Leoš JANÁČEK (1854-1928)
From the House of the Dead (De la maison des morts) - Opera in three Acts (1930) [99:09]
Sinfonietta, JW VI/18 (1926) [28:31]
Libretto by the composer, after Dostoevsky.
Sung in French.
Šiškov - Lucien Lovano (baritone); Skuratov - Roger Barnier (tenor); Filka Morozov/ Luka Kusmitch – Jean Giraudeau (tenor); Prison Commandant – Doda Conrad (baritone); Alexandr Petrovič/Gorjančikov - Bernard Demigny (baritone); Aljeja – Gérard Friedmann (tenor); Don Juan/Tchekunov – Xavier Depraz (bass); Garde/Chapkine/Tcherevin/Sganarele – Michel Hamel (tenor); Le Petit Forcat/Le Forgeron – André Vessičres (baritone); Grand Forcat – Joseph Peyron (tenor)
Men’s Chorus and Orchestra of the Radiodiffusion Télévision Française
Vienna Symphony Orchestra (Sinfonietta)/Jascha Horenstein
rec. 14 May, 1953 (From the House of the Dead), 2-16 September, 1955 (Sinfonietta)
PRISTINE CLASSICAL PACO173 [57:55 + 69:08]
Leoš Janáček’s posthumously staged opera is the subject of this
latest operatic offering from Pristine Classical. When Janáček died in 1928 he had not finished the final editing on the score for this dark but strangely affecting opera. In order to get it ready for the first production in 1930 various hands assisted in the completion of the task. Unfortunately for the opera, they were considerably more revisionist in their outlook on the work, making additions and cuts to the score as well as altering Janáček’s finely crafted orchestration. They did this from a misguided attempt to make the work more appealing to a public who were living through the dark days of the economic collapse of the early 1930s. Their most regrettable choice was to foist a rather incongruous optimistic ending to the opera instead of Janáček’s original darker ending, which stayed closer to the Dostoyevsky novel that inspired the work. The opera received its premiere in Brno in 1930 and made its way to Dusseldorf in 1931 for the German premiere in a series of performances conducted by Jascha Horenstein. The current release offered by Pristine was the occasion of the French premiere performance which was a concert organized by the forces of the French radio, and was conducted by Horenstein before a specially-invited audience in 1953. At that time the work was sung in a new French translation. This particular broadcast has been made available on CD before but those editions have long ago disappeared and currently Pristine’s release is the only way to encounter From the House of the Dead as the world first came to know the work. Conductor Rafael Kubelik took a turn at revising the performing material to bring things more in line with what Janáček intended, but the original was the version that predominated in performance until the late 1970s, when music scholar John Tyrell and Charles Mackerras set to work on creating a definitive performing version which would be close to what Janáček wrote. This version finally resulted in the publication of a critical edition of the score in 2017.
Hearing the older version today after so many years of living with the Tyrell/Mackerras revisions, one is immediately struck by how much the opera sounds more akin to the late romantic leftovers in the style of Siegfried Wagner then we would encounter in performance today. There is a strange lushness to the sound of the orchestra that mutes some of the brilliance of Janáček that we have rightly become accustomed to. I don’t suppose that non-French speaking listeners would actively choose to hear the opera sung in French, but surprisingly the opera’s lines actually translate quite well in French, and the sound of the voices enunciating the words does not seem to dull the effect as one might have anticipated. Pristine has obtained a fantastically clear source recording of the broadcast from the archives of Misha Horenstein, who
is the cousin of the conductor. The voices, and especially the orchestra, have an analytical transparency that even at times actually exceeds Decca’s great Mackerras version from Vienna. I have rarely heard an old French radio recording with such clarity as is evinced here. One can literally be inside the orchestra to observe every tiny, albeit inauthentic detail. The cast of singers was typical of the plethora of French opera broadcasts of those days. Many of the names here are familiar to those who have heard the numerous operetta recordings that derive from the archives of the French radio. Singers with instantly identifiable timbres, such as Jean Giraudeau as a most affecting Kusmitch/Morosov and Lucian Lovano as Šiškov, show that their distinctive styles translate well to a more dramatic and musically full bodied work like a Janáček opera. The cast is weighted on the side of tenors, with even the soprano role of the young Aljeja sung by an appealingly lyrical Gérard Friedmann, who would later appear in small roles on many major commercial opera recordings in the stereo years, such as Daniel Barenboim’s version of Samson et Dalila. It is a tribute to the French Radio engineers and those of Pristine Classical that a cast involving so many tenors could have each one sound so individually distinctive that one cannot possibly mistake one for another. The French Radio Chorus of men contribute their quite beautiful wordless interjections to the proceedings admirably, which adds greatly to the atmosphere. Above all is the superlative orchestra guided by Horenstein's passionate commitment to Janáček. When Horenstein was young he was acquainted with Janáček personally; he would evolve to become a dedicated promoter of Janáček’s music and was the first to conduct the popular Sinfonietta in its Viennese premiere in 1928. His fine 1955 recording on Vox of that work with the same orchestra that he conducted at the Vienna premiere is generously included to fill up Disc Two. Pristine has, of course, added its very welcome XR ambient stereo processing to what was a very fine copy of the source material. What they have achieved is to bring a sense of atmosphere about this occasion to the listener. They have happily included the applause and the announcer’s closing comments to add to that sense of occasion. While it is highly unlikely that any recording will ever come along to knock the Mackerras from its supreme position among recordings of a Janáček opera, this new Pristine release is something that all Janacek admirers should also hear. Horenstein’s magnificent conducting and a truly fine cast bring it all vividly to life and hearing it serves to give context and remind one of just what an astounding achievement the Decca Mackerras recording was, and continues to be.
Mike Parr
