MUSICWEB LOG – JUNE
2007 - Robert Hugill
Handel operas seem
to be doing rather well at the moment.
John Eliot Gardiner's recording of Agrippina
has reappeared in the Philips classic
opera series and I definitely agree
that it’s a classic. Any recording which
has a cast that includes Della Jones,
Alistair Miles, Derek Lee Ragin and
Michael Chance can't be all bad. Ragin
is singing the mezzo-soprano role of
Nerone, now usually sung by a woman.
The set is worth getting for this alone,
seeing what a real high counter-tenor
can do with the part. Ragin is appearing
in the English Touring Opera production
of Teseo this autumn.
More unusually, Alan
Curtis has recorded Floridante.
It has a fine case, a rather better
one than Curtis's previous Handel opera
recording. This recording also enables
Curtis to experiment with the edition
of the text. Handel doesn't really give
much scope for radical changes to the
text for editorial purposes, most of
his later changes are not improvements
but simply making the piece work with
whomsoever he had to sing at the time.
In the case of Floridante Curtis
has reverted to the planned voice range
of Elmira, who was intended to be a
soprano but had to be recast when the
soprano, Margherita Durastantini, was
ill. Rather bizarrely he then casts
the role as a mezzo-soprano, but Joyce
diDonato has a very bright, soprano-ish
voice and is a superb singer, so what
the hell. The same goes for Agrippina
where the title role was also sung by
soprano Margherita Durastantini. Nowadays
Agrippina is often sung by mezzos, Della
Jones on this disc, Sarah Connolly in
the recent ENO production. So perhaps
Durastantini had a rather low voice.
(Handel:Floridante)
My 3rd Handel
was even more curious. Handel's Tobit.
In fact a pasticcio made by John Christopher
Smith and the Revd Morrell after Handel's
death. Alas, Morrell's libretto is no
better than the ones he did for Handel,
but this time he lacked Handel's genius
by his side. So its best thought of
as a delightful concert. Morrell succeeds
in minimising or omitting the most dramatic
elements of the story and Smith seems
to have been content to go along with
these. Whereas in Theodora Handel
deliberately went against the libretto
to create a work of genius. (Handel
& Smith:Tobit:Naxos)
Performance practice
in these Handel pieces is relatively
standard; though we do not have lots
of information we do have a moderately
clear idea of the forces with which
he was working. The same cannot be said
of Bach where the controversy continues
about the exact size of performing forces.
I generally align myself to the one
to a part school but accept that we
must be able to make decisions based
on available forces. So performances
like the St. Matthew Passion by the
Cologne Chamber Orchestra are listened
to with open ears, as long as they provide
imaginative solutions to the balance
and other issues. What I can't abide
are performances which try to pretend
these works are full scale orchestral/choral
music. Do try the new re-issue of Paul
McCreesh's recording of the St. John
Passion with is Gabrieli Consort, just
one to a part recorded in a church with
an organ from Bach's time, it sounds
just right. (Bach:St.
Matthew Passion:Naxos)
Most baroque composers
used the cantata as a means of keeping
their hand in. Small scale vocal/choral
pieces were a good way to experiment
with techniques that could be used in
the bigger works. And, of course, they
were highly portable, saleable items.
Bach's sequence of church Cantatas were
his staple diet but he wrote secular
ones as well. I think that, too often,
there is a tendency for performances
of these to emulate the rather more
staid atmosphere of the church ones.
Still, a disc like the new Swiss one
gives us the opportunity to hear the
delightful name-day cantata Der Zufriedengestellte
Aeolus. London Baroque have recorded
a selection of Rameau and Campra pieces.
Whereas the Bach cantata required serious
forces and was a one-off. The Rameau
and Campra are truly portable pieces,
capable of being performed in the houses
of patrons and eminently suitable for
publication. After all, publishers only
published music that the public wanted
to buy, and by and large they wanted
to buy piece that they could perform
at home. (Bach
cantatas)
It is amazing what
we don't know about Baroque music and
performance, how much information has
been lost or simply mislaid. Buxtehude
started an influential series of evening
concerts each Advent in his church in
Lübeck. They were enormously influential
and he wrote a series of oratorios for
them. Amazingly these have not survived.
All we have is a single manuscript,
that people can't quite agree whether
it is by Buxtehude or just in his style.
The other possibility is, of course,
that what we have is a cack-handed revision
by another hand. Anyway, Ton Koopman
has chosen it to open the Vocal Works
section of the new Buxtehude Opera Omnia.
Personally I can't wait for the next
volumes. (Buxtehude
Oratorio)
Another Philips Classic
Opera set cropped up in my in tray.
The famous (infamous) Bonynge/Sutherland
Il Trovatore. Its a performance
where the winds of later operas don't
blow as strong as they usually do; this
is Verdi seen through the lens of his
predecessors. After all the first Leonora
was famous for her singing of Bellini,
Donizetti and Rossini. It would all
work well if you like Bonynge's conducting,
I'm still in 2 minds about it. By and
large I welcome performers moving out
of their standard comfort zone. With
singers especially going against your
fach can be very rewarding, providing
you take care of your voice. One of
the best Leonora's that I heard was
Rita Hunter, who brought a thrilling
power and remarkably accuracy to the
role. She was a singer who knew the
power of a firm musical line, and this
was conveyed in all her roles. Sutherland's
sense of line is, inevitably, different;
you can feel her treating the music
as if it was by an earlier composer,
adding flexibility and freedom, highlighting
some notes at the expense of others.
It is a fascinating performance. As
a bonus you get the ballet music
that Verdi wrote for the Paris performances
of the opera. Not Verdi at his strongest
I'm afraid, so not much of a bonus.
(Verdi:Il
trovatore)
Siegfried Wagner suffered
the usual problems of having a more
famous father, but having a mother like
Cosima can't have been easy. I'm not
convinced that he was destined to be
an opera composer, I can't help feeling
that he'd have done well writing orchestral
tone poems and the like. Still, getting
a better librettist would have helped.
He wrote his own for Der Kobold
and he tries just too hard. It has some
interested dark themes, but I'm sure
that his father (or Richard Strauss)
could have made more of the suggestions
of child abuse, adultery and the killing
of illegitimate children. But the composer
it really needed was Webern. Siegfried
Wagner's mix of middle period Richard
W., Marschner and Weber is not quite
what is needed. But, then again, perhaps
seeing it in performance would change
my ideas, not that there is much chance
of that.
The release of 1950s
discs from copyright means that we are
having a rash of delightful re-issues
and compilations. Alto give us some
lovely Puccini duets sung by the likes
of Victoria De Los Angeles, Jussi Bjorling,
Renata Tebaldi, Callas, Giuseppe Di
Stefano. Lovely.(Puccini
duets)
Into the more recent
century for the final batch of discs.
I've long admired the music of Judith
Bingham and she has been woefully neglected
on disc. This new Naxos disc admirably
re-cycles live recording made at the
Proms by the BBC Symphony Chorus. The
results make a fine disc, based on the
talents of the BBC Symphony Chorus but
I did wish that we might have had something
from the BBC Singers. Perhaps we could
have more music from the Proms on disc,
after all it would be a good way to
promulgate the first performances which
take place there. (Judith
Bingham choral works)
Naxos have also issued
a disc of Laurent Petigirard's music,
presumably on the back of his successful
Elephant Man opera. Petigirard has a
background in film and his scores are
always admirably written, often gorgeous
to listen to. Like the Bingham this
disc seems to re-cycle some earlier
material and add some new; one of the
tracks being recorded way back in 1992
in Ljubljana. Still the results make
a surprisingly coherent and balanced
disc. (Petitgirard:Orchestral
works)
Charles Jencks's Garden
of Cosmic Speculation is a new landscape
garden that I've longed to visit. Now
we have a disc of music by Stephen Goss
which explores the landscape in sound.
I loved it. Like Petigirard, Goss manages
to make lovely, pleasurable auditory
experiences, but Goss adds in to this
strength and rigour of construction.
Whereas with Petitgirard I simply loved
the sound world, with Goss I felt that
there was something underneath, the
steel beneath the velvet glove. (Goss:Garden
of Cosmic Speculation)
Milken's disc of Jewish
operas gives you the chance to hear
excerpts from 3 more or less contemporary
operas. Its a good way of exposing them,
even though the disc left me wanting
more. It always amazes me how much music
comes out of the USA, and how much we
never properly hear. After all, how
likely are any of these three operas
(David Schiff's Gimpel the Fool,
Elie Siegmeister's Lady of the Lake
and Hugo Weisgall's Esther)
to get a UK staging. (Naxos:Jewish
operas vol 2)
Finally a disc of choral
music by Brian Ferneyhough. Not a composer
associated with choral repertoire, the
music is challenging. But the BBC Singers
respond to the challenges in superb
fashion. This is what discs of contemporary
music should be like, stretching and
challenging us but giving us superbly
crafted performances. (Ferneyhough:Choral
Music)
Robert Hugill
