcome opportunity to hear one of Cavalli’s earliest operas. As you would expect with Zedda at the helm, the performance has good dramatic pacing, though there are times when things get a little too well upholstered and comfortable. But don’t listen if you dislike the idea of Cavalli filtered through a 19th century sensibility.

-- Robert Hugill, MusicWeb International

When Music Sounds

Luxembourg-born Australian composer Georges Lentz' 60-minute solo guitar work Ingwe is a truly extraordinary achievement. Here, heavy metal meets musical metaphysics, as shrieking amplified sound clashes with the spirituality of Indigenous Australian culture.

The Ukrainian-born pianist Antonii Baryshevskyi is a multi-award winner, including First Prize at the Fourth Enescu International Piano Competition in Bucharest in 1999, the Fourth Performer-Composer International Piano Competition in St Petersburg.

The songs on this album are not as well known as other works by these three composers, but this more intimate form of expression often goes straight to the heart and soul of their work. Tchaikovsky wrote songs throughout his life, and it is easy to find autobiographical parallels in his chosen themes of love and longing. Rimsky-Korsakov's songs are characterized by tender lyricism, while Rachmaninov's wordless Vocalise has become one of his most famous melodies. Margarita Gritskova was born in 1987 in St. Petersburg. She is a prizewinner of the Luciano Pavarotti Competition in Modena, and the Concurso Internacional de Canto 'Villa de Colmenar Viejo' in 2010. She has performed in Carmen under the direction of Mariss Jansons in St. Petersburg, and appeared at world renowned festivals across the globe.

Vojin Kocic, winner of the 2017 Heinsberg International Guitar Competition, presents a recital that not only covers a wide historical range but also includes some of the most challenging works in the guitar repertoire, of which Ponce's La Folia variations is considered a veritable Everest to be conquered. Following a long and distinguished tradition, Kocic's own arrangement of Bach's Second Violin Partita is crowned by the greatest of Baroque instrumental masterpieces, the monumental Ciaccona, Regondi's prodigious talent is reflected in his scintillating Introduction et Caprice, while Pasieczny's Phosphenes was composed as a test piece for a guitar competition. Born in Serbia in 1990, Vojin Kocic began playing guitar at the age of eight, studying with Jovica Milsevic and Darko Karajic. He went on to study with Anders Miolin at the University of Arts in Zurich, Switzerland, and was awarded a Bachelor of Arts, Master of Specialized Music Performance and Master of Pedagogy Diploma.

Emanuele Buono has established himself as one of the most highly regarded and active guitarists of his generation. His numerous achievements include winning the prestigious Pittaluga competition in 2013. This fascinating program brings together music from Renaissance Italy, the golden age of the guitar in early 19th century Europe, and modern classical sounds from 20th century Spain.

Now emerging as one of the most distinguished artists of the mid-seventeenth century Roman baroque period, Bonifazio Graziani served as maestro di cappella at the Jesuit Church in Rome. Graziani preferred the genre of the solo cantata for one, two, three, and four voices, much like his great contemporary, Giacomo Carissimi. The motets, or liturgical cantatas, from Musiche sagre e morali, are distinguished for their incredibly differing subject matter. The topics range from Lenten penitential and Advent themes to philosophies on the meaning of life, such as Mal'accorto pensier.

A huge journey of adventure - a very good place to start.

The Venetian-born Malipiero wrote eleven numbered symphonies as well as the ‘Sinfonia del Mare’ stretching from 1906 to 1969. It was the Marco Polo label that presented them to us originally in the mid-1990s. It’s good that Naxos have now re-issued them at budget price in the hope that more music-lovers will tackle these rarely heard works. This disc and the ones that will follow also act as a firm memorial to that most quick-learning and versatile conductor Antonio de Almeida who died suddenly whilst conducting in Pittsburgh in 1997.

Malipiero was an extraordinarily prolific composer and that may be part of the problem. Like Darius Milhaud, a similarly productive composer, he has been largely ignored. This seems to be on the grounds that there is so much to take in, with such a huge journey of adventure, that it might be best never to start. Well this disc is quite probably a very good place to start.

Malipiero is a composer of several styles and to a certain extent you can see them developing in these three works. It’s best to start with the ‘Sinfonia del Mare’ which is not much more than a student work - the composer was 24. It contains the seeds of what is going to happen in later years. I first heard this disc whilst sitting on a sun-lounger in glorious sunshine overlooking the Adriatic near Ravenna. The calmness and delicacy of the work’s opening matched the scene perfectly. So did the more troublesome and windy section which takes up its middle portion - the Adriatic can be a harsh taskmaster on sailing boats and can quixotically change its mood. All this is so superbly summed up in this arch-shaped work. I have returned to it quite a few times since then and with increasing pleasure. It should also be remembered, as John Waterhouse says in his very interesting booklet notes, that the composer had not yet been able to meet “the better known sea music of Debussy which had been completed only a few months before”. There are three Sinfonias dating from the first decade of the century. The previous one had been the ‘Sinfonia degli eroi’ of 1905. After that Malipiero only used the term ‘Symphony’.

The Third Symphony also offered much pleasure in its four movements based on and inspired by bellringers, especially those of St.Mark’s Venice at the end of the war. Here I must add that the orchestral playing of the Moscow Symphony Orchestra sometimes falls below international standard, especially in the sound of the brass when exposed and in the high string passages. One can mostly put this down to rushed rehearsal schedules and unfamiliarity with the repertoire. The Malipiero symphonies should nevertheless be looked at again and this time by a top-flight orchestra. Only then may full justice be done to them. Having said that the ‘Sinfonia del Mare’ comes off well as do parts of this work. The Andante second movement is particularly beautifully played.

Malipiero enjoys the cor anglais but it sounds a little too nasal here – at least for my taste. It’s nevertheless interesting that he often gives it rather oriental melodies which emphasize the augmented second interval. The Scherzo is placed third and is a very brief but rhythmically fascinating creation. The work ends in a Lento with its “slow, solemn tread and the most realistic bell-evocations of them all”. The closing epilogue comprises the “more fully-scored, affirmatively bell-like return of the second movement’s entire first section”. Apparently Ernst Ansermet who knew the composer well commented very astutely: “these symphonies are not thematic but motivic, that is to say Malipiero uses melodic motifs … which generate other melodic motifs … they reappear, but they do not carry the musical discourse - they are, rather, carried by it”. As you listen you realize the veracity of this remark. For example his use of progressive tonality where the composer often ends a movement in a key unrelated to the one in which it started.

The Fourth Symphony is a more serious affair, ending in a long Lento - the longest of its four movements. It also includes an almost Stravinskian Scherzo. The slow movement is said to be the most beautiful which the composer penned. This is not surprising really as it was written in memory of Natalie Koussevitzky. Her death also resulted in Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra and Britten’s Peter Grimes, both works also dedicated to her memory. Perhaps one can also see this piece as a memorial to the war dead with its reflective ending featuring the cor anglais again.

As I have implied, I missed these symphonies first time around on Marco Polo, probably because of mediocre reviews. Despite the ordinariness of the orchestral playing and the somewhat boxy recording I am looking forward to the next disc in the series and to discovering more about a composer in whom the record industry has taken little interest.

-- Gary Higginson, MusicWeb International

Sammartini had a long and active musical career, working as maestro di cappella or organist in as many as ten different churches, yet surprisingly few of his sacred compositions survive.

Choral and vocal masterpieces for spiritual meditation and relaxation. The ultimate musical antidote to these stressful times.

R E V I E W S:

It's surprising that Arnold Bax's Symphonic Variations isn't played more often, for it's hard to imagine a more attractive Romantic work for piano and orchestra. The only thing it's lacking, as usual with Bax, is a truly memorable tune, but there are scads of attractive passages and ideas that come awfully close. In any event, this is an excellent performance, with Ashley Wass ebullient, rhapsodic, and meditative by turns. The slower bits (Nocturne and The Temple) are gorgeous, and they never drag. James Judd and the Bournemouth Symphony offer plenty of color and drama on their own, and they are very well recorded.

The Concertante is a late work (1949), and not one of Bax's best. Even though he's trying to be lighter than usual, his heavily chromatic harmony weighs the piece down, and what purports to be a jolly tune at the start of the final rondo fails miserably. Still, as with the Variations, the performance is wholly committed, and overall, especially on the strength of the Variations, this remains a fine addition to the Bax discography, and a very good deal at the price.

--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com



BAX Symphonic Variations. Concertante for Piano Left Hand • Ashley Wass (pn); James Judd, cond; Bournemouth SO • NAXOS 8.570774 (68: 03)


Here’s one of Bax’s best “Harriet Cohen” pieces, the enormous Symphonic Variations , composed during World War I. Lewis Foreman’s notes suggest that while Bax dedicated it to his then lover, Cohen’s small hands were not quite up to it. Bax had conceived the music with his own virtuoso technique in mind. Each of the six variations is as long as a movement, and the titles (“Temple,” “Strife,” “Triumph,” etc.) suggest a hidden program. Clear influences include (especially) Franck and Rachmaninoff, but also Elgar.


Complaining that this music is discursive is like criticizing a Thanksgiving dinner for not being sushi. If you know Bax, you know what you’re in for, or you would not sit down for the meal. Along the way, there are self-allusions, whiffs of other composers (thought I noticed a Ring quotation near the end), and the tune of a Bax song whose text suggests that this is indeed love music. Or perhaps music about the role and scale of love and passion, in the context of life and English society. Cohen was a spectacular beauty and a formidable artist. She seemed at the heart of British literary and political life, as well as being adventurous with music and musicians. Bax, already married, had bedded the hottest girl around. The Variations enact the period in which their relationship blossomed, and the composer then came to leave his wife.


The second half of the Variations is the stronger. It starts with “The Temple,” which makes something oddly yearning out of a blend of Grieg and Elgar, and it ends in a “Triumph” that is quite restrained. The music sounds replete with pleasure, and while it’s an extended narrative, it does not feel too long. This recording has the measure of the work, better than the Chandos version. These artists are full and Romantic in the rhapsodic “Nocturne” and brilliant in the scherzo, “Play.” It is no masterpiece, but Wass and Judd successfully project these Variations into the mainstream of big, highly indulgent, late-Romantic concertos.


The late (1949) Concertante is one of the left-hand works not written for Paul Wittgenstein. It’s another “Cohen” work, composed after the right-hand “injury” provoked by the revelation (on the death of his wife) that Bax had yet another girl on the go, and it had been going on for quite some time. The tunes are good, and the 22-minute piece is better than some reviewers claim, though it is not major Bax. A couple of the first-movement figures meandered into the Vaughan Williams Eighth Symphony, written a few years later. Other tunes suggest earlier RVW. The slow movement whips up something genuinely memorable from Rachmaninoff, Elgar, and Ravel, but it’s an authentic Bax delicacy. The Rondo is weaker, like lesser Saint-Saëns.


Recommended to Bax admirers everywhere: the best case for these works you are likely to hear.


FANFARE: Paul Ingram

Classical Music

Classical Music