La damoiselle élue: Opera Arias

Telemann’s twelve “Methodic Sonatas” come from that happy time when there was no functional difference between pedagogical and art music. Much of Bach’s keyboard output, such as the Inventions and Sinfonias and The Well-Tempered Clavier, falls into the same category. The “method” that Telemann speaks of refers not just to the variety of movement forms found within these four and five-part sonatas, but also to the ornamentation, some of which Telemann writes out in full.

Composed for either flute or violin solo, plus continuo, these performances offer an even more varied selection of instruments including flute, recorder, oboe, and violin. The continuo contingent couldn’t be more adept, and includes Anner Bylsma and Wouter Möller on cello, as well as harpsichordists Bob van Asperen and Gustav Leonhardt. Two of the slow movements are headed “ondeggiando” (“waving”), a colorful term that in modern times has been adopted by the HIP movement to mean “baroque bow vibrato,” but ironically it didn’t mean that at all in the baroque period, when the usual word for vibrato of any kind was “tremolo.” Instead, it referred to music with a gentle, pastoral quality, and later in the 19th century to a particular “waving” bowing technique. Go figure.

Telemann wrote so much music that it’s very difficult for collectors to know where to start. Much of his output is “typical” rather than great, but these were pieces over which he took particular care, both in the composition as well as overseeing their publication. You won’t find them better played on disc, or imbued with such variety and color in the selection of solo instruments. Flutist Frans Brüggen and oboist Han de Vries form the woodwind contingent, while Boston Museum Trio violinist Daniel Stepner plays an impressive baroque violin. This set, assuming you can still find it, ought to form the cornerstone of any serious Telemann collection.

-- David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

WEBER: TEN SCOTTISH MELODIES,

Brahms: Violin Sonatas Nos. 1, 2 & 3

From Perahia and Abbado, the Piano Concerto comes across with refreshing eagerness, as if Schumann could scarcely pause for breath in an uprush of inspiration.

Whereas Perahia's 1989 release of Schumann's Piano Concerto (an excitingly vivid live recording with Sir Colin Davis) had Grieg's as bedfellow, here he follows Dalberto's excellent example (Denon, 6/94 — nla) in rescuing Schumann's two later works for piano and orchestra, of which the sorely neglected last in D minor was part of his birthday present for Clara barely six months before his breakdown. Though less immediately earcatching than the Mendelssohnian G major work (where Perahia's exhilarating homecoming silences often heard accusations of protraction), Schumann's farewell to the genre — as played here — strikes me as by far the more intense and laden of the two, with eventual major-key victory won after deeper internal struggle. Not for nothing had Schumann just completed his long-postponed overture to his Scenes from Faust in the same dramatic key of D minor.

With a considerable number of versions already available, the Piano Concerto needs no special pleading. From Perahia and Abbado it comes across with refreshing eagerness, as if Schumann could scarcely pause for breath in an uprush of inspiration. But unflagging strength of direction by no means excludes the personal. The first movement, in particular, brings intimately revealing nuances of phrasing from Perahia, with a finely shaped, richly expressive cadenza before a delectably light-fingered, effervescent coda. Free of coy cosseting the Andante has a natural, gracious flow. However, I would have liked a more expansive melodic glow in the middle section, not least when the violins soar into the upper reaches (a masterstroke of orchestration) near its end. Piquantly crunched acciaccaturas at the start inject the finale with inexhaustible rhythmic buoyancy. Recorded in Berlin's Philharmonie the sound quality is vibrantly full and forward.

-- Joan Chissell, Gramophone [1/1998]

Selections recorded 1984 and 1985.

Echoing Schumann, Schoenberg and Mahler, these songs have a concentrated, poignant intensity that is impressive.

A few years ago Blochwitz, Schmidt and Garben, together with Barbara Bonney as soprano and Anne Sofie von Otter as mezzo, recorded all of Zemlinsky's published songs (DG, 10/89). These are the ones he didn't publish; why not? When sung as they are here in chronological order the reason for a while seems obvious: a good many of the earlier ones are competent but rather ordinary. Apart from a charming hint of Schumann in the very first of them (and an almost literal quotation from him in the second) they have little individuality until about a third of the way through the collection. Then, in "Orientalisches Sonett" (Vier Lieder), there is an appropriately languishing touch of fin de siecle exoticism, as well as a deft reflection of the form of a sonnet, and, on "Süsse, süsse Sommernacht" (from the same set) a long and beautiful lullaby melody, finely poised over an arpeggiated accompaniment. From then on things get much more interesting.

In his notes, Anthony Beaumont suggests that in some cases it wasn't dissatisfaction that deterred Zemlinsky from publication; the austere, searching "Es war ein alter König (Drei Lieder), for example, may have been a private reflection on Mahler's marriage to Alma Schindler, with whom Zemlinsky himself was in love. Similarly three settings of Richard Dehmel, obviously designed as a set, are perhaps about the love affair Zemlinsky's sister (Schoenberg's first wife) was having with the painter Richard Gerstl. The relationship and Schoenberg's reaction to it led to a cooling of Zemlinsky's close friendship with his brother-in-law; Gerstl later killed himself. The songs have a concentrated, poignant intensity so impressive that one is tempted to speculate about other hidden reasons for Zemlinsky's reticence. "Jane Grey" (from Zwei Balladen), for example, was entered for a competition to which Schoenberg submitted a setting of exactly the same text. Is that why it almost out-Schoenbergs Schoenberg in its tenuous hold on tonality, its curiously gripping bare angularity? But in "Der verlorene Haufen" (Zwei Balladen), also set by Schoenberg for the same competition, Zemlinsky seems to be outMahlering Mahler in the fearsome march-toccata that accompanies this grim tale of a front-line regiment contemplating death each morning.

The manner of the Dehmel songs is recaptured in a haunting group of settings of Hofmannsthal (Vier Lieder); there are also two curious comic ballads (the Brettl-Lieder, one quite funny, the other—about a man who eats so much that he bursts-rather disgusting), a most beautiful cradle song over a dead child ("Uber eine Wiege", Drei Lieder) and a much later, nobly stoic contemplation of old age (Und einmal gehst du) that are in no way inferior to the best of Zemlinsky's published songs. Blochwitz, Schmidt and Garben are as reliable as they were in the earlier set, Vermillion matches them admirably and Ziesak, if a little hard and bright at times, can fine her voice down to an effective intimacy. The recordings are excellent.

-- Gramophone [6/1995]

Includes notes in English, German, and French. Song texts in German and English.

These performances are also included on Sony's 10-disc set "Bruno Walter
Edition Volume 3" - Sony Classical 66248.

This selection is also available in Super Audio CD format.

SCHOENBERG: TRANSFIGURED NIGHT

Selections recorded March 27-29 and April 1-3, 1993.

Includes verse(s) for organ by Anonymous. Soloist: Gustav Leonhardt.

Prometheus: The Myth in Music

Includes work(s) by various composers. Ensemble: Niederaltaich Scholars. Conductor: Konrad Ruhland. Soloist: Stefan Trenner.

MUSIC INSPIRED BY H?LDERLIN -