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The Divine Feminine: A Musical Meditation
on the Mystery and Spirit of Woman
John TAVERNER (b.1944)
The Last Sleep of the Virgin (excerpt) [1:17]
Robert KYR (b.1952)/Hildegard of BINGEN (1098-1179)
O eterne deus (excerpt) [0:47]
O viridissima virga [4:15]
Arvo PÄRT (b.1935)
Fratres, for eight cellos (excerpt) [1:17]
Tomás Luis de VICTORIA (1549-1611)
O magnum mysterium (excerpt) [2:22]
Alan HOVHANESS (b.1911)
Alleluia and Fugue, Op.40b (excerpt) [3:12]
Hector BERLIOZ (1803-1869)
Le Spectre de la rose, from Les Nuits d’été, Op.7
[6:23]
Ottorino RESPIGHI (1879-1936)
Siciliana, from Ancient Airs and Dances, Suite No.3
[3:29]
Anton BRUCKNER (1824-1896)
Adagio, from Symphony No.8 (excerpt) [1:37]
Gustav HOLST (1874-1934)
Venus, The Bringer of Peace, from The Planets [8:30]
Sergei PROKOFIEV (1891-1953)
Madrigal, from Romeo and Juliet, Suite No.1, Op.64A [3:20]
Hector BERLIOZ (1803-1869)
Love Scene, from Roméo et Juliette (excerpt) [4:30]
Carl ORFF (1895-1982)
In trutina, from Carmina Burana [2:13]
Ralph Vaughan WILLIAMS (1872-1958)
Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis (excerpt) [5:57]
Christopher ROUSE (b.1949)
Movement V. Ànhran, from Flute Concerto (excerpt)
[4:58]
Recording and performer details at end of review
TELARC CD80689 [55:34] |
|
How
misleading a title can be! Not long ago there appeared on
Alia Vox (AVSA 847) a CD entitled Lux Feminae, on
which Montserrat Figueras explored, with great originality,
medieval and Renaissance Spanish music which presented a
compelling image of the Feminine, of feminine strengths and
sufferings, joys and pains, of feminine spirituality, even
something of the female face of divinity. This all went to
make a beautiful CD of substance and clearly-conceived and
purposeful integrity.
The title of this new CD – ‘The Divine Feminine: A
Musical Meditation on the Mystery and Spirit of Woman’ – might
perhaps have made one hope for something similar, at any
rate something worth taking equally seriously. Unfortunately,
what we get is a CD which differs from that created by Figueras
in almost every respect. Where that was the serious expression
of a coherent and explicit idea, this is a hotch-potch of
extracts and fragments in the service not of the kind of
integrated vision which characterises the Alia Vox CD but
rather in the service of a wishy-washy lazy would-be-feminism
cum new age confusion. The aspirations of the marketing department
are not hard to discern – “Each who listens may hear a different
element in the complexity, simplicity, and mystery of how
the composer and performer visualizes Woman. For it is mystery
that is at the heart of the divine, and of both sacred and
secular feminine”. There has been a lot of fascinating, even
revelatory, writing about the ‘Feminine’ – from the pens
of psychologists and theologians, sociologists and, for that
matter, musicologists – in recent years. Waffle such as the
booklet note to this CD is a trivialisation of a profound
and important matter.
The music is trivialised too. The CD, we are told,
is “a compilation of portrayals, of meditations, of varied
representations of the ‘sacred feminine’ [which] brings us
closer to recognizing, and listening to, the voice of the
divine that exists in each of us, male or female, composer,
performer, or listener”. What this means, in practice, is
one minute seventeen seconds from Tavener’s The Last Sleep
of the Virgin - or to be more accurate two minutes thirty
four seconds, since the extract, which opens the CD, is repeated
at the end of the CD, too - and one minute thirty seven seconds
of the adagio from Bruckner’s Eighth. What it means is music
by Hildegard of Bingen arranged by Robert Kyr or an incomplete
version of Vaughan Williams’s Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas
Tallis. What it means is one track virtually segued into
the next to make a kind of seamless wash of sound. What it
means is a booklet in which nothing is said - beyond the
kind of generalised gush quoted above - about the music,
but in which the number of every CD from which an extract
has been taken is provided so, presumably, as to facilitate
ordering them should one so wish.
I feel sorry for performers of the quality of many
of those represented on this CD. Can they really have agreed
to have their work treated in this way, or is built into
their contracts? Elly Ameling singing Berlioz, Previn conducting
Vaughan Williams, Paavo Jarvi conducting Prokofiev – I have
no objection to, and some admiration for, these and others
represented on the disc. But not trivialised, chopped up
and segued.
This is sadly disappointing and wasteful of good music
and good performers. An example of the compilation album
at its worst.
Glyn Pursglove
Performance details
Taverner: I Fiamminghi, The Orchestra of Flanders/Rudolf Werthen;15-18
September, 1997, Onze Lieve Vrouw, Presentatiekerk, Ghent
Kyr/Hildegard: Tapestry; 28-31 May, 1997, Studio A, National
Music Foundation, Lenox, Massachusetts
Pärt, Hovhaness: I
Fiamminghi, The Orchestra of Flanders/Rudolf Werthen; 18-20 August,
1994, Basilica de Bonne Espérance, Vellereille-les-Brayeux, Belgium
Victoria: Robert
Shaw Festival Singers/Robert Shaw; 26-28 July, 1989, Church of
St. Peter, Gramat, France
Berlioz (Les nuits): Elly Ameling
(soprano), Atlanta Symphony Orchestra/Robert Shaw; 21 March,
1983 and 10 May, 1985, Symphony Hall, Atlanta, Georgia
Respighi: Lausanne
Chamber Orchestra/Jesús Lopez-Cobos; 29-31 May,
1991, Musica Theatre, La-Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland
Bruckner: Cincinnati
Symphony Orchestra/Jesús Lopez-Cobos; 14-15 March,
1993, Music Hall, Cincinnati, Ohio
Holst: Women of the
Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Chorus, Atlanta Symphony Orchestra/Yoel
Levi; 3-4 April, 1997, Symphony Hall,
Woodruff Arts Center, Atlanta, Georgia
Prokofiev: Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra/Paavo Järvi; 17-18 November,
2002 and
9-10 February, 2003, Music Hall, Cincinnati, Ohio
Berlioz (Romeo): Baltimore
Symphony Orchestra and Chorus/David Zinman; 5-6 October,
1987, Joseph Meyerhoff Concert Hall, Baltimore, Maryland
Orff: Judith
Blegan (soprano), Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chorus/Robert
Shaw
Vaughan Williams: Royal Philharmonic Orchestra/André Previn;
6-7 July,
1988, Walthamstow Town Hall
Rouse: Carol
Wincene (flute), Houston Symphony/Christoph Eschenbach; 24 September
and 1 October 1996, Jones
Symphony Hall, Houston, Texas
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