This 2012 production was the centrepiece of Cecilia Bartoli’s first season as Artistic Director of the Salzburg Whitsun Festival. It’s a pleasure to note that Andreas Scholl has retained almost all his tonal beauty over 20 years now. Costumed as a European Union bureaucrat, his towering physical presence and wonderful sound befits the stature of the role. Christophe Dumaux exudes danger and menace as Tolomeo. His nemesis, Sesto, usually comes across as a dithering ninny but Philippe Jaroussky takes hold of the role, his youthful look suggesting a boy out of his depth in a pool of circling sharks. Anne Sophie von Otter has gravitas as aging beauty Cornelia, singing with such artistry as to conceal any marks of time. Bartoli’s Cleopatra is a knockout; a big, blousy Elizabeth Taylor portrayal sung with flamboyance in triumph and tenderness in defeat. The big tragic arias are heart-rending showstoppers, the artist spinning endless strands of silken tone. In contrast there’s Bartoli in frizzy blonde wig astride a missile. Once seen it’s difficult to unsee. And there’s the rub – wonderful musical performance in an ugly mess of a production. I counted off the directorial clichés; No 7 – dancers in army fatigues,…

The huge repertoire of English opera from the Victorian and Edwardian eras has virtually vanished from public view, but not from the public ear, thanks to top recordings such as this one. Michael Balfe, the composer of Satanella, was prolific, writing some 30 operas for both British and European opera houses. However, his most famous piece, The Bohemian Girl, hasn’t been seen on its feet for decades. Satanella opened at Covent Garden in 1862 and held the stage for 60 years, including a visit to Sydney in 1962. It is a sturdy work, a mix of opera, operetta and ballad opera. I wish I could be more enthusiastic about the music as it is very professionally written with a reasonable balance between arias, choruses and ensembles. However it lacks true inspiration and there is little that grabs the ear. To put it crudely, it has no memorable tunes, and as with fellow works in the genre, makes us realise how brilliant Gilbert and Sullivan were and why they are the great survivors from that period. Bonynge has edited the work and the recording is happily without dialogue, always a weakness in this repertoire. As it is unlikely that any of…

Curious fact: at one time Leoncavallo’s Zazà outstripped Pagliacci for popularity.

Sometimes strong performances aren’t enough to throw a work’s greatness into sharper relief. What’s needed are violent contrasts. Which is what we get with these electrifying new interpretations of two Russian string quintets that deserve to be better known. Not that Sergei Taneyev’s first of two String Quintets and Alexander Glazunov’s only String Quintet haven’t been recorded before. But to hear to the Gringolts Quartet and second cellist Christian Poltéra shift from the dense intellectual rigor of the Taneyev to the lightness and charm of the Glazunov with such conviction is something else again. Taneyev was a Renaissance man, as interested in science and philosophy as he was in music while Glazunov was part of the famed Mitrofan Belyayev circle, who benefited from the timber magnate’s fortune and love of chamber music. While his music too can sound academic at times, his compositional fluency from a young age ensured an effortlessness that perhaps eluded Taneyev. Although as Andrew Huth writes in his booklet note, “The heavy burden of theory and reflection that Taneyev brought to the process of composing fades away when actual performance brings the music to life.” That’s certainly the case here. A stormy Allegro con spirito gives……

I have been aware of Belgian soprano Sophie Karthäuser’s fine work in early repertoire for some years now but somehow missed her first release on Harmonia Mundi of Poulenc, which Andrew Aronowicz praised in these pages back in 2014; on hearing this latest delight I shall eagerly hunt out the former. Wolf has a reputation as a tough nut to crack for most listeners; his melodic style is a world away from Schubert, with wild, chromatic harmonies of Wagnerian sensuality, although naive simplicity sometimes pops up unexpectedly and he mostly avoided repetitive strophic form so that each setting is a miniature dramatic scene. His accompaniments, often carrying a bold subtext, can sometimes seem more inspired than the vocal line with evocative scene-painting and extended epilogues. In the wrong hands those accompaniments can sometimes turn turgid (like Schumann on acid) but no concerns here; Eugene Asti’s work is breathtakingly beautiful, perfectly graded and balanced – the recording is stunningly clear and present, every pellucid touch audible. As for the singing – I was bowled over. While expecting the clarity and tonal beauty of such a fine Mozart exponent I was surprised by the dramatic range on offer. The… Continue reading Get…

Argentinian composer Alberto Ginastera’s music is neatly divided into three styles: nationalist folk (or Gaucho); ‘subjective’ nationalism influenced by Stravinsky, and Neoexpressionism, which is infused with Serialism. His vocal pieces reflect those phases. Uruguayan Gisèle Ben-Dor conducts the Santa Barbara Symphony with superb vocalists. Ginastera’s five popular Agentinian songs are here sung delightfully by Puerto Rican soprano Ana Marìa Martìnez. They have a touch of Cantaloube’s Songs of the Auvergne about them, especially the much-loved lullaby Arroro which Ben-Dor, like most South American mothers, sang to her children. Argentinian diva Virginia Tola features in the other two works on this disc. She’s alongside Plácido Domingo for two excerpts from Ginastera’s opera Don Rodrigo. Domingo reprises his role from his 1960s hit at New York City Opera, which was overseen by the composer. Challenging for both singer and listener, Domingo’s radiance and energy here seem undimmed by age. Listen out for The Miracle scene when all the bells of Spain ring out unaided by human intervention in a serialism-meets-Mussorgsky showstopper. Tola makes superb work of the cantata Milena, based on Franz Kafka’s letters to his lover. This is an interesting tribute to the composer, beautifully produced and vibrantly performed by… Continue reading…

The name of Henry du Mont has rested in the shadow cast by those giants of the French Baroque, Lully and Rameau, yet this ‘foreign’ composer (born near Liège in 1610) rose to the heights, directing Louis XIV’s chapel from 1663 to 1683. Inspired by the Italian-style encountered in his Flemish upbringing, du Mont wrote numerous petits motets for two or three voices with instrumental parts and was one of the first to introduce basso continuo into French music. His other great contribution was to develop the grand motet, which pitted a petit choeur of soloists against a grand choeur and interleaved instrumental episodes in which many of the king’s famous string players featured. Sébastien Daucé and Ensemble Correspondances give polished and empathetic performances of both forms of motets. Smaller works such as the heartfelt Sub Ombra Noctis Profundae allow solo voices, like that of bass, Nicolas Brooymans to display emotional range while larger works, in particular O Mysterium and Super Flumina Babylonis, brilliantly evoke the splendour of Louis’ court with voluptuous textures and elegant turns of musical phrase. Daucé’s forces communicate with energy, passion and precision. Engineering and presentation are of Harmonia Mundi’s usual high standard. Continue reading Get unlimited…

Every cloud, they say, has a silver lining. In the dark days of World War II, Cambridge was a bleak place; emptied of students and the famous windows of King’s College Chapel put in storage. Attempts were made to keep up appearances. Services in college chapels were more or less maintained, despite a dearth of adult male singers and college organists being called up. A middle-aged Herbert Howells was called upon to deputise at St. John’s College. Having weathered the death of his young son from meningitis and finding his style of music increasingly unfashionable, Howells found solace in university life. Amongst the supportive colleagues he found at Cambridge was the Dean of King’s, Eric Milner-White. He suggested that Howells should write some settings of the canticles for the college chapel. Taking up the challenge reinvigorated Howells’s composing career and gave Anglicans some of their most beloved 20th-century music. Howells eventually completed his music for King’s, setting all three choral services: Matins, Holy Communion and Evensong under the college’s Latin name. One of the many advantages of this new recording is having all three services on the one disc. The evening canticles have been recorded countless times, but the other…

This box set truly is a must have set for all 20th-century music fans.

In my youth, a popular party piece was to haul out a recording made by New York socialite Florence Foster Jenkins and all fall about laughing as we listened to her murder The Queen of the Night. It was so innocently bad. It took great skill, imagination and sympathy to bring her story to the screen, for where is the modern audience for a truly bad opera singer from the 1940s? Enter director Stephen Frears. He has produced a remarkable film, drawing on the brilliance of Meryl Streep as Jenkins, Hugh Grant as her husband (one of his best performances) and a wry, comic turn from Simon Helberg (of Big Bang fame) as Madam’s hapless pianist. The film is beautifully written and produced, an absolute delight. Frears makes it convincing, including showing how Jenkin’s devoted husband shielded her from the truth of her foolishness. Meryl Streep sings all the Jenkins extracts, and it is a tribute to her taste and skill that she doesn’t make it sound like a poor take-off as she reproduces Jenkins’ famously bad singing. It’s a star turn, especially as it takes great skill to sing badly, convincingly. Alexandre Desplat provides a small amount… Continue reading…

Yehudi Menuhin (1916-1999) was the most widely known violinist of the 20th century. A child prodigy, he recorded the Elgar Concerto at the age of 16 with Elgar conducting. His recording career spanned seven decades. The earliest discs were made for American Columbia in 1928, but from 1929 until 1998 he recorded for EMI. It is from his EMI catalogue that these 80 CDs are drawn (they are available separately, or in one box with a set of DVDs). Amazingly, these are not Menuhin’s complete recordings: his late conducting work and some duplications (such as Lalo’s Symphonie Espagnol) are missing. The landmark recordings are here: the 1932 Elgar; the complete Beethoven Sonatas with the distinguished pianist Louis Kentner; Beethoven, Brahms, Mendelssohn and Bartók concertos under Furtwängler, and earlier sessions with his mentor, the Romanian composer Georges Enescu. The young Yehudi’s sheer panache and extraordinary musical instincts are a revelation: hear him delighting in his skill in the Virtuoso collection, in pieces by Sarasate and Fritz Kreisler recorded in the late ‘30s. In mid-career, Menuhin’s technique faltered; problems with his bowing arm plagued him from then on. You can hear it in his live performance of the Britten… Continue reading Get…

Baptised for the castle in Scotland’s capital, the Dunedin Consort’s reputation for Bach persists on this disc of concertos with Cecilia Bernardini, their regular leader, stepping up to the plate. The Concerto for Violin and Oboe in C Minor is famous for sustained lyricism in the second movement. Bernadini clutches mischievously at the apex of phrases in this and the Violin Concerto in E, interacting energetically with her collaborators, in this case oboist (and dad) Alfredo Bernardini. The older Bernadini offers a galaxy of dynamic detail in just the first note of the languid Sinfonia that opens the cantata Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis. The glittering finale of the Violin Concerto in A Minor is one of Bach’s most cheerful movements in a minor key. Bernardini weaves in and out of accompanying layers to sublime effect. This work (and the programme in general) exudes more the impression of chamber music than of soloistic fireworks.For the Concerto for Two Violins in D Minor Bernadini is joined by Huw Daniel. The two violins dart in and out of the aural foreground and beautifully-judged swells on long notes is evenly-matched in intensity between the two soloists. The Grammy-nominated Dunedin Consort under founder and Bach specialist John Butt…