Classical Music

Classical Music

MOZART The Magic Flute ? Wilhelm Furtwängler (cond); Irmgard Seefried ( Pamina ); Wilma Lipp ( Queen of the Night ); Walter Ludwig ( Tamino ); Karl Schmitt-Walter ( Papageno ); Josef Greindl ( Sarastro ); Vienna St Op Ch; Vienna PO ? ORFEO C 650 053 D, mono (3 CDs: 176:35) Live: Salzburg 7/27/1949)


This performance was first publicly issued on the Discocorp LP label, and then on CD by Arlecchino and Arkadia, the latter slightly better than the former. It was then sonically improved on by Music & Arts, and in Fanfare 19:5 I reviewed the Music & Arts release. Now, along comes an Orfeo issue that far surpasses both Music & Arts and Tahra (which is almost identical to Music & Arts). Orfeo?s is the first release that is officially sanctioned by the Salzburg Festival, and while the original master tapes have not survived, the Salzburg archives had at their disposal material superior to the off-the-air sources that have been the basis of prior releases. The sound here is far less harsh and strident, completely lacking the distortion found on all prior releases, and in fact even superior to EMI?s release of the slightly superior 1951 performance with a similar cast (EMI 65356).


From the chords that open the Overture, it is apparent that this is a weighty reading, one very far from today?s theories of how to perform Mozart. Those opening chords are arpeggiated (or, depending on your point of view, just sloppy), and have a significant mass about them. Throughout, Furtwängler?s performance is rooted in the 19th-century tradition?rich in color and texture, filled with tempo adjustments, and far weightier than we would encounter today. If you are open to this approach, it has probably never been done better. It is, as I said in my earlier review, a noble, humanistic Flute , one where the text has a strong impact on the conductor?s view of how to manage the music; it is a performance that smells of the theater. But if your idea of this music is that it must be light and fleeting, you will probably wish to avoid it.


The cast is very good, though not as good as the 1951 repeat of the production that is on EMI. There were two important cast changes between 1949 and 1951, and both are significant improvements (probably not a coincidence). The biggest difference is the 1951 Papageno, Erich Kunz, who is superb vocally and dramatically; Karl Schmitt-Walter here is limited by a dry timbre and what seems to be a lack of dramatic and comedic imagination. The other change is Tamino. Walter Ludwig here is sensitively phrased and dramatically inflected, but his tone is throaty; in 1951, Anton Dermota was a clear improvement.


Aside from that, the cast is the same in both, and is superb. Particularly noteworthy is Irmgard Seefried?s glowing Pamina. Wilma Lipp manages the second of the Queen?s two viciously difficult arias better than the first, but few have done better with both. Josef Greindl?s Sarastro is thrillingly dark-toned, though admittedly occasionally out of tune. The remainder of the cast is luxurious?in fact, only at a level possible in a festival setting like this.


Furtwängler collectors are going to want this?even if they have the Tahra or Music & Arts editions. The warm, clear sound here is such an improvement that it casts the performance in a new light. Helpful and interesting notes accompany the set, but (as is typical of historic reissues) no text or translation.


FANFARE: Henry Fogel

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Recorded live during the 1957 Festival D'Aix en Provence, each member of the unique cast involved in this production of Mozart's Cosi fan Tutte- Stich-Randall, Berganza, Panerai, Alva - is a singer of superb ability, reputation and a fine Mozartean singer of the time. Leading a famed, historic Parisian orchestra, Hans Rosbaud (1895-1962), a stalwart conductor of music past and present who is sometimes derided as a "Kapellmeister", was, as this and other recordings of the era prove, in fine form during his last full decade of life. Remastered in 24bit/96kHz sound.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Triple Feature.

WIENER OPERNFEST 2005

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Classical Music

English translation by Hugh MacDonald.

"...The casting shows the depth of ENO 30 years ago, with Eilene Hannan as Mélisande, more knowing, less naive than some portrayals, the baritone Robert Dean a Pelléas with just the right mix of muscularity and lyric grace, Neil Howlett the conflicted Golaud and John Tomlinson the pontificating Arkel." - Andrew Clements, The Guardian U.K.

SMETANA The Two Widows • Jaroslav Krombholc, cond; Maria Tauberová ( Karolina ); Drahomira Tikalová ( Anežka ); Ivo Židek ( Ladislav ); Eduard Haken ( Mumlal ); Antonin Zlesák ( Toník ); Miloslava Fidlerová ( Lidunka ); Prague Natl Theatre O & Ch • SUPRAPHON 3926 (2 CDs: 124:45 Text and Translation)


Of the eight completed operas of Smetana, The Two Widows (or, in the original Czech, Dv? vdovy ) was finished fifth. It was the fourth to be performed, however, ahead of the historical pageant Libu?e , in its original and revised versions. Both versions, too, were considerable successes at their respective debuts, and especially valuable to a composer whose work was almost always under attack for political and musical reasons by powerful interests preferring a more Germanic style.


The original version of The Two Widows debuted within less than three months of its completion, in 1874. The story, drawn from a comedy by Pierre-Félicien Mallefille, concerned a pair of sisters who treat their mutual widowhood very differently. One, Karolina, relishes ruling her broad estates benignly, and contemplates entering politics. The other, Anežka, dresses in black and keeps the memory of her husband sacrosanct, avoiding a young man of leisure whom she once cared for while still married. When that young man turns up on Karolina’s lands while Anežka is visiting—pretending to poach the wildlife, and missing constantly—it’s time for a little scheming intervention. Low comedy was provided by the buffoonish bass role of Mumlal, Karolina’s gamekeeper.


Like the original Bartered Bride , this first version of The Two Widows was a comedy with dialogue. Smetana himself conducted that premiere, and wrote in his diary, “I received numerous wreaths and flowers, also a beautiful ornamented silver baton and silver wreath. . . . I was called out repeatedly after each act. Perfect success of the opera.” But the composer ultimately judged otherwise, for the second version made a few important changes clearly designed to give The Two Widows , well, legs. Smetana and his well-wishers wanted to see his operatic works performed abroad. As in the case of Carmen , which saw its debut a year later, the best way they saw to boost the international chances of an opera-with-spoken-word was to make it all music, all the time.


The recitative Smetana created in place of spoken text for his revision was fluent and varied in character, freely phrased and capable of moving between different levels of speech-song and concerted pieces. An example occurs in act II, scene 4, from recitative to parlando, and smoothly into an excellent trio (“Tob?, vdovo truchlivá”). Richard Strauss is said to have admired the way Smetana used recitative informally in The Two Widows , and saw it repeatedly while writing Der Rosenkavalier . Perhaps he was doing more than just thinking of this very scene, with its simple but beguiling waltz tune that starts midway through, with its sideslips into the relative minor.


The revision also involved the creation of what some might charitably call a secondary plot: a tiresome bit of wheezy humor, with interfering Mumlal sticking his head between two otherwise anonymous lovers, getting kissed, doing it again, and getting his nose boxed in stereo. It has the same rustic quality as Va?ek’s circus misadventures in The Bartered Bride , save that there, the incidents were truly woven into the story. Here, they simply pad the second act. Musically, it is another matter. Mumlal’s act II aria isn’t very interesting, but I find the trio scene for Mumlal, Toník, and Lidunka a delight.


Indeed, the opera displays a relatively high level of lyrical inspiration and craftsmanship throughout. While act I is slow—in part because it bore the larger amount of converted dialogue, in part because Mallefille’s original one-acter wasn’t really ideal for conversion into two acts—it has some choice content, including a short but delightful overture, a proud aria by Karolina (“Tot je jiná”), a hauntingly beautiful song for Ladislav (“Aj, vizte lovce tam”), and a wonderful concertato for all four main characters. Act II is almost pure gold: an attractive prelude, a heartwarming aria for Ladislav (“Když zavitá máj”), and a sparkling duet for Karolina and Anežka in which the latter quotes her sister’s earlier musical paean to non-marital freedom and tosses it astutely back. There’s a wonderful and lengthy scene for Ladislav and Anežka, where he reads a letter he’s written her, over music. (The liner notes claim this melodrama as unique, but as anybody familiar with opera should know, the ploy of reading a letter over powerful music was made very popular years earlier, with its best known example being a similar letter-reading scene in Verdi’s La traviata .) There is also a magnificent scene for Anežka, who finally regrets her behavior to Ladislav, addresses her husband beyond the grave, and lets go of what she has perceived as faithfulness, seeking the joys of living, instead. Not to be missed either are a series of concerted numbers for several voices, and, of course, one excellent polka.


There isn’t any available competition for this album. The 1970s recording for Supraphon is currently out of print and unattainable on most Web sites. (I just found a used version selling for over $360, but that’s ridiculous.) František Jilek led a spirited reading with a well-rounded but never outstanding cast. Its best feature is, frankly, the sound. It is far better than what Supraphon could accomplish in 1956, and that’s the date of this boxy reissue under Krombholc. Digital re-mastering hasn’t done a thing to rebalance the neglected midrange frequencies, or to deal with the constriction of the original tapes. But Krombholc, a fine conductor in his own right, has the advantage of a superior Karolina—almost Marschallin-like in her brightness, ease of phrasing, and coloratura—and a richer, slightly darker, more lyrical Anežka, who does full justice to her act II scene. Ivo Židek is slightly off his best, bright but occasionally pinched at the top, sometimes sliding in an unconvincing fashion. But he has a good, lyric voice, fine enunciation, and an ardent approach to this music that requires more than heft and vocal perfection. My only real disappointment in the cast was Eduard Haken, whose dark bass occasionally wobbles, and who goes disastrously askew when asked to do any figurations. Otherwise, he’s more than satisfactory, as are Zlesák and Fidlerová in their minor parts. All the performers sound thoroughly at home in their parts, and have that sense of rightness in scenes together that only comes from working in close proximity for a length of time.


A less appealing reading would still get a recommendation on the strength of the score, though the deficiencies would be noted. Here, the reservations are few. Definitely recommended.


FANFARE: Barry Brenesal

The characters and mainly their inner life was so autonomous and convincing that it made his final work timeless. He transformed the medieval subject matter of love at first sight into a hymn about defiance and freedom. He equipped the opera with well-arranged leitmotifs and made his characters musically vivid far beyond what the text had offered.

The Italian composer Gioachino Rossini is best known for his operas. Many of their overtures and arias were catchy tunes at the time and have remained so to this day. Although it is Rossini’s comic operas that are primarily performed today, more than half of his stage works are in fact based on serious themes. One veritable rarity is the stage work "Sigismondo", which premiered in 1814 at the famous Teatro La Fenice in Venice but was only ever rarely performed afterwards. Presumably, the story on which it was based had no appeal for the audience at that time, because musically, the work is hardly less impressive than the "Italian Girl in Algiers", written during the previous year, or the "Barber of Seville", which followed two years later. The subject of the opera is, however, based on a long tradition. Rossini shows his protagonist, the fictional King Sigismondo, in extreme states of mental distress. Confusion and insanity reveal inner feelings, and it is only delirium that finally brings the truth to light. This "madness opera" is highly topical, both in its subject matter and its musical language – after all, Rossini is among the top ten most-performed composers of our time. A concert performance of this little-known and unjustly neglected masterpiece was given at Munich’s Prinzregententheater on October 14, 2018 - in the original language, and by performers highly familiar with Rossini’s music, which seems so easy but is in fact extremely difficult to sing. This extraordinary opera event – a festival of singing that received tumultuous applause as well as great critical acclaim – is now being released on BR-KLASSIK as a live recording.

 

REVIEW:

 

It would appear at first glance that the release of this recording of one of Rossini’s more egregious operas has been primarily designed as a promotional exercise for the conductor Keri-Lynn Wilson. How else does one explain that hers is the only artist biography in the 36-page German-English booklet?

 

She is good. But the singers are good too: an exceptional cast to be assembled for a Sunday radio transmission. But that’s Germany for you, the one country in Europe which still has the desire and the wherewithal seriously to invest in opera.

 

Singing Rossini live under a skilled if sometimes hard-driving conductor is not without its perils, as is occasionally evident with the one soprano in the cast, the gifted Hera Hyesang Park, who sings the role of the exiled wife of the delusional Polish king Sigismondo. But she, too, generally acquits herself with distinction, not least in Aldimira’s striking Act 2 aria.

 

Sigismondo, an old-fashioned travesti role, is sung by Marianna Pizzolato. Both she and Kenneth Tarver as the king’s devious and sexually ambitious Prime Minister are class acts. It’s also good to hear the young Irish mezzo Rachel Kelly in the comprimario role of the minister’s sister, Anagilda.

 

Keri-Lynn Wilson — or Mrs Peter Gelb as one’s probably not allowed to call her — is an experienced conductor who has worked in leading houses across the world. Here the drive and authority of her conducting work wonders for the piece. I like the way she rescues the Overture from buffo banality by giving it a rumbustious, even dangerous feel. I also like the way the performance culminates in an electrifying account of the Act 2 quartet. Identifying and realising any work’s one true climax is a skill that eludes all too many stick-wavers.

 

Rossini wrote Sigismondo for Venice’s Teatro La Fenice in the autumn of 1814. He was 22 and on the cusp of a move to Naples and the second great phase of his career. The impresario of La Fenice warned him that the libretto wasn’t up to much and Rossini seems to have agreed. Still, he set to and came up with some vital and at times forward-looking music that had the singular merit of appeasing the first-night audience. Which is why it doesn’t perhaps matter that BR-Klassik has been negligent in its presentation—no text and translation, such as one has with Bongiovanni’s highly recommendable 1992 Rovigo theatre recording conducted by Richard Bonynge, nor the kind of track-by-track synopsis such as Naxos provides in its altogether less well-sung and less efficiently recorded 2016 Rossini in Wildbad performance.

 

 

– Gramophone

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Intolleranza 1960 was Nono's first work for the opera stage, and is a flaming protest against intolerance, oppression and the violation of human dignity. Premiered in 1961, the premiere night was interrupted by neo-facists shouting "Viva la polizia!" during the torture scene.

Following the release of the DVD box in the spring, OehmsClassics now issues the complete Ring from Frankfurt in the well-known design on 14 CDs. This complete version comprises the individual issues of the four operas with the Frankfurt Opera, produced and released during the years 2010-2012. This release is accompanied by a single CD with orchestral music from the Ring.

OehmsClassics now releases the recording of this controversial production of Doktor Faust by Nicolas Brieger made in 2008 just in time for the Munich Opera Festival. The title role is sung by Wolfang Koch, who will sing Wotan this year at Bayreuth in the Jubilee Ring Cycle. The singer can be assured of an appropriate portion of attention, and the new CD could hardly appear at a more favorable time.

Creating excitement is the aim of this effective music with it's trombone attacks, bell tolls and horrors, sentimental cantilenas, sweet love duets and the famous overture: never was there the least doubt that Sebastian Weigle with the Frankfurt ensemble would succeed in bringing these off. With Rienzi, Oehms Classics now presents the last of the three operas attributed to the youthful years of Richard Wagner.

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

Carus is building a valuable stable of recordings, many taped in the Frauenkirche in Dresden. For this three CD set the NDR Choir, Festspiel Orchester Göttingen, a sextet of solo singers and Nicholas McGegan have been enlisted to render Samson to the disc-buying public. The result, if I can anticipate my own critical comments, is an equable and well, but small scaled, performance. There are no outstanding singers as such; instead ensemble virtues are promoted in pursuance of a harmonious and expressively equable reading of the score.

One of the most striking things about the set is the excellent diction and spirited incision of the NDR Chorus. The relatively new Festspiel Orchester Göttingen employs period instruments and, as with almost all bands promoted by Carus that I have encountered, are a most adept, rhythmically buoyant and sympathetic one. McGegan directs with style and if one sometimes feels him a little lacking in brio - I tend to feel the same way about his compatriot Robert King in this sort of repertoire - then compensation comes in the shape of his long-term control and of the rise and fall of the work's emotive high ground. Recitative is notably well judged, accompanied recitative especially, where the band points finely, and these are the result of McGegan's acumen.

But Samson is about the voice and here we have some matters to ponder. The singers have been well selected to ensure that warmth and a certain limited expressive range is harmoniously maintained - which is not to say there aren't some outbursts, of which more in a moment. It is all too easy, when this work is staged or semi-staged, as it has been, to allow Samson's gravitational pull to splinter ensemble focus. I saw John Vickers's last performances on a London stage, when he sang Samson, and though this wasn't quite the case here, it was obvious where all eyes and ears were directed. In this Carus things are, for want of a better phrase, democratically apportioned.

Franziska Gottwald is a sonorous but not over inflated Micah - she sings with equalized tone and requisite plangency, as well as fine English diction. It's a voice that can take on a pleasing keen, as in her Act II aria with chorus Return Oh God of Hosts. Thomas Cooley is Samson; he sings with pleasing, neatly controlled eloquence but it's rather small-scaled and arguably a bit neutral, something I felt about his Total Eclipse! which should be more starkly and incontrovertibly conveyed. William Berger has a warm, rounded bass and does well throughout; his recitative control is evident as early as Act I's Oh miserable change! where the band accompanies with spirited interjectory drama. His How willing my paternal love is sensitively graded, modest but not especially expressive. Sophie Daneman sings a pretty but perhaps subdued Let the Bright Seraphim but otherwise gives a controlled, pleasing account. Bass Wolf Matthias Friedrich sports some well nourished but incongruously employed open American vowels, not least in Honour and Arms which gets rather a 'windy' reading.

Who sings the Virgin in Act II, to shadow Daneman? I assume it's a member of the choir but she should be credited, especially as she's good.

The Raymond Leppard directed modern instrument performance is still going strong, and with Janet Baker, Helen Watts, Robert Tear, John Shirley-Quirk and Benjamin Luxon you're assured of first class singing of a certain stamp [Warner Classics 6 CDs 2564695686 - a box set with Messiah and assorted arias]. Harnoncourt [Teldec 2564692602] has pressing claims as does the old Richter with Alexander Young et al [Archiv 453 245 2]. Harry Christophers' 1996 recording with Lynne Dawson, Lynda Russell, Catherine Wyn-Rogers, Mark Padmore, Matthew Vine, Thomas Randle, Jonathan Best and Michael George is ex-Collins and now on Coro 16008 and is the major opposition. I prefer the Christophers. 

Recorded over two days this is an SACD and sounds a touch reverberant in the tricky acoustic of the Frauenkirche. There are some small cuts, for example To Song and Dance. Whilst admiring the overall, equable nature of the performance, the Christophers gets a more urgent recommendation.

-- Jonathan Woolf, MusicWeb International

This new release has been long anticipated, and concludes Ars Produktion’s discographic documentation of one of the most outstanding German theater scene Ring productions. This production of Wagner’s Ring cycle from 1997/1999 received international enthusiasm from critics due to its amazing artistic interpretation and musical skill. This special release includes a bonus CD with an interview featuring famed opera journalist Thomas Voigt and the director of the Staatstheater Kassel, Michael Leinert.

Classical Music