The present disc contains works by French composers from Rameau to Berlioz, together with arias by non-French composers who set French texts such as Sacchini (1734-1786), Piccinni (1720-1800), the Basque Arriaga, who died at 20 in 1826, and more familiar non-French composers such as Cherubini and Gluck. The arias are all highly dramatic. This disc is most recommendable. Arias by the lesser known composers, such as Sacchini and Piccinni, are just as interesting as those of the better known Gluck and Rameau. The Cherubini aria is especially fascinating for its bassoon solo and it is very gratifying to have a composition by Arriaga who seems to have been a genuine genius. Dying so young, he had hardly the time to write an opera and is represented by a cantata written when he was just 17. Veronique Gens’s performance of this music is very accomplished and satisfying. She has a voice of excellent quality and a sound technique. Her French is a joy and her combination of crisp declamation and pure legato is just what this type of music needs. Interspersed throughout the recital are orchestral excerpts from the operas from which the arias are drawn. If we must have period…

I heard Kate Royal at the Schubertiade concerts in Austria this year and was very impressed with her singing of Lieder by Schumann and Brahms. Here, she attempts a completely different program of arias from the 20th century. The most noticeable feature of the disc is the beautiful sound that emerges at all times. Kate Royal’s voice is exquisite and Edward Gardner draws ravishing sounds from his orchestra. I enjoyed most the arias by Stravinsky (The Nightingale), Carlisle Floyd (Susannah), Dvorak (Rusalka), Britten (Paul Bunyan), Lehar (The Merry Widow) and Korngold (The Dead City), although in the last named Royal does not efface memories of the great singers who have sung this in the past. Elsewhere, the arias are testimony to the inability experienced by many 20th century composers in writing attractive vocal music. For example, the aria from Britten’s The Turn of the Screw begins with a superbly atmospheric orchestral introduction, but the vocal part is not only uninteresting in itself, it also fails to convey the impact of the words and the mood of the dramatic situation. The same might be said of the extracts from the operas of Bernard Herrmann, Samuel Barber, William Walton and even Britten’s much-vaunted Peter Grimes;…

These works have the melodic fluency and musicality that are the birthright of all Czech composers. Bohuslav Martinu (1890-1959) wrote nearly 400 works including 16 operas and 11 ballets. It seems odd that, with all its excellent qualities, his music has not become more popular than it is. Perhaps the fact that he left Czechoslovakia in 1923 meant that he lost touch with his homeland and his natural audience. He continued to write Czech-style music (the second Concerto contains reminiscences of Czech Christmas music) but this lacked a ready audience in the West. Another factor may have been that the second Cello Concerto had to wait 20 years after it was written before it received its first performance and the Concertino had to wait 25 years. The first Concerto was composed in 1930 and revised in 1939 and again in 1955. It is an impressive work but gives the impression of being worked-over and tampered with too much and some of the material is rather episodic. It was dedicated to the French cellist Pierre Fournier. The second Concerto, composed in 1944/45, is altogether more impressive. The material is more homogeneous and the musical argument clearer and more logical. The Concertino…

Not being particularly attracted to modern English music, I had not heard the music of John Tavener (except for an involuntary and unrewarding exposure to The Protecting Veil). This CD has left me with no desire to hear any more. The Requiem contains sections from the Roman Catholic Requiem Mass, lines from the Koran and Sufi texts and Hindu words. It calls for cello, soprano and tenor soloists, mixed chorus and orchestra. The composer states that “the essence of this Requiem is contained in the words ‘Our glory lies when we cease to exist’.” Whatever its other values, the Requiem seems to me to be worthless as a piece of music. It has no sense of musical direction. The vocal parts are ungainly and awkward, the cello solos uninteresting and the choral writing turgid and oppressive. The final section, lasting nine minutes, sounds like something that might be written as a finale to a film depicting a fairy tale. Mahashakti, about Celestial Feminine Energy, written for solo violin, strings and tam-tam, is an exasperating work lasting 18 minutes with no musical argument and replete with sickly, cloying harmonies. Surprisingly, Eternal Memory, for cello and strings, does bear some resemblance to…

In his notes for this CD, Jaroussky states that although counter-tenors are not usually associated with French melodies, he decided to sing this music when he found it was suited to his voice. The performances on this CD justify his decision. The songs mostly date from the last quarter of the 19th century and, as the notes observe, derive their inspiration from “the warmth of the conservatory and the silken and velvet draperies of the salon”. Many songs of this type were once described by an English writer as “all atmosphere and no tune”, but Jaroussky has wisely chosen songs that do have some musical interest, even though it may sometimes be slight. Two of Saint-Saëns’s songs, ‘Tournoiement ‘Songe d’opium’’ and ‘Violons dans le soir’, evoke the very special savour of that era. After listening to the entire disc, one has the feeling of having spent an hour in a rather over-scented hothouse. The only criticism of the program is that there are sometimes too many slow-moving songs in succession. Jaroussky’s voice is agreeable and of good quality and he is a careful musician who, as he states, has deliberately eschewed exaggerating the peculiar qualities of these songs. Unlike most…

Sometimes the effect is rather bitty; the Aida love duet on the Nile stops abruptly after three minutes. The best feature of these discs, for me, is the orchestral and choral work which illustrates the improvement, probably due to the influence of the Toscanini recordings, that has taken place in the performance of Verdi’s music in the past 50 years. Also noticeable is the excellence of Richard Bongynge as a conductor of Italian opera; he stands successfully alongisde the other famous conductors represented. Pavarotti is a serious and musical artist, but there is a bleating, rasping quality to his voice above forte which may not be noticeable in the opera house (where I never heard him) but which becomes tiresome and irritating when heard in long stretches. He does not have the silvery quality of Bjorling or Bergonzi or the dusky beauty of Villazón’s voice. Of his distinguished associates, Margaret Price sounds excellent in the Ballo in Maschera excerpts, Kiri Te Kanawa exhibits too much tremolo as Desdemona, Maria Chiara is so good as Aida that one wonders why she is not better known, Monserrat Caballé, as usual, sounds far better on records than she ever did in the opera…

A noble effort but not strong enough in a highly competitive field.

Born in Argentina in 1962, he was a comparatively late starter, commencing his career as late as 1994. After initial encouragement in his homeland from Giuseppe di Stefano and Luciano Pavarotti he went to Europe where he achieved quick success in Venice, Genoa, Hamburg, London, Tokyo and Vienna. He made his New York Metropolitan debut in 1998 in La Traviata and his Covent Garden debut in 2000. He has already made six CDs for Sony. He began singing in Verdi operas in the lighter, lyrical roles like the Duke in Rigoletto and Alfredo in La Traviata (neither of which is represented on this disc). From these, he progressed to slightly heavier roles like Rodolfo in Luisa Miller and Manrico in Il trovatore. These both appear on this disc, as do two of the most powerful Verdi tenor roles which Alvarez has not yet sung on the stage, Otello and Radames in Aida. He does justice to all the roles recorded here. His voice is powerful, steady and clear, perhaps wanting in warmth, but of good quality. He is certainly alive to all the dramatic demands of these arias, so much so that listening to 14 arias in a row became…

The Elias Quartet (named after the prophet Elijah) was formed in 1998 and consists of two Frenchwomen, a Scot and a Swede. This is their first CD. It was recorded live at a concert at London’s Wigmore Hall and is put out under the Hall’s own label. Anyone wanting this particular selection of quartets can be safely guided to this disc although it is not an unqualified success. The members of the quartet state that they were somewhat daunted at being recorded live and this is noticeable in the Mozart Quartet. Here, the leader is too reticent and often fails to project the music or to take the lead. (The cellist is much better in this respect.) There are certainly better recordings of this work, notably by the Budapest Quartet. The players seem to recover their confidence in the Mendelssohn Quartet, a work about which they claim to have very positive feelings. Their performance of this beautiful work is excellent and they make a particularly ravishing sound in the lovely andante movement. Their performance is justly rewarded with vociferous applause from the audience and the players then oblige with an encore in the shape of the slow movement from Mendelssohn’s Quartet…

This is the latest in a series of excellent CDs by Australian singers I have reviewed recently in these columns, the others being by Damian Whiteley, Yvonne Kenny and Deborah Riedel. As all Australian music lovers now know, Emma Matthews has a beautiful voice and a secure technique and, like many Australian singers from Melba onwards, an instinctive feeling for the right style in any music she sings. Here, she is completely successful in all she undertakes – from Proch’s music box Variations (without obliterating memories of Miliza Korjus’s remarkable record) to songs by Leonard Bernstein and Australian composers. Like many singers, her Italian is better than her French. It was a real pleasure to hear a song by the Australian composer Calvin Bowman (b. 1972) who has what is all too rare today – a genuine melodic gift. I enjoyed particularly the long excerpt from Thomas’s Hamlet, rarely heard now. The recording itself is not completely successful. As on many CDs today, both orchestra and singer lack proper ambience; the performance seems to be taking place in some never-never land and the orchestra is frequently blatant. Emma Matthews’ voice has an occasional shrillness which I don’t recall hearing in…

I have not heard the others and perhaps should point out that there are no duets on this particular CD. The songs on this disc date mainly from Mendelssohn’s teens and twenties and are an amazing revelation of his genius. The accompanist Eugene Asti, who assembled the songs, claims in his notes that none of them had been recorded before; some of them had remained undiscovered for 150 years. Both the vocal writing and the accompaniments are reminiscent of Schubert. Remembering that Mendelssohn wrote such masterpieces as the overture to a Midsummer Night’s Dream and his Octet while still in his teens, it should come as no surprise that many of these songs are of high quality and would adorn any Lieder recital. They do not reach the same height as Schubert’s greatest songs, but many of them are equal to Schubert’s Lieder of the second rank. What is particularly interesting is the variety displayed in the composition of the songs. Mendelssohn never repeats himself and the vocal line and the accompaniments are always different and individual. All the singers are good musicians who meet the demands of the music and enunciate the texts clearly. Unfortunately, their voices are not…

Inva Mula was born in 1963 and has been a star for 15 years. She has appeared with Plácido Domingo in Paris, Munich and Brussels and has also sung at the Vienna State Opera and the Metropolitan in New York. Her most important recording so far has been of Bizet’s little-known opera Ivan IV for Naïve. Mula has an agreeable voice with sufficient power and quality throughout its compass to manage the florid passages of the ‘Jewel Song’ (except for a weak trill) and the melodic legato of ‘Le roi de Thulé’ – both from Faust. Unlike many sopranos of this type, her lower register is firm and opulent, with an attractive vibrato. Her French and Italian are both excellent. She also has a good sense of the operatic situation and the ability to project her arias with dramatic conviction. She does not, however, have sufficient vocal resources to project ‘Sempre libera’ (from La traviata) with the bravura that will bring the house down. She includes a rarely heard aria from Faust that is omitted in many performances and is joined in ‘Sempre libera’ by an off-stage tenor, Agim Hushi. The record’s only real fault is the occasional shrillness it…