Rossini's brilliant satirical opera, Il Turco in Italia, is as notable for it's considerable use of ensemble set pieces as for it's many memorable tunes. The plot revolves around the tangled romance of the Turkish nobleman, Selim, on a visit to Naples to experience Italian life at first hand, and of his former mistress, Zaida, with whom he is finally reunited. Among the many highlights is the masterful duet of Geronio and Selim, in which the Turk tries to persuade the ageing husband to sell him his wife, the capricious Fiorilla.

An operetta with musical elements of true opera, Jabuka, is Johann Strauss the Younger' fourteenth stage work. An annual Apple Festival in the Serbian town of Ravica is an opportunity for local young people to choose a partner.

Vivaldi' Griselda, one of more than twenty operas, is based on a story retold in Boccaccio' Il decamerone about the testing of Griselda' patience and virtue by her royal husband through a series of cruel trials.

In his atmospheric rendition of Rachmaninov's The Rock, conductor Alexander Anissimov delights in the Rimsky-Korsakov-style fantasy of the music while emphasizing its drama, making this one of the best recordings since Walter Weller's fluid and expressive reading on Decca (which, along with his Rachmaninov symphonies has yet to see laser light). Though it might not seem so at first, The Rock actually makes a nice lead-in to The Bells, with its somber sounds gently usurped by the joyful ringing of the celesta and flutes. Joyful also describes Anissimov's performance of The Bells' first movement. After tenor Ivan Choupenitch's record long-held note on "Slyshish", the chorus enters exuberantly though not with the voluminous massed sonority of the Russian Republican Capelle for Kondrashin.


The RTÉ Philharmonic Choir, an Irish-based ensemble, makes a pretty impressive show of itself throughout this performance, not least for its convincingly Slavic sound. Ireland's National Symphony also transcends geography, paradoxically sounding more Russian than Pletnev's Russian National band does on his recent Deutsche Grammophon recording. For this Anissimov certainly deserves the credit: listen to how his trumpets peal against the strings in the second movement's great ascending orchestral interlude, or how in the finale the winds and brass snarl like ghostly specters from the yet-to-be-composed Symphonic Dances. Helen Field's singing in the wedding song is at once soothing and seductive, while Oleg Melnikov intones the bells of death with the requisite gravity and sense of finality. Despite the enormous dynamic range inherent in this work, Naxos' recording captures it all vividly, managing to convey both size and detail. Budget or no, these are Bells you ought to hear.
--Victor Carr Jr., ClassicsToday.com

This disc represents an easy first choice in Finzi's Intimations of Immortality, one of the masterpieces of the English choral literature and a surprisingly neglected one too. Its only serious competition comes from Richard Hickox on EMI (if it's still in print) and Matthew Best on Hyperion (a very good version, if not quite as orchestrally polished as this). David Hill has one advantage over everyone: his is simply the most exciting performance available, not just a function of swift tempos, but also in terms of the acuity and enthusiasm of the instrumental response to the music's bold contrasts and driving climaxes.


With James Gilchrist, a very fine tenor soloist, singing with impressive clarity of diction and very little of that traditionally English, pinched tone quality, the overall picture only gets better. It may be that in his own Corydon Singers Best has a finer contingent of massed voices, but the Bournemouth choir certainly does as well as Hickox's Liverpool forces. The coupling is equally impressive: a resounding performance of the ebullient ceremonial ode For St. Cecilia (Hickox offers the Grand Fantasia and Toccata for piano and orchestra, Best the gentle cantata Dies Natalis). At Naxos' budget price, this is an easy call. Buy it! [7/24/2006]
--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

Alexander Zemlinsky’s four numbered string quartets span some four decades, moving from the conservatism of his Brahms-inspired youth to the experimental works of his mature years. Written just after the Lyric Symphony (Naxos 8.572048), the Third Quartet is constructed in a cool, austere language far removed from the emotional, expressionistic atmosphere of the Second Quartet. The Fourth Quartet, written in memory of Alban Berg, is a fitting conclusion to an important body of work bridging the Romantic world of the nineteenth century to the modern age of the twentieth. Quartets Nos 1 and 2 will follow on Naxos 8.573088.

Torvaldo e Dorliska was Rossini's 16th opera, premiered in Rome in December, 1815, two months after Elisabetta... and two months before Barbiere. It has an odd tone--it's a so-called "rescue opera". The plot concerns the eponymous hero and heroine, who are married. The evil Duke loves Dorliska and attacks the couple on their wedding day and leaves Torvaldo for dead. Dorliska runs away but winds up (unknowingly) taking refuge at the Duke's castle and is imprisoned. When Torvaldo finds his way there he attempts to rescue her, but he also is taken prisoner. The Duke's embittered henchman, Giorgio (a comic role), helps the couple. The villagers rise up and the Duke is punished, while our heroes live happily.

The opera is not in the top 10 of Rossini's great output--it breaks no new ground--but it's quite enjoyable despite being neither serious nor comic. Torvaldo has a couple of fine arias, as does Dorliska, the first-act finale is excellent, and even the basses and baritones have some good, if not altogether memorable, music.

This performance is very good indeed. Taped live in Bad Wildbad in July, 2003, stage noises do not interfere and there are precious few problems with ensembles, missed notes, etc., perhaps because there were patch-up sessions. Paolo Cigna and Huw Rhys-Evans are our heroine and hero and they're both up to the task. The former has plenty of high-flying and florid music and she sings it all accurately and with the right emphasis, while Rhys-Evans' very light, sweet voice copes well enough without the word "virtuoso" (or "Blake" or "Florez") coming to mind.

Michele Bianchini as the Duke exhibits a good-sized voice that may lack heft in the middle but that otherwise is a pleasure to hear. Mauro Utzeri, as the villain-turned-good guy Giorgio, sings with great character and a light tone (he's billed as a baritone); his duet with the Duke is a high spot. The rest of the cast is just fine.

Alessandro de Marchi leads a tight performance, one in which neither recitatives nor slower passages drag, and he keeps up with the singers nicely. Even a superb conductor would be unable to make the music of our villain, the Duke, sound villainous (this is Rossini's shortcoming in this opera), but he gives the work a respectable amount of drama nonetheless and his orchestra and chorus are excellent. No libretto is supplied but the track-by-track synopsis is very helpful.

There is another live recording of this opera, from Radio Switzerland in 1992 and starring tenor Ernesto Palacio (on Arkadia), but I haven't seen it in years--and at any rate, this Naxos set is better. Calling all Rossinians--who will also enjoy spotting bits and pieces of some of the composer's other operas sprinkled throughout.

--Robert Levine, ClassicsToday.com

Although we usually associate Masses with vocal music, these solo organ works by a very young François Couperin (published in 1690) are examples of a form and style common to the place and time--one that included the organ as a significant part of the celebration of Mass, either replacing or enhancing sections of the spoken liturgy. The producers of this outstanding recording--presented in vivid, palpably realistic sound on two CDs--have chosen to include only the organ's contributions to these services, wisely eliminating the interspersed plainchant passages that would have occurred in a normal service.


While the purely musical rewards of this recital are many--Couperin exhibits an impressive range of formal/structural technical mastery, particularly regarding counterpoint and use of texture, register, and articulation for expressive/dramatic effect--organ enthusiasts will absolutely want to hear this for the commanding presence of the organ itself. The well-preserved, minimally altered 18th-century François-Henri Clicquot organ at Poitiers Cathedral is one of the world's treasures, and its indisputably authentic French credentials are on full display here, particularly regarding the assertive, rich-colored reeds (the 16' bombarde pedal stop is a treat!) and lively, lustrous winds. Organist Jean-Baptiste Robin knows this instrument well and delightfully exploits its multifarious voices (if only we had a list of the registrations he uses on each track) while making sure we hear the important inner lines and plainchant themes. If you love organ music, don't miss this--and don't be afraid to turn it up!
--David Vernier, ClassicsToday.com

The Classics at the Movies: Sci-Fi

Classics at the Movies: Adventure

Salve Regina

The operas of Nicola Vaccaj, renowned as a vocal teacher and still known today for his Metodo di Canto, employ a similar bel canto style to that of his rival Bellini. Based on a tragedy by Friedrich Schiller, the powerfully dramatic plot of La sposa di Messina deals with the inescapable and, in this case, destructive nature of destiny. Vaccaj’s own 1839 première was dogged by bad luck, and the subject proved too controversial for Venetian audiences despite its numerous superb set pieces. After one complete and one partial performance, it was not staged again until the 2009 revival heard on this live recording.

This is fun. Amirov and Nazirova’s concerto is based on Arabic themes, and while it has its share of “snake charmer” music, it makes a worthy successor to, say, Saint-Saëns’ “Egyptian” Concerto. Elmira Nazirova, who worked with the composer on the piano part, is the same woman that Shostakovich allegedly encoded in the horn theme in the third movement of his Tenth Symphony. Adigezalov’s Fourth Piano Concerto might be thought of as a sort of Azerbaijani answer to the concertos of Khachaturian. The pace is moderate, the ethnic color heavily underlined, the form is dodgy, but the melodies are often captivating.

The remainder of the disc consists of a brief dance for piano and orchestra (by Guliyev) and two works by pianist Farhad Badalbeyli, one a tone poem (“The Sea”) for piano and orchestra, the other a wordless vocalise for soprano and orchestra. What this latter is doing on a disc of piano concertos is anyone’s guess, but both works are very pretty in a cinematic sort of way. Certainly the performances show the music in a very positive light. Nationalist music such as this may take us back to the late 19th century, and perhaps to a more innocent age, musically speaking—but so what? As I said, this is fun.

—David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday

Of all the volumes in this series, the current one presents arguably the most diverse sample of Villa-Lobos' musical language and techniques.

Drawn from David Lloyd-Jones' excellent set of Bax symphony recordings, this collection competes in four out of five works with Bryden Thomson and the Ulster Orchestra on Chandos. Whereas Thomson has Summer Music, Lloyd-Jones offers The Tale the Pine Trees Knew, a more interesting and substantial work. In general this Naxos issue offers tauter, livelier performances than does Thomson, and this prevents the music from degenerating into a typically shapeless Baxian blob, as it has a tendency to do, particularly November Woods and The Garden of Fand. Lloyd-Jones also has the finer orchestra and a leaner basic sonority, less atmospheric than Thomson to be sure, but with a rhythmic crispness that puts a bit more muscle and sinew on Bax's opulent textures (check out Tintagel, which delivers a real rush of excitement in its central section). The engineering complements the performances, having fine clarity and impact. If you're in the market for a single disc of Bax tone poems, or even a single disc of Bax, then this one certainly fills the bill. [7/25/2005]--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

SCHOENBERG Herzgewächse. 1 Pierrot lunaire. 2 4 Orchestral Songs. 3 Chamber Symphony No. 1 4 • Robert Craft, cond; 1 Eileen Hulse (sop); London SO; 1 Anya Silja (Sprechstimme); 2 Twentieth-Century Classics Ens; 2,4 Catherine Wyn-Rogers (mez); Philharmonia O 3 • NAXOS 8.557523 (73:51)


These four recordings were made from 1994 to 1998, when Craft’s Schoenberg series was being recorded by Koch. At least two of them— Herzgewächse and Pierrot lunaire —appeared on Koch CDs. The former is written for “high soprano,” which is an understatement; I don’t have a score, but it seems to probe the entire octave above high C (well above, say, the Queen of the Night), as well as exploiting the normal soprano range. Hulse makes smooth, well-rounded sounds at the top end, but they sound more instrumental than vocal. That effect may be merely the listener’s aural experience: we are not prepared to recognize a voice at such heights.


Silja brings a surprisingly fresh voice to Pierrot lunaire (I saw her Salome at the Vienna Staastoper in 1967). In the spoken/sung conundrum that is Sprechstimme , she tilts toward singing. The Twentieth-Century Classics Ensemble is loaded with stars: for Pierrot : Christopher Oldfather, piano; Michael Parloff, flute/piccolo; Charle Neidlich, clarinet/bass clarinet; Rolf Scholte, violin/viola; and Fred Sherry, cello. The playing is superb, instrument by instrument, but the whole is too smooth, too steady; the slashing wit and the terror of this extraordinary work do not come through. There are places where it’s more appropriate for strings to screech and winds to squawk.


The Four Orchestral Songs are rarities on or off disc; I know them only from Yvonne Minton’s recording with Boulez, and I don’t believe they appeared in Craft’s early “The Music of Arnold Schoenberg” for Columbia. Composed in 1916, these songs are surprisingly harmonious for music lacking a tonal center. The differences between the two recordings are primarily in the accompaniments: Craft’s Philharmonia plays the music in a strict, forthright manner, whereas Boulez’s BBC Symphony is mellifluous and distant, more closely matching the poems of loneliness and memories. My preferences seem to depend on my mood of the moment.


Freed from having to support a vocalist, Craft loosens up in the Chamber Symphony, and his ensemble of stars delivers vital, exhilarating playing. The lush, sweet acoustics of the Recital Hall at the SUNY Purchase Performing Arts Center in Purchase, New York, smooth out Schoenberg’s 15 individual lines, making the ensemble sound more like a conventional orchestra. It’s pleasant to hear but belies the composer’s revolutionary one-instrument-on-a-part scoring. Nevertheless, a great performance.


The downside of this disc is its lack of vocal texts,* so important for Pierrot lunaire and the little-known songs. Naxos’s program notes go on for eight-and-a-half pages, so space is not the problem. One simply must have texts here, as does the Minton/Boulez Four Songs on Sony. Of the many available Pierrot lunaire recordings which offer German/English texts, I recommend Jan DeGaetani on Nonesuch or Lucy Shelton on Bridge, a disc which also includes Hergewächse.


* Music Editor’s note: Texts are available on the Naxos Web site, but in German only; search for catalog no. 8.557523 and click on the Lyrics link.




FANFARE: James H. North

Pierre Rode' music represents the full flowering of the French violin school founded by his mentor Giovanni Battista Viotti. Naxos' recordings of his 24 Caprices and Violin Concertos Nos. 7, 10 and 13 have received critical accolades, with Nos. 3, 4.

The viola works on this recording fuse lyricism with virtuosity, and sometimes invoke folkloric moments as well as more rhapsodic flights. Martinu' 1955 Sonata plays on elements of folk music and rhapsody, as well as a toccata-like intensity.

I write what I hear without trying to define any criteria other than emotion and rhythm.

"This music has the power to connect the avant-garde with the lost paradise of tonality,’ said Robin Holloway once about Britten. He might have been talking about this Blake set, a standout in Britten’s still often underrated output of the 1960s, written for Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau after his contribution to the War Requiem.

Putting this new Roderick Williams recording immediately up against the composer and Fischer-Dieskau is like going from hymns ancient to hymns modern. Williams finds an ideal emotional stance—involved, totally word-conscious but never melodramatic…as a recorded recital, Williams—and Burnside, who is similarly colourful but keeps an interpretative distance from pumping up the text—have created an outstanding achievement, one to set alongside the Gerald Finley/Julius Drake disc. Their remaining items, including Tit for Tat—Britten’s ‘reissue’ of early 1929-31 Walter de la Mare settings—shine in a similar way. The Potton Hall recording is clean and clear with excellent instrument/voice balance."

-- Mike Ashman, Gramophone [6/2012]

This disc couples a masterpiece from Britten’s maturity and songs written in his youth. The latter were revived and gathered together as a set in his later years. Britten wrote very little for baritone, but I do think it a pity that rather than seek an interesting work by another composer to complement these two works, it was decided to complete the disc with folk-songs. Beautiful though these arrangements are, many collectors will have quite enough Oliver Cromwells and Little Sir Williams on the shelves, thank you. They are, however, beautifully sung here. There is a very brisk Plough Boy, and Roderick Williams tones in his voice beautifully for the gentler numbers. Ca’ the yowes, a minor masterpiece, is magnificently grand. Overall, the delivery is simple, neither folk-song nor art-song, and refreshingly avoiding the coy or arch in the likes of The foggy, foggy dew. No, Williams presents them unadorned, and with a beautiful legato line, as a series of lovely tunes with inventive and striking accompaniments. Others, some of whom set them up as quasi-operatic scenes, do inject more life into some of the songs, not always to their advantage.
 
Tit for Tat, a set of five short songs to poems by Walter de la Mare, was first performed in 1969 by John Shirley-Quirk with the composer at the piano. I have in my head the sound of Shirley-Quirk singing these songs, but can’t for the life of me remember where or when it comes from. The songs were written when Britten was in his teens, and he had only recently gathered them together and, with minimal editing, prepared them for publication. They are accomplished works that can, on the whole, be enjoyed without making allowances for the composer’s age. There is not the psychological insight - neither into the poems nor into the mind of the listener - that you find in the mature composer’s vocal music. Nor is the piano part so developed. Listen however to the second song, “Autumn”: everything that was to come is there in embryonic form. It would be easy to exaggerate the claims of these songs, but presented so cleanly and with such understanding as do Williams and his superb pianist, Iain Burnside, they make just the effect the mature composer surely intended.
 
Philip Lancaster’s booklet essay casts plenty of light on the programme. Walter de la Mare’s poems are sadly not given, but the folk-song texts do appear, as do the texts of the masterly Songs and Proverbs of William Blake. This work was composed for Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and is dedicated to him. The dedication reads “For Dieter: the past and the future. It is a proper, integrated song-cycle, but which is sung without a break. Poems and proverbs alternate, creating a continuous text which was chosen and arranged in order by Peter Pears, no doubt with input from the composer. Words and music combine to create a cycle that maintains a single mood throughout its length, one of melancholy observation. In his book Britten, Voice and Piano, Stephen Johnson recounts how the relationship between Fischer-Dieskau and Britten, though nourished by mutual admiration, was not an easy one. The sessions for their Decca recording of December 1965 were by all accounts particularly fraught, but this is hardly audible in the finished result, which is a performance of extraordinary mastery. Fischer-Dieskau is magnificent, and the composer’s piano playing is miraculous. Listen, for example, in the ppp quavers that introduce A Poison Tree, how he manages to conceal the inconvenient fact that a piano works by hammers striking on keys. This is the kind of piano playing that prompted Gerald Moore, in his book Am I Too Loud?, to proclaim Britten as “the world’s greatest living accompanist”. Britten’s recorded legacy is essential for any admirer of his work, but happily the era is now long gone when attempts by other performers to stamp their own personality on the music seemed like an affront to the composer’s memory. Iain Burnside is outstandingly fine on this disc. It seems almost insulting to state that his playing is technically impeccable, but I do state it, whilst adding that he is profoundly in tune with the music and with the singer’s needs. Roderick Williams gives a performance of great vision, beautifully sung, that will satisfy any listener who discovers the work from this performance. In general, Fischer-Dieskau employs a wider range of vocal colour that allows him, in The ChimneySweeper, for example, to play the part of the oppressed child with remarkable vividness. Another example would be at the line “And blights with plagues the marriage hearse” in London, where Williams doesn’t really match Fischer-Dieskau’s disillusioned bitterness. Williams is slower, too, the song hardly reflecting the composer’s marking of “Very agitated”. If this gives the impression that the reading is a pale one, the opposite is the case. There is a suggestion of whimsy in Fischer-Dieskau’s performance of The Fly that is absent in Williams’ reading, and Williams launches Ah! Sun-flower with a superb crescendo barely observed by Fischer-Dieskau. The end of the work, too, is very fine indeed from both artists, not quite resigned, not quite hopeless.
 
-- William Hedley , MusicWeb International

Francis Poulenc reportedly felt uncomfortable writing for piano and strings and had harsh things to say about both the violin and cello sonatas, remarks duly parroted by critics and biographers ever since. And yet the fact remains that they are his most ambitious, lengthiest, and emotionally complex chamber works. As so often happens in these circumstances, it's much easier to regurgitate received opinion than it is to actually listen to the music and take it on its own terms.


Alexandre Tharaud, whose superb pianism enlivened Volume I of this ongoing series, plays this music with a freshness, seriousness, and bigness of gesture that reveals its greatness at every point. In the Violin Sonata, he and his partner Graf Mourja really do make the finale a "Presto tragico" rather than a series of cartoon episodes. Similarly, the four-movement Cello Sonata, Poulenc's largest chamber work, is so strongly projected and sensitively balanced that the composer's reservations simply vanish. The Clarinet Sonata, of course, is "classic" Poulenc: Tharaud and Ronald Van Spaendonck have a ball both with its suavity and its caustic wit. When Poulenc writes "très rude" over the solo part, that's exactly what we get. The recording is extremely vivid: close up, in your face, and a bit dry--ideal for this music. Bring on Volume 3! [4/30/2000]
--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

BLISS: Colour Symphony (A) / Adam Zero

Handel: Concerti Grossi, Op. 3, Nos. 1-6

Includes sinfonia(s) by Leopold Mozart. Ensemble: New Zealand Chamber Orchestra. Conductor: Donald Armstrong.

Rossini’s Eduardo e Cristina was a huge success in its day, but as perhaps the last centone opera (one assembled from previously existing material) by a major composer, it became forgotten under the subsequent tide of Romantic idealism. Today we can put these prejudices aside and enjoy this masterful creation for what it is: a hugely entertaining parade of beautiful and spectacular musical ‘hits’ set to a familiar story of secret love, dramatic crisis and triumphant resolution. This 2017 Bad Wildbad revival was summed up as “an evening of pure bel canto pleasure!” by Operagazet.

Premiered in Vienna for the celebration of his artistic golden jubilee in 1893, Strauss' Princess Ninetta enjoyed seventy-six performances and critical approval: "The libretto was a success in the true sense of the word.

Alfred Cellier was a contemporary of Arthur Sullivan as a Chapel Royal chorister, and would later conduct several Gilbert and Sullivan productions. With its rural tale of disguise and romantic scheming, its jaunty tunes, lively characters and farcical comedy, Cellier’s light opera, Dorothy, has been almost entirely forgotten today. It had the longest run of any 19th-century piece of musical theatre, seeing off The Mikado and Ruddigore, and became such a popular hit in its day that the box office profits were able to fund the building of the Lyric Theatre on London’s Shaftsbury Avenue. The work is receiving on this release its world premiere recording, presented by The Victorian Opera.

Suavely performed by the Oxford Camerata, this is a disc to appeal to those who prefer medieval music with a more spiritual and meditative emphasis.

– MusicWeb International

VIVALDI: Violin Concertos Op. 8, Nos. 5-8 and 10-12

A contemporary of Rossini and Donizetti, Saverio Mercadante was one of Italy’s most productive 19th-century operatic composers. Don Chisciotte alle nozze di Gamaccio was written during the composer’s stay in Spain, and is based on a chapter of Cervante’s Don Quixote in which the hero prevents the forced marriage of a poor farm girl to the wealthy Camacho. Magnificently entertaining and dramatically innovative, Don Chisciotte combines fashionable Neapolitan style with Spanish folk music elements in an unforgettable melodramma giocoso. It is heard on this recording in its first modern performance.