Vocal & Choral
CD and Other Review

Review: Tchaikovsky: The Snow Maiden (MDR Sinfonieorchester/Kristjan Järvi)

This recording of Tchaikovsky’s incidental music for Alexander Ostrovsky’s The Snow Maiden is a pure delight. Written in 1873, after the composer’s first two versions of the Romeo and Juliet fantasy overture (1869-70) and just before his first ballet, Swan Lake (1875-77), the work falls into a period when Tchaikovsky often found recourse to love stories that end badly. In Ostrovsky’s tale the immortal child of Spring and Ded Moroz – a sort of Russian Santa Claus – covets the companionship of mortals but is unable to know love. After her mother takes pity and grants her the power to love, growing fond of a shepherd, the emotion warms not only her heart but her entire being, to the point at which she melts. Estonian mezzo-soprano Annely Peebo sings the ill-fated maiden, her mellifluous tone and warm vibrato a pleasure to listen to – try any of Lehl’s Songs; they’re all superb (the principal clarinettist here and in the first two Entr’Actes deserves special mention for sympathetic phrasings and solo work). As her shepherd, Vsevolod Grinov’s tenor is powerful and clarion with a nice weight at the bottom and a ringing top that comes across well in Brusilla’s Song. Kristjan Järvi conducts the exceptional MDR… Continue reading Get…

May 16, 2016
Vocal & Choral
CD and Other Review

Review: Autograph (Ian Bostridge)

Autograph is a career-spanning seven-disc set personally selected by English tenor Ian Bostridge in celebration of his 50th birthday. Organised thematically, discs 1 and 2 cover the Lieder for which Bostridge is justly famous – Wolf, Schumann and Schubert, including Winterreise in its entirety. Discs 3 and 4 are devoted to early music, with a lengthy selection of excerpts from Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo, and including briefer coverage of Dido and Aeneas, Mozart’s Idomeneo and Die Entführung aus dem Serail, plus a sprinkling of Handel. Then it’s on to substantial excerpts from Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia, Billy Budd, and The Turn of the Screw, before returning to two complete Lieder cycles. In an usual pairing, Schumann’s Dichterliebe and Janácˇek’s The Diary of One Who Disappeared are bracketed together under ‘Allegories of Love,’ the rationale for which you can hear Bostridge discuss on the final disc, a lengthy (80 minutes!) interview. It’s extraordinary for a singer to have such command of the differing vocal demands of repertoire covering four centuries, and if your early music preferences are with period performances, Bostridge’s readings may not quite be for you. He is especially good with Britten, and, not surprisingly, at his transcendental best with the…

May 13, 2016