Zelenka – Missa dei Filii

Tags

baroque, Classical music, Czech composer, Jan Dismas Zelenka, sacred music

Enjoying Zelly with due zeal

Having recently discovered Zelenka by some chance or other, I very quickly became enamoured!

He is sometimes referred to as `the Catholic Bach’

There is certainly a greater degree of sumptuous opulence in this music than in JSB, and indeed I had many images of gold, red velvet, richly painted icons, stained glass windows and the like fill my mind, as I listened. There is also a particularly, I can only describe it as bouncy, quality to his music – listen to that opening Kyrie, which is almost folksy.

This is music which has a certain earthiness to it, a flesh and blood quality. It never quite leaves the ground, there is some sort of pragmatic, tangible joy, rather than austerity or mysticism (both of which I also love, musically) Here, I almost expect the choir to be dancing with each other, swinging each other round, wearing elaborate traditional high-days-and-holidays costumes (listen to that Gloria!) Most unseemly behaviour in a church – but why not!

This is a delight in the divine, a joyousness. The musical runs in the Gloria made it hard to sit still. Had I heard it in a church setting I’m sure I would have been expelled for bad behaviour, as it would be necessary to skip and twirl in the aisles!

What a very happy and energetic performance of Zelly this is. Reviewer bounces off into the sunshine, skipping and leaping the Gloria!

Here is a website devoted to all things Zelenka – including also the fact most ‘supposed’ images of Zelenka are NOT of Mr Jan-far-from-Dismal at all! Zelenka site

Zelenka – Missa Dei Filii Amazon UK
Unfortunately there does not appear to be an option to hear this version on mp3 on Amazon USA though the CD exists, albeit with a different cover, though it IS the same version, reissued
Zelenka – Missa Dei Filii Amazon USA

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Cecilia Bartoli – Arie Antiche: Se tu m’ami

Tags

Arie Antiche: Se tu m'ami, baroque, Cecilia Bartoli, Classical music, Music review

Turning training exercises into high art

In many ways, this is a very simple CD, featuring Cecilia Bartoli as her voice was back in 1992 (Decca re-issued this in 2005) Arie antiche are a collection of pieces, put together at the end of the nineteenth century, which were designed to train classical singers in vocal smoothness, control, pitching, ornamentation and expressiveness, particularly in the Baroque tradition – or at least the baroque tradition filtered through late nineteenth century vision. So we have pieces by Scarlatti, Vivaldi, Giordani, Paisello – all Italian baroque. And the subtitle ‘Se tu m’ami, indicates these will be love songs, so we are right to expect tenderly seduced ears and a melting heart!

Simply arranged with only an accompanying piano, there is nowhere for the singer to hide

Bartoli 2008 Wikimedia

The CD comes with an accompanying booklet with the words of each aria in Italian and translated into English

In Bartoli’s hands (or most properly larynx pharynx et al) these are far far more than the vocal equivalent of practicing scales, they are intensely musical pieces in their own right which will reveal both the strength and the weakness of the singer.

Listen, for example to the utterly haunting Caro mio ben, by Giordani, where Bartolo’s rich but never florid mezzo caresses this love song. What lover could fail to melt, and ‘put an end to this coldness’ as the singer implores! Lotti’s Pur dicesti o bocca bella, a little song in praise of the lover’s kissable mouth is splendidly flirtatious and seductive. I could go on, pulling out track after track to enthuse over, – of the 21 tracks, about half are, in my opinion, as pieces of music, quite stunning. And all are breathed into life by Bartoli’s deliciously un-strained, flexible vocals. She strokes, not stabs, the listener’s ears
Cecilia Bartoli – Arie Antiche: Se tu m’ami Amazon UK
Cecilia Bartoli – Arie Antiche: Se tu m’ami Amazon USA

The Enchanted Isle

Tags

baroque, Danielle de Niese, David Daniels, Joyce DiDonato, Luca Pisaroni, Opera, Placido Domingo, The Enchanted Isle

Gentle viewer – watch this – or at least check your discs for faults – immediately

I was pretty shocked to see that a goodly number of the  reviews of this on Amazon were from people who found 1 or both of the DVDs were faulty. Somewhere along the route of pressing there has clearly been a major problem, and I feel very sorry for those affected. An error rate of nearly 40% is alarming and I guess will leave people reluctant to buy this, which is a shame, as the opera itself is delightful.

I was lucky enough to catch this ‘Live At The Met in HD’ showing, early in 2012, and it was one of the highlights of that season for me, so I was delighted when a fellow reviewer alerted me to the release of the DVD. And especially delighted as there was a delay between buying the DVD and settling down to watch it, that I wasn’t one of the ones who had faulty discs

And so – to the actual delight of the piece itself:

And I’m pretty well as enchanted as I was, on seeing it ‘live’ last year. It is a brilliantly showy, inventive production, using works from Handel, Vivaldi, Rameau, Purcell, and other less-well known composers, and an outrageously playful mash-up libretto from Jeremy Sams. The story combines Prospero, Miranda, Ferdinand, Caliban, Ariel and the island from The Tempest together with the four lovers from Midsummer Night’s Dream. And then some – enter a missing character – Neptune, given the imaginative buildup of a stage full of flying mermaids, the only accompaniment possible really, given the casting of Placido Domingo as Neptune

Full of wonderful comedy and oozily saccharine Broadway moments the lovers from Midsummer Night’s dream enact all the delicious comedy brought in by Ariel-as-Puck getting it wrong with who falls in love with whom, but there is also room for deep pain, transformation, betrayal, and true forgiveness. And the various musical pieces accommodate all this.

There are also lots of nods to a couple of Mozart operas – the 4 lovers of course from The Dream, recast into Cosi Fan Tutte, but more obviously, Prospero and Sycorax, Caliban’s mother, given some wonderfully showy arias, bring elements of Sarastro and Queen of The Night to mind.

Stand out, for me, is David Daniels, the countertenor voice giving Prospero a real power and strangeness, and Joyce Di Donato, as Sycorax singing her heart out, with music ranging from the firework cracking spectacle to deeply tender and intimate. Indeed, the most tear jerking aria was the quiet ‘Hearts that love will all be broken’ which Sycorax sings to her son – a painfully touching performance by Luca Pisaroni, who almost steals the scene without uttering a sound, through his piteous body language and expression.

I can’t miss noting another highlight – the ‘quartet’ (the lovers from The Dream) are not headlined, but for me a showstopping, heart-filling moment was Hermia’s aria, which opened Act 2, beautifully and intensely sung by Elizabeth DeShong. Listening to this aria I stopped breathing, transfixed by emotion

On watching the DVD I had a few slight ‘ouch’ moments which I hadn’t noticed ‘live’ – because I was so swept up in excitement – every now and again some of Danielle de Niese’s top notes are a little snatched, and the clump clump of Prospero’s boots infiltrates the music at times. And as a Brit the singing of short American ‘a’ sounds rather than long received pronunciation long ‘a’ sounds – yours to command’ rather than ‘yours to commaaand’ irritated, as the longer, more open vowel just sounds better to my ears. But these are really minor points of personal preference.

The production team of Phelim McDermott and Julian Crouch absolutely guarantee inventiveness, magic, theatricality. And they deliver. What more could anyone want? There is even a lasciviously rude goatish goblin ballet, Helena as a slightly dippy hippy botanist, and a plethora of visual delights, sumptuous costumes, extravagantly lush and inventive staging and design, beautifully acted, as well as sung,  performances – and of course, the music, the music, the music

The short extras on the second disc involve interviews with the stars, conductor, librettist, producer and designer.

I heartily recommend this – keeping fingers crossed you get the 60% discs that work, not the 40% that don’t.

Now, if only the Met would release a video of the real standout of that 2011-2012 season for me –  Glass’ Satyagraha, to replace the only recorded version available, which is a technically poor one, I would be permanently ecstatic!

The Enchanted Isle Amazon UK
The Enchanted Isle Amazon USA

Vivaldi – Stabat mater. David Daniels, Fabio Biondi, Europa Galante

Tags

baroque, Classical music, countertenor, David Daniels, Europa Galante, Fabio Biondi, Music review, sacred music, Vivaldi

I first came across the American counter-tenor David Daniels in a Live at the Met in HD showing of The Enchanted Isle, and immediately became absolutely captivated by and addicted to, this voice.

It is probably wrong (though understandable) to focus almost completely on the countertenor here, as of course we have a whole group of musicians involved in the experience, so the wonderfulness is a shared production, but the pieces do place the singer centre stage, and it is the role of the musicians to provide unobtrusive, fabulously sensitive support to the strange magic of the countertenor. And Biondi and Europa Galanti are exactly in place, providing this.

There are 3 pieces of music here, the Stabat Mater, Nisi Dominus (Psalm 26) and Longe Mala. I can’t pick apart the technicalities of the pieces, only surrender to them, and to this beautiful, strange, warm and yet ethereal, effortless and brilliantly sparkling voice, a voice seems to come from some angelic realm – not a little cherub of an angel, but an angel whose shining is too bright to look upon. Possibly I’m still carrying the image of Daniels as the almost on the edge of dark magician (Prospero) from The Enchanted Isle here, but this voice really is almost, properly, something truly magical. Surely Daniels has been possessed by some musical elemental, surrendered himself to some celestial entity of singing. No words can convey it…listen and surrender.

The penultimate track of Longe Mala particularly is so profoundly beautiful in its quiet, reflective yearning that it reaches the point where the pleasure in the passing moments is almost too much to bear.

(and other, fortunately unwritten passages, too purple and fulsome with praise to want to read, or write!) Just buy this!
Vivaldi Stabat Mater

Pergolesi – Stabat mater. Kirkby, Bowman, Hogwood, Academy of Ancient Music

Tags

Academy of Ancient Music, baroque, Christopher Hogwood, Classical music, countertenor, Emma Kirkby, James Bowman, Music review, Pergolesi, sacred music

Almost unbearable in plangent magic

What a piece of work this is. I have had this version for a while, and recently bought the David Daniels, Biondi Europa Galante version, Pergolesi Stabat Mater Salve Regina because of the glorious seduction of the Daniels/Biondi/Europa Galante team on the Vivaldi – Stabat Mater, Etc, principally because Daniels is the countertenor par excellence for me.

However, trying to compare these 2 versions this wins, despite the fact of Daniels on the other. Kirkby’s ethereal purity of voice wins out big time for me over Röschmann, but Daniels, ah Daniels takes the biscuit over Bowman, on the solo countertenor sections, though the blend of Kirkby and Bowman together, how their voices weave, is utterly beautiful. – as is the richer, fleshier blend of Daniels and Roschmann – but for me Roschmann is far too sumptuously voluptuous for this piece – not to mention Europa Galante take the music with such bounce, it is almost terpsichorean. Full of vibrancy, brio, opulence – operatic and theatrical.

To come back, however to Kirkby, Hogwood, Academy of Ancient Music and Bowman. Well, to be most particular, come back to Kirkby. In her vocal lines the spiritual, sacred nature of the piece is expressed most tenderly, most yearningly,. However flamboyant and brilliant the music itself is, in the weaving of its lines, this is ultimately NOT an operatic piece, there is a sense of loss, and grief and desolation not to mention surrender which is there. The Hogwood et al is more austere, more lachrymosa, more nakedly suffering. I believe the emotion in this version, because as listener I am pulled in to inhabit it. Yes of course the music itself does have an almost muscular spring to it, but the Hogwood reins it in, creating a tension which is appropriate, whereas Europa Galante go bouncy castle, which feels wrong as if it wrongs the nature of the piece. Unlike the Vivaldi Stabat Mater mentioned earlier the Europa Galante Pergolesi does not break and melt my heart

This Hogwood version is a piece of devotion, the Galante an artwork suggesting devotion

Pergolesi Kirkby