The Berlin Radio Choir sings major choral works by Johannes Brahms

There was no point in his life when Johannes Brahms did not take an active interest in choral music. It was an interest that he evinced not only as a choral conductor in Detmold, Hamburg and Vienna but also as a composer who bequeathed to posterity a vast number of secular and sacred choral works. Among his principal compositions for chorus and orchestra were not only his German Requiem but also his Song of Destiny op. 54 (1871) for mixed chorus and orchestra. This was arguably the most significant of all Romantic settings of a poem by Friedrich Hölderlin and has now been selected by the Berlin Radio Choir for a CD that explores the whole vast range of Brahms’s choral writing. Under the direction of Gijs Leenaars, the Choir – heard here in various formations – is joined in some of these works by the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester of Berlin. The Drei Gesänge op. 42, for example, are scored for mixed unaccompanied chorus, while Nänie op. 82 was written for chorus and orchestra. “All of the pieces that are featured on this CD show how well Brahms was able to write for the human voice,” says Gijs Leenaars, “and this is true of both their compositional textures and the impact of the sonorities that he uses.” At the same time Leenaars notes that the present programme is an ideal showcase for the Choir’s versatility. The Choir, he goes on, is a “great vehicle for choral works with orchestra, in which the right balance between orchestra and voices is a challenge”, while in the a cappella repertory the singers impress with the delicate textures of their voices.

The texts that Brahms has set in this selection of pieces all raise existential questions about our lives as human beings. The Song of Destiny is taken from Hölderlin’s epistolary novel Hyperion and draws on the world of classical mythology, contrasting the carefree lives of the gods on Mount Olympus with the toilsome existence of mortals on earth. Nänie for chorus and orchestra was written in 1881 in memory of the painter Anselm Feuerbach, who had died the previous year. The motet “Warum ist das Licht gegeben dem Mühseligen?” (Wherefore is light given to him that is in misery?) op. 74 no. 1 revolves around the question of why an almighty God allows to us suffer. “Es tönt ein voller Harfenklang” (The sounds of a full-toned harp ring forth) comes from the Vier Gesänge op. 17, which Brahms wrote in 1860 for the women’s choir that he had founded in Hamburg the previous year. And the Geistliches Lied (Sacred Song) op. 30 for four-part mixed chorus and strings invites its listeners to be steadfast and take comfort in their faith in the face of suffering and death.

WAGNER Götterdämmerung • Marek Janowski, cond; Lance Ryan ( Siegfried ); Petra Lang ( Brünnhilde ); Matti Salminen ( Hagen ); Markus Brück ( Gunther ); Edith Haller ( Gutrune ); Jochen Schmeckenbecher ( Alberich ); Marina Prudenskaya ( Waltraute ); Julia Borchert ( Woglinde ); Katherine Kammerloher ( Wellgunde ); Kismara Pessatti ( Flosshilde ); Susanne Resmark ( First Norn ); Christa Mayer ( Second Norn ); Jacquelyn Wagner ( Third Norn ); Berlin R Ch & SO • PENTATONE 5186 409 (4 SACDs: 243:42 Text and Translation) Live: Berlin 3/15/2013


In the fall of 2010, PentaTone announced plans to release new concert recordings of Wagner’s 10 mature operas—all with the same conductor, orchestra, and chorus plus top Wagnerian singers—by the end of the composer’s 200th birthday year. A given was that, as with all PentaTone releases, these would be hybrid multichannel SACDs featuring the best possible sound that the Polyhymnia engineering team could muster. Well, they did it. My copy of Götterdämmerung , recorded in May of last year, arrived on my doorstep on December 11, 2013. Almost three weeks to spare. It’s a successful conclusion to an ambitious undertaking, even if a couple of key singers here were not in top form.


Marek Janowski, as usual, favors brisk tempos. He brings in this Götterdämmerung in about 4:04:00; a quick check of five other audio-only versions of the work, of various vintages, revealed a range of 4: 17:00 (Keilberth, 1955) to 4:34:00 (Thielemann, 2010). Sometimes, this penchant for speed is quite evident, as with a third act Funeral March that’s something other than a dirge. Mostly, Janowski’s tempo choices translate into an increased sense of dramatic urgency rather than seeming rushed or perfunctory.


As signaled above, two key performers were not at the top of their game. Lance Ryan sang Siegfried for Zubin Mehta in the Valencia Ring —my favored video version—and, as I noted there, while no Melchior, he gave a dramatically effective account of the misguided hero. Here, his voice seems closed-in, pinched, sometimes even a little nasal in character—though his softer singing, as when he remembers his history to Hagen’s men right before he’s murdered, is better. Petra Lang is a top-tier Wagnerian who always brings intelligence and strong sense of character to her portrayals. Best here is her scene with Waltraute (capably sung by Marina Prudenskaya) where she begins with the same aura of radiant happiness she manifested when she waved goodbye to Siegfried in the Prologue—and then evolves into defiant fury. Lang’s Brünnhilde is set up perfectly for the gigantic disappointment in the form of Siegfried-as-Gunther who is the next visitor to her rock. “Verrat!”—“Betrayed!”—she cries out, and really sounds like she means it. In the last act, though, Lang’s vocal instrument does show some wear in more demanding passages: The voice is a little rough on top with some imperfect intonation. Violeta Urmana was the Brünnhilde for PentaTone’s Siegfried and she’s more technically secure—but, of course, the role in Götterdämmerung makes very different and more extreme demands on a vocalist than does the earlier drama.


But then there’s Hagen. Give me a choice between a grade B-plus Brünnhilde/Siegfried combination with a grade B Hagen, and a B-minus Brünnhilde/Siegfried with an A Hagen, and I’ll take the latter deal every time. And Matti Salminen is an A-plus Hagen: As Peter Rabinowitz noted in a review of the Valencia Ring in Fanfare 34:2, “he virtually owns the part these days.” Salminen’s act I monolog “Hier Stiz’ ich zur Wacht” is darkly horrifying, dripping with contempt not just for Siegfried but for the rest of humanity as well. Janowski backs him up with tritone-laden brass declamations of crushing power.


Markus Brück and Edith Haller capably sing Gunther and Gutrune. At least vocally, there’s no obvious attempt to make the former into a puffed-up fop and the latter into a floozy, as is so often the case in staged productions. They are there to function mechanistically in the scheme Alberich and Hagen have devised to recover the ring and there’s really no need to vilify them further. The trios of Norns and Rhine Maidens are dramatically and musically effective as well.


The choral work in act II is thrilling—and the recording lets you hear everything. Orchestral sonorities are wonderfully warm and richly textured: Listen to the blend of the eight horns in the music between scenes 1 and 2 of the second act (after Alberich and Hagen’s exchange), or to the glowing majesty of the work’s closing pages. The packaging is in the same luxuriant mode as the preceding nine releases: PentaTone provides a 320-page bound booklet that holds the four hybrid multichannel SACDs as well as a German/English libretto, another lengthy essay from Steffen Georgi, and plenty of information on the cast. By the way, I did it. I managed to hang onto the vouchers that came with the nine earlier releases in the series, so I’m entitled to a “special CD collection box.”


As the final D? chord so handsomely recorded by the Polyhymnia engineering team fades away, one is left marveling at the achievement of Marek Janowski and the many top-notch singers who joined him for PentaTone’s project. But mostly, one is left in awe at the remarkable staying power of the music penned by one Wilhelm Richard Wagner.


FANFARE: Andrew Quint

Albert Lortzing was familiar with the stage from his earliest years, for both his parents were actors, and by the age of 18 he too was engaged as both an actor and singer. His career was anything but stable, however; a competent composer, he divided his time between precarious kapellmeister positions – including a stint at the Theater an der Wien – and having to revert to acting in order to support himself. He died impoverished and unhappy in 1851, a few months after securing his third kapellmeister post.

Today he is best remembered for his Singspiel Der Wildschütz, a masterpiece of writing and whose libretto the composer himself fashioned from Kotzebue’s comedy Der Rehbock, oder Die schuldlosen Schuld bewußten, which had been published earlier in 1816. Kotzebue’s work is a whirlwind of character disguise, a piece whose titillating coquetry touches firmly on frivolity but manages to evade full-scale immorality, and Lortzing also added small touches of his own to the story – including the character of the majordomo Pancratius, whose role has traditionally been performed in Saxon dialect. The enduring appeal of Der Wildschütz, however, clearly rests on the score, with Lortzing’s lightness of touch, his memorable and catchy tunes, and the vivid characterisation of comic situations lending his music a charm that appears as fresh as ever. An ardent admirer of Mozart, it is in Der Wildschütz, more than in any other of his operas, that Lortzing succeeded in writing at least a few numbers that are reminiscent of the great composer. This applies particularly to his carefully wrought ensemble passages, which greatly outweigh the arias in terms of number and of which the much-admired Billiards Scene (Act 2) is surely the greatest.

Lortzing’s operas were the most-performed in Germany for about 150 years, and from listening to Der Wildschütz it is easy to understand why. Recorded in the early ‘80s and bringing together many of Germany’s top singers of the period, this version remains one of the finest to date. ‘Edith Mathis is a delightful Baroness and Doris Soffel nicely characterises the Sophocles-besotted Countess…’, while ‘Georgine Resick sings a charming Gretchen, warm but with a will of her own.’ (Gramophone)

Other information:
- Recorded 1980–1982.
- Reissue of one of the gems of the East Germany archive recordings of Berlin Classics: Der Wildschütz by Albert Lortzing.
- Lortzing’s operas were extremely popular in their time, due to their good humour and wit, the memorable tunes and the general romantic nature feeling.
- A star studded cast of the best German voices of the time: Edith Mathis, Doris Soffel, Peter Schreier, Hans Sotin, Gottfried Hornik, and the magnificent Staatskapelle Berlin conducted by Bernhard Klee. - Contains detailed notes on the music and plot synopsis.
- German Libretto available for download

The composer Hans Werner Henze describes his Ninth Symphony for mixed chorus and orchestra (words by Hans-Ulrich Treichel after the novel "The Seventh Cross" by Anna Seghers) as follows:"What happens in this symphony is an apotheosis of terror and pain. It is a summa samarium of my creative output, the attempt to come to terms with the assaults of an arbitrary and unpredictable world. (...) A German reality, this symphony is above all an expression of enormous respect for the people who dared to resist in the time of Nazi-Fascist terror and who gave their lives to defend freedom of thought."

The seductive, addictive potential of this music can be heard and felt straight away. His film music, an important pillar of his livelihood, embodies almost everything that characterizes Schnittke's music as a whole. It heralds a musical personality which, precisely because of its conscious use of tradition in the twentieth century, represents a solitary exception. Curious – not greedy for the old – he collected discarded or worn-out remains of music history, cleaned and polished them, and placed them in strikingly new contexts. The principle of drawing from and making use of the past was not well received in the strongholds of the avant-garde, but was all the more enthusiastically embraced by film viewers and concertgoers. 25 years ago Schnittke had encouraged the young conductor, arranger, and film music expert Frank Strobel to condense the music of his film scores into suites and to republish them for concert use. Since then, Strobel has arranged around a third of Schnittke’s over 60 pieces of film music and successively recorded them with the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra.

Kassel, the city in the heart of Germany, internationally known as the city of the world art exhibition "documenta", which takes place every five years, also attracted international attention in the field of music when the then General Music Director Ádám Fischer initiated the "Gustav Mahler Fest Kassel" in 1989. With the "Festspielorchester", an orchestra of its own quality and characteristics was created. In addition to the concertmaster Rainer Hocke of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, the oboe and clarinet groups of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra and the Vienna Symphony Orchestra were formed, whose instruments have special characteristics and thus a specific sound. The same applies to the horns, which play an important role in Mahler's music. The special string sound of musicians such as the Staatskapelle Dresden, the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra Prague, the orchestra of the Hungarian State Opera as well as the brass, especially trumpets, from German orchestras, supplemented by musicians from Brno, the Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam as well as from Frankfurt, Hanover, Cologne and Düsseldorf, gave Mahler's music a particularly adequate sound. Of course, the Kassel State Orchestra, with a total of 20 musicians, who took turns, played a major role in the festival orchestra.

The Rundfunkchor Berlin, led by its chief conductor Gijs Leenaars and accompanied by wind players from the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin, presents masses by Bruckner and Stravinsky. The mass is arguably the oldest genre in music history, full of traditions, but also an inexhaustible soil for originality and innovation. This mix of tradition and innovation makes the genre an ideal vehicle for Bruckner and Stravinsky, who were both masters at blending the old and new into a uniquely personal musical idiom. Bruckner’s Mass in E Minor and Stravinsky’s Mass share their unusual orchestrations of almost a cappella voices with a sparse, extraordinary wind accompaniment. While Bruckner was inspired by open air “country masses”, Stravinsky’s Mass is emblematic of his neo-classical style. The Rundfunkchor Berlin is one of the most established German choirs, and has participated in several PENTATONE releases of Wagner operas, as well as a recording of Bruckner’s Mass in F Minor (2013) and Richard Strauss’s Die Tageszeiten (2015). The Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin has an even more extensive PENTATONE discography, containing collaborations with conductors such as Marek Janowski, Jakub Hruša and Vladimir Jurowski. Gijs Leenaars makes his PENTATONE debut.

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

Ivan the Terrible – the second joint project of Sergei Eisenstein and Sergei Prokofiev – is, much like Alexander Newski, a historical epic, portraying the rise and fall of the autocratic ruler Ivan IV in the 16th century. Sergei Prokofiev’s musical portrayal is unique in film history, for the score conceives both parts of the film on an epic scale. Prokofiev’s rich melodic invention thrives on the expressive sound palette of his native Russia, mostly as they echo the spiritual works of the Russian-orthodox liturgy. These film scores were not published during Prokofiev’s lifetime. They were arranged as an oratorio for soloists, chorus, and orchestra by Levon Atovmyan, one of Prokofiev’s assistants, in 1961. This version received its concert premiere in Moscow that same year. This, however, is the original, straight from the composer’s hands, receiving its world premiere recording.

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REVIEW:

The music is well worth the listener’s time: it is very inventive and highly atmospheric owing to the composer’s uncanny ability to depict the characters, moods and historic aspects of the story. As mentioned, the performances are quite fine and Strobel, who earlier gave us the world premiere recording of the complete film music from Alexander Nevsky, has a grasp on Prokofiev’s film music style that few other conductors do.

– MusicWeb International

The Overture is played with a sombre foreboding, the Peasants' March has a good raw sound, and the Wolfs Glen is vividly characterized. Among the singers, the most distinguished performance comes from Sharon Sweet. She has a most expressive sense of phrasing, always feeling the words and varying her rich, warm tone to convey them. Her two main numbers, ''Leise, leise'' and ''Und ob die Wolke'', are beautifully contemplative; and she joins sensitively in the Trio and the other ensembles. Ruth Ziesak's Aennchen sounds indeed a relation, with a family kinship in manner: she is less soubrettish than most singers of the role, but lively enough, and she makes an amusing success of the silly song about the dog. There is a magnificent Kaspar from Kurt Rydl, who glitters darkly in the Drinking Song, delivers ''Schweig! Schweig!'' with appalling menace, and speaks his lines in the Wolfs Glen more powerfully than any other performer of the role. Peter Seiffert brings to Max a good reputation as a Heldentenor in Wagner and Strauss; but there is an edge to his voice, and he can sound strained and even tremulous, as if he is trying too hard with melodic lines that for much of the time owe more to French example.

– Gramophone

Despite a certain inner distance to the Communist regime, Rudolf Wagner-Régeny was considered one of the most distinguished artistic personalities in East Germany. Karl Böhm and Herbert von Karajan were only two of the distinguished conductors to champion his music. Although he himself was not regarded as a stylistic pioneer, the way Wagner-Régeny took up and blended old and new elements formed a highly individual musical diction that might well be defined as a personal style. Genesis (1955/56) is a blend of oratorio and cantata. It was written prior to East Germany’s ambivalent attitude towards the church. The latter represented the strongest opposition to the regime and was discriminated mainly during Walter Ulbricht’s tenure as the chairman of the Central Committee.

Engelbert Humperdinck's music for the pantomime of Karl Gustav Vollmoeller's arguably most important stage work impresses with it's deeply Romantic sound and large-scale choral scenes and had so far led an unforgivable shadowy existence in the composer's oeuvre. Premiered in London in 1911, none other than Max Reinhardt adapted this work for film (1912) and staged numerous performances with hundreds of actors, singers, and dancers - finally also at the Salzburg Festival in 1925. This recording represents the first complete recording of this deeply Romantic masterpiece.

In 1946 Hindemith, who became an American citizen in January of that year, composed the Requiem for Robert Shaw's Collegiate Chorale. Whitman's poem had been written on the death of Lincoln. Some parallel events at Roosevelt's death and the excellent interpretation presented Hindemith's work a great success. The recent identification of the Jewish melody Gaza, which appears in large parts of the work, reveals a further meaning: It must be seen as Hindemith's musical reaction to the Holocaust, a reaction, whose effect is all the more penetrating and persuasive, because Hindemith himself never revealed the identity of the Gaza melody for the purposes of cheap publicity. Hindemith wrote a Requiem for the living (the survivors), who are obligated to remember and identify themselves with the victims and must transform this historical moment into an imperishable personal experience.

Paul Hindemith was motivated to work with Gottfried Benn after he had read his article "Can Writers Change the World?". In it Benn states, in opposition to the political program of salvation of his days: History has no overarching sense, no upward movement, no dawning of humanity, a motif of the Orient, a myth of the Mediterranean Sea; it survives the Niagara Falls, only to drown in the bathtub; necessity calls and randomness answers. Benn then gave form to these views in his poem "Das Unaufh�rliche", which is supposed to express the self-transformation of the creative act. Hindemith was confronted with the paradoxical problem that he could in no way express the principle of the perpetual, to which as an art form music, too, is subject, by means of an emphatically autonomous music. Instead, he sought to embody the principle of the perpetual in his basic compositional decisions. Hindemith succeeds by always giving something fictive to the "organic" closed forms of the "natural" musical flow. The principle of the perpetual is assigned to three themes, which almost all of the work's other themes are derived from in the most subtle, unobtrusive art of transformation. And when the final chorus returns to these three themes in their original form, it makes thematically manifest what was always latently present: the principle of the perpetual.

The CD presents partly unpublished choral works of Paul Hindemith who wrote in 1952: "It is not going too far to say that the art of a cappella ensemble singing and the music written for it can be thought of as the measure of the achievement of the musical culture of any particular period." The brief texts of the canons reveal his love of punning games and an underlying sense of humor.