In a very crowded field, a recording of this Mendelssohnian tour
de force has to be special to head the list. I don’t think
this Naxos issue is the one to rise to the top but it has a unique
advantage in that it gives us more of the play than any other
recording; not just mere excerpts but all the melodramas - the
musical accompaniments which punctuate the spoken verse. At 77
minutes, it is the most complete version available.
It is this inclusion which constitutes the disc’s greatest
strength but which also admits of some weaknesses. An assembly
of young British actors, directed by David Timson (who also very
ably plays both Bottom and Theseus), provides variety and characterisation
rather than relying upon the talents of one Big Name actor. Unfortunately,
I came to listen to them just after having heard the solo contribution
of Dame Judi Dench in the Ozawa/DG account. There might be only
one of her, but she contains multitudes, and the warmth and versatility
of her interpretations of all the characters overshadow the efforts
of the youthful Naxos actors. Certain aspects of their performance
are very attractive, but some members of their company needed
a more acute supervisory ear to guide them in their delivery of
Shakespeare’s text. Sometimes their diction is flawed; the
odd Estuary vowel (“ee-ow” in “flower”,
“wahld” for “wild”) creeps in, and their
ability to inflect the verse with nuance and subtlety has its
limitations, especially when it comes to the proper treatment
of enjambment: there is too much end-stopping, which can create
a choppy effect. First impressions are compromised by the fact
that the actors who open proceedings as Puck and a Fairy think
that the way to suggest “faeriness” is to affect a
constricted, nasal tone that is almost immediately grating. It
is a form of emphasis that singers sometimes affect and is vocal
production of the kind my old voice teacher used to call “on
the grab.” Matters pick up after that: Emily Raymond is
a gracious, sensuous Titania, even if she does mispronounce “reremice”
(an archaic word for “bats”) as “rarer-mice”
instead of the correct “rearmice”. Tom Mison makes
a competent job of Oberon but “I know a bank where the wild
thyme blows” goes for nothing. The Mechanicals are a jolly
bunch and as I mentioned above, David Timson shows his skill and
versatility by playing two totally different characters very convincingly.
If you want to get a much fuller experience of the music integrated
into the play as literature as the composer intended rather than
just listen to bleeding chunks, this disc fits the bill.
In his biography of the composer, Heinrich Eduard Jacob says that
Mendelssohn scribbled the evocative rising sequence of four chords
which open the overture after hearing an evening breeze rustle
the leaves in the garden of the family's home. The scurrying staccato
strings which answer need to be as gossamer-light as fairies'
wings.
The New Zealand Symphony Orchestra play well enough under James
Judd, but they are no match for the sheer, silky beauty of the
Boston Symphony Orchestra with Ozawa. There is no real sense of
the “otherworldly” in the overture here - though to
be fair even the Boston Symphony Orchestra for Ozawa does not
achieve the ethereal delicacy of John Nelson with the Ensemble
Orchestral de Paris on a rival Virgin Classics version; their
fairy feet really scamper pianissimo. On several occasions the
New Zealand strings make a slightly creaky start, wavering particularly
at the opening of the Melodrama on Band 6 and the Nocturne. Horns
and flutes, however, are especially fine, and they are so important
in this music to evoke the mystery of the magic wood.
The two local sopranos here are utterly outclassed by the shimmering
purity of Kathleen Battle's fluting soprano paired with the slightly
warmer and equally lovely mezzo of Frederica von Stade in their
"Spotted Snakes" song. Nor do they match well; Jenny Wollerman
employs ripe vibrato while her partner, Pepe Becker, has a much
more boyish sound with an incipient tremolo; they do not really
integrate and the effect is incongruous.
Both this Naxos and the Virgin recordings give us a lot more text
delivered by a small company of actors and thus offers a slightly
more complete theatrical experience, but despite the fact that
Nelson gives us the best Overture and Judd the most complete performance,
neither is quite as satisfying, musically speaking, as the superbly
recorded 1992 version on DG by Ozawa, which still leads the field.
If you want the songs in German, Claus Peter Flor’s account
with Lucia Popp singing very prettily is a good option, but the
translation is, unsurprisingly, not as magical as the original
Shakespearian English, and Flor is rather sedate and measured
in the Previn manner; I prefer a more vivacious and mercurial
touch such Ozawa and Nelson provide. However, Judd and his New
Zealanders perform the Big Tune numbers with wit, warmth and brio;
the Wedding March is ebullient, the donkey’s braying in
the Bergomasque suitably raucous, the timpani in the Fairies’
March charmingly piquant.
One oddity: the production of this disc extended over seven years:
the orchestral music was recorded in Wellington Town Hall as long
ago as 2003, the vocal items were made in 2007 at the same venue,
then it was not before 2009 that the spoken contributions were
recorded in England - and now the disc has finally appeared. At
least the interval between the inception and issue of this disc
was not as drawn out as that between the seventeen-year-old Mendelssohn’s
composition of the overture and his addition of the fourteen incidental
numbers sixteen years later in 1842. As has often been remarked,
the manner in which he picked up the themes and threads is extraordinarily
felicitous. This was obviously a sustained, long-term enterprise
by Naxos and as super-bargain issues go, it is very good, but
I see little reason to prefer it when the market abounds in bargain
versions of even better musical quality - unless you specifically
want the completeness and authenticity of a performance as Mendelssohn
conceived of it - but for that the Virgin Classics issue is superior.
Ralph Moore
Track listing
1. Overture [12:36]
2. Act I: Scherzo [4:24]
3. Act II Scene 1: How now, spirit! [2:22]
4. Act II Scene 1: Fairies' March - Ill met by moonlight [4:19]
5. Act II Scene 2: Come, now a roundel and a fairy song - Song
with Chorus: Ye spotted snakes * † [4:09]
6. Act II Scene 2: What thou seest, when thou dost wake [1:38]
7. Act II: Intermezzo [3:34]
8. Act III Scene 1: Come, sit down, every mother's son [6:57]
9. Act III Scene 2: I wonder if Titania be awaked [7:04]
10. Act III: Nocturne [6:03]
11. Act IV Scene 1: Her dotage now I do begin to pity…
[5:00]
12. Act IV Scene 1: Wedding March [4:44]
13. Act V Scene 1: So please your grace, the Prologue is address'd
[2:53]
14. Act V Scene 1: Funeral March: How chance Moonshine is gone
[1:35]
15. Act V Scene 1: A Dance of Clowns: The iron tongue of midnight
hath told twelve [3:41]
16. Act V Scene 1: Through the house give glimmering light [0:29]
17. Act V Scene 1: Song: Through this house give glimmering
light*
Now until the break of day… [5:11]
The following
comments have been submitted by David Timson
The speaking of Shakespeare is a mine-field, there are so many
theories and practices that in the end which school you subscribe
to, can only be matter of personal taste. Peter Hall for instance
believes that the lines should be end-stopped to preserve the
metre, this can at times disrupt the sense in my opinion, and
modern performance of Shakespeare as taught largely in drama
schools is for length of line to preserve the sense
(sometimes extended over 3 ½ lines by Shakespeare) rather than
slavishly follow the metre (the iambic pentameter). Shakespeare
himself breaks his own rules continuously in this respect and
instead of keeping a regular beat of 5 stressed syllables per
line will add a sixth or break the line after 2 beats to indicate
a significant pause required for the emotional journey of the
character – and this is the point, Shakespeare is writing a
dramatic play with characters not a sequence of poetry. Of course,
an actor must do the poetic construction justice but Shakespeare
(in my opinion) was a dramatist first and a poet second. Therefore
I thought it essential that in the recording we gave a sense
of the play and not poetic chunks. Criticism of characterisation
etc. again is a matter of taste, but the actors were chosen
for their ability to vocally characterise, so that a sense of
the play was maintained in the extracts that were backed by
Mendelssohn’s melodramas. I think the words and music should
complement each other here, not compete, though it was necessary
sometimes to serve Mendelssohn’s music at the expense of the
flow of the verse, his cues sometimes timing differently, no
doubt because he was originally using the German text. I say
‘serve M’s music’ because I was aware that this was a disc produced
primarily for the music-lover perhaps rather than the theatre-goer.
Comparisons are odious, but with regard to the recording made by Ozawa, with Judi Dench. Judi Dench is of course excellent, but it is obvious that she has been directed to read the excerpts (heavily cut) as poetry. There is little attempt at characterisation, which might over-shadow the poetry, (a touch of rustic for the mechanicals, whose text is mainly cut out of the recording), and the pieces are read without any sense of their context in the play. This style of presentation means that despite having the leading British actress of her generation on the disc, she doesn’t upstage the music. We chose the opposite approach of giving listeners the opportunity to hear the play and Mendelssohn’s response to it as an integrated experience.
Jenny Wollerman* (soprano) Pepe Becker † (soprano) 
