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Fritz Wunderlich – A Poet Among Tenors.

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As well as for DG, Wunderlich recorded extensively for EMI and this 6 disc set, now on Warner, has very little overlap with the DG set I reviewed earlier. Indeed it is amazing how much Wunderlich recorded in his relatively short career. Most of these EMI recordings were all made in the years 1959 to 1962. The exceptions are the excerpts from Klemperer’s Das Lied von der Erde, which was recorded in 1964. Some have doubted Wunderlich’s ability to ride the Mahlerian orchestra, suggesting that he might have had some studio assistance. Well we now have two live recordings of the work (under Krips and Keilberth, both with Fischer-Dieskau singing the lower songs) to refute that. Whether large or not, the voice had a fine ring to it and its heady beauty remained unimpaired whether at piano or forte. I think there is a discernible increase in its carrying power between 1959 and 1964, and I have no doubt he would have gone on to sing certain Wagner roles – Lohengrin and Walter von Stolzing at least.

So what do we have here? Well disc 1 starts of somewhat surprisingly with early German fifteenth century songs, then progresses through Bach, Handel (a sublime Ombra mai fu), Mozart arias from Die Entführung aus dem Serail and Die Zauberflöte (Dies Bildnis ist bezaubernd schön slightly more diffident here than it is on the later Böhm recording), and excerpts from Lortzing’s Zar und Zimmermann and Der Wildschütz which rather outstayed their welcome for me. It finishes with excerpts from Nicolai’s Die lustigen Weiber von Windsor, including his glorious version of Horch, die Lerche singt im Hain.

Discs 2 and 3 are mostly operetta, with the addition of ecerpts from Flotow’s Martha and Cornelius’s Der Barbier von Bagdad. Wunderlich’s infectious joy in the act of singing made him ideal for operetta and though there is admittedly rather a lot of it here, he makes no concessions to the music; like Schwarzkopf and Gedda, he can make the music sound much better than it is.

However, for me the jewels of the set, with a couple of exceptions noted above, are all to be found on discs 4 and 5. Though all sung in German, we get some ideal performances of excerpts from Italian, French, Czech and Russian opera. Disc 4 starts with the Act I duet for Donna Anna and Don Ottavio (with Elisabeth Grümmer no less), in which he is both aristocratic and ardent, with a touch of the heroic often missing from singers of Don Ottavio. Wunderlich’s Mozartian credentials are further strengthened by the inclusion of both Don Ottavio’s arias and Ferando’s Un aura amorosa from Cosí fan tutte. Nemorino, the Duke and Alfredo’s arias are all treated to his golden tone and winning manner, his liquid legato hardly impeded by the fact that he is singing in German rather than Italian. There are more extended excerpts from La Bohème and Madama Butterfly, in which he is an ardent Rodolfo and Pinkerton (a glorious top C in Che gelida manina), whilst disc 5 gives us some lovely excerpts from French operas (Boieldieu’s La Dame Blanche, Thomas’s Mignon and Massenet’s Manon and wonderful Smetana (The Bartered Bride), though he is hampered here by the gusty singing of Melita Muszely, who sounds rather like Marianne Schech in Konwitschny’s Der fliegende Holländer. This is not a compliment. Best of all perhaps is his plaintive singing of Lensky’s Kuda, kuda, but he is also superb as Hermann in The Queen of Spades.

The last disc concenrates on Lieder; Schubert, Wolf, some glorious Strauss which might just have reconciled the composer to the sound of the tenor voice, and of course his headily free singing of the tenor songs from Das Lied von der Erde. That said, though there is always pleasure in the voice itself, these 1962 performances of Lieder are a little penny plain. He hasn’t yet learnt the Lieder sigers art of colouring the voice to the text. The disc finishes off with a song cycle by his friend Fritz Neumeyer, which unfortunately rather outstays its welcome. No matter, these are wonderful reminders of a gorgeous tenor voice that shot through the operatic firmament only to be silenced too soon.

It remains to be said that the orchestral contrubutions are fine and it is good to also encounter the voices of Aneliese Rothenberger, Lisa Otto, Pilar Lorengar, Rudolf Schock, Hermann Prey and Gottlob Frick in some of the duets and emsembles.

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Dame Janet Baker sings Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert

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Essential listening, I’d venture to suggest, even for those who already have the Philips Originals box set I reviewed here. Here we have the whole of Baker’s 1977 Beethoven and Schubert recital, of which three items appear on the Philips box, coupled to the Mozart items from her 1974 Mozart and Haydn recital, none of which do.

The prize of this CD is Dame Janet’s superb rendering of Sesto’s arias from La Clemenza di Tito. Not only is it a technical tour de force, the rapid triplet figures at the end of Parto, parto tossed off with breathtaking ease, but the range of expression is extraordinary and personal. I have never heard another singer differentiate so much between the repeated cries of Guardami!; in the first she pleads almost angrily, but in the second her tone changes completely, becoming meltingly beseeching, as if Sesto realises he has gone too far. Furthermore she has the ability to get to the emotional core of the music without ever disrupting its Classical style. Pure genius.

Elsewhere she is in enviable form in a programme that ranges wide, including rarities like Beethoven’s No, non turbati and arias from Schubert’s Lazarus and Alfonso und Estrella. Leppard’s accompaniments, whether conducting the English Chamber Orchestra or on the piano or harpsichord are discreet rather than revelatory, perhaps happy, with such a patrician artist, to let his soloist take the lead.

The recordings, originally made for Philips in quadrophonic sound, are here issued in SACD, though I was listening in simple stereo. They are wonderfully clear and lucid.

Highly recommended.

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Valerie Masterson – Song Recital

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  1. Arne – O ravishing delight
  2. Arne – Under the greenwood tree
  3. Arne – The soldier tir’d
  4. Handel – Nel dolce del’oblio
  5. Bishop – Lo! Here the gentle lark
  6. Gounod – Le premier jour de mai
  7. Gounod – L’absent
  8. Gounod – Sérénade
  9. Bizet – Vieille chanson
  10. Bizet – Pastel
  11. Bizet – Tarantelle
  12. 12 – Satie – La diva de l’empire

The English soprano Valerie Masterson was a mainstay of my early opera going life and I saw her on stage quite a few times. A light lyric soprano with great flexibility and an immediately recognisable voice, she was also much admired in France, having made her French debut in Toulouse in the role of Manon. The following year she created quite a stir at the Aix-en-Provence Festival singing the role of Matilde in Rossini’s Elisabetta, Regina d’Inghilterra opposite Montserrat Caballé. She was an arrestingly beautiful woman with a charming stage presence and I well remember her Semele at Covent Garden which was both vocally and visually stunning. Unfortunately I didn’t get to see her ravishing Cleopatra in ENO’s production of Handel’s Julius Caesar (sung of course in English) with Janet Baker, but at least it was filmed. I did however see her as Manon, Juliette, Margeurite, the Governess in Britten’s Turn of the Screw and as the Marschallin, a role she took into her repertoire quite late in her career, having had enormous success as Sophie when she was younger.

Recorded in 1986 when Masterson was approaching 50, this recital probably catches her just past her best. There is just the suspicion that the lovely voice is thinning out, a trace of a slight taint on its silvery purity. Nevertheless the recital is something of a treasure, especially considering Masterson was so little recorded.

With piano accompaniment provided by Roger Vignoles, it splits neatly into two halves, the first being of music from the baroque era (Arne, Handel and Thomas Bishop), where she is joined by Richard Adeney on the flute, and the second of songs by Gounod, Bizet and Satie. The baroque items display her neat and deft coloratura as well as her ability to shape the long line. When she sings O ravishing delight in Arne’s song, the words mirror exactly the sounds coming from the speakers. It is good also to have the Handel cantata, reminding us of her many successes in his works.

The French items are all fairly light. They are a sung with elegance and style but a little more variety in the material might have been welcome here. She finishes with a delightful performance of Satie’s La Diva de l’Empire which captures a coquettish smile in the voice.

A lovely reminder of a lovely singer.

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Karita Mattila – German Romantic Arias

 

 

The programme is an interesting one, though including Beethoven in a recital called German Romantic Arias might be thought to be stretching the definition a bit, and it’s good to see some rarer items are included amongst the well-known. Accompaniments are in the safe hands of the Staatskapelle Dresden under Sir Colin Davis and Mattilla might be considered to be at her mid-career peak when the disc was recorded in 2001, eighteen years after she was the first winner of the Cardiff Singer of the World at the age of 23.

Unfortunately the recital doesn’t really satisfy. I enjoyed most the scene from Euryanthe and Mendelssohn’s concert aria Infelice!, but this might have more to do with their unfamiliarity than anything else as I had little else to compare them to . In the more familiar items I found myself constantly thinking of versions by other artists. One or two moments of smudged coloratura apart, Mattila gets round the notes easily enough, but her singing can be a bit rigid and lacking in colour and her legato is not always perfect, nor does she ever illuminate a phrase or bring something personal to the piece she is singing in the way the greatest of the past have done. There is no sense of desperation in Leonore’s Abscheulicher! or radiance in the Komm, Hoffnung section, no real appreciation of the contrasting emotions in Ah perfido!. Agathe fares no better. There is no real poise and serenity, such as that achieved by Schwarzkopf, Grümmer or Janowitz. When Schwarzkopf sings Er ist’s in Leise, leise we register the change of expression, the quickening of the pulse, where here the moment passes almost unnoticed.

Commendably she sings Rezia’s Ocean, though mighty monster in English. It is more comfortably vocalised than Callas’s late recording, also in English, but Callas fills its pages with significance where Mattila just sings the notes. She conquers its tehcnical challenges, but makes little impression dramatically.

Something of a disappointment then and a disc that is probably making for the jettison pile

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Lorraine Hunt Lieberson – Songs by Mahler, Handel and Peter Lieberson

 

There are some singers whose emotional connection to the music they are singing is so complete, so all-embracing that such minor details as vocal technique and beauty of voice are completely forgotten. Not that either of those two qualities are in the least bit lacking here, but they don’t really register, so intense, so all-enveloping is the experience of listening.

Lorraine Hunt Lieberson was one such artist and, more than once during the course of this marvelous recital, she managed to reduce me to tears. In her voice, the act of singing becomes as natural as the act of speaking. There is no artifice, no show, just total commitment to the music and that rare gift of communication.

The disc starts with a highly personal and emotionally shattering performance of Mahler’s Rückert Lieder. I prefer Mahler’s orchestral version of these wonderful songs but even with piano accompaniment (wonderfully realised by Roger Vignoles here) I would place this performance with Janet Baker’s of the orchestral versions under Barbirolli as the pinnacle of Mahler interpretation. Indeed the desolation of Um MItternacht is utterly overwhelming and the performance of all the songs totally gripping, with the audience sitting in rapt silence.

The Handel items, though more theatrical, more outwardly dramatic, are no less sincere. She makes musical sense of the vocal leaps in Scherza infida and pours calming balm on the ears in As with rosy steps from Theodora, a reminder of her devastating Glyndeboure performances of Irene.

She married Peter Lieberson the year after this recital and she sings here two of his Rilke settings, written specifically for her as well as an aria from his opera Ashoka’s Dream, which she performed in Santa Fe the previous year. The lovely Rilke songs were recorded complete at the Ravenna Festival in 2004 but it is good to have this tantalising extract from Lieberson’s opera.

To close we have two encores, a stunningly heartfelt performance of the spiritual Deep River which became something of a Hunt Lieberon speciality and a radiantly ecstatic performance of Brahms’s Unbewegte laue Luft.

Hunt Lieberson died at the age of 52 when she was at the absolute height of her career, which makes every recording she made, most of them from live performances, absolutely essential. This one is no exception

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Barbara Hendricks – Spirituals

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Fifteen years separates these two discs of Spirituals by Barbara Hendricks and the intervening years have done little to tarnish the voice’s beauty. I suppose if one listens carefully and with a highly critical ear, a slight wear on the top register is detectable, a little of the gloriously rich bloom has gone but, for the most part, the consistency is remarkable.

However the two discs differ quite a lot in other ways. The first one might be seen to have a more sophisticated approach, treating the spirituals more as art song with piano accompaniments beautifully realised by classical pianist and winner of the Leeds Piano Competition in 1975, Dmitri Alexeev, whilst the second adopts what one would consider a more traditional approach with the contribution of the Moses Hogan Singers. You might think, therefore that the second would be the more satisfying, but I prefer the approach of the first, which brings more concentration on the songs and Miss Hendricks’s glorious singing. More than once the second disc, though beautifully executed, has a whiff of Hollywood, and it is the first disc I listen to most often. You might have different preferences.

The first disc has a good cross section of slow and up tempo songs, of the not so well known and favourites like Swing low. sweet chariot and Nobody knows de trouble I’ve seen. Hendricks gorgeous voice is in prime condition here, velvety and rich in the lower and middle registers and opening out into that gleamingly individual top register. Her diction is superb too and she makes no concessions to the music, singing with a burning conviction that suits the material well. Her exhortation of The lord loves a sinner in Roundabout da mountain would convince any sinner to repent whilst her beautifully lulling Swing slow, sweet chariot would rock any baby to sleep. She also has the voice for joy in such songs as Ev’ry time I feel de spirit. A wonderful disc and on its own well worth the price of the two disc set, which closes a disc guaranteed to lift the spirits.

The second disc provides variety by including songs for unaccompanied solo voice and for just the choir, but, for my money, there is more musical variety in the first one.

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Edda Moser sings Mozart

Edda Moser, who was active on the operatic stage during the 1970s and early 1980s, should probably be better known than she is, though many will no doubt remember her from the Joseph Losey film of Don Giovanni in which she played Donna Anna.

Not strictly a recital, this is a collection of excerpts from various Mozart recordings Edda Moser made during the 1970s. Many would no doubt pick Moser for their favourite Queen of the Night, a role she sings on the patchy Sawallish recording, and indeed one notes that most of the music chosen here is for Mozart’s fierier characters.

It starts appropriately enough with the Queen of the Night’s arias and they really are splendid. First of all the coloratura flourishes and high notes are tossed off with ease and yet she also chracterises the music brilliantly. There is authority in her O zittre nicht, rage in her Der hölle Rache. Where many coloraturas sound merely pretty, Moser sounds regal and dangerous.

Next comes Konstanze’s Martern aller Arten which is properly defiant, the coloratura not only accurately executed but filled with affronted contempt. Donna Anna’s Non mi dir displays Moser’s fine legato and she also has the technique to do justice to the coloratura section.

The qualities that make her an excellent Queen of the Night and Konstanze stand her in good stead for Elettra, which she sang on Hans Schmidt-Isserstedt’s recording and she embraces both the lyricism of Idol mio and the fury of D’Oreste, d’Ajace.

The range is exceptional too and during the course of this disc, Moser not only has to sing a low G in Vitellia’s Non piu di fiori but a G in alt in the concert aria Popoli di Tessaglia, an aria Moser herself describes as “Unperformable, written without intelligence, not one beautiful note”. Well I might not go that far, but the high lying flights make impossible demands on the singer, which Moser manages incredibly well. On the other hand the low lying phrases in Vitellia’s aria tax her more and the notes below the stave emerge colourless, almost as if from a different singer.

To finish up we have a couple of examples of her contributions to some of Mozart’s sacred music, which showcase her deep legato and firm line. The voice may not have the creamy beautfy of a Te Kanawa or a Fleming, but it is still a very attractive instrument and she is more responsive to the emotional core of the music than Te Kanawa at least.

This is, without doubt, one of the best Mozart vocal compilations I have come across and is definitely worth hearing.

 

 

 

 

 

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Susan Graham – French Operetta Arias

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With a title like “French Operetta Arias” you’d probably be expecting quite a bit of Offenbach and maybe some Lecocq, but what we get is a disc of largely forgotten music from between the two wars. Quite a bit of Messager and Hahn, but also a couple of tracks from the Cuban composer Moises Simons (both great fun), one by Maurice Yvain, probably best known for his song Mon homme, immortalised as My man by Fanny Brice and Barbra Streisand, and one by, of all people, Arthur Honneger, from his operette Les Aventures du roi Pausole. Annoyingly the track listing just gives the titles of the songs so you have to consult the lyrics to find out the composer and work the song is taken from. With so much rare material I’d have welcomed a little more background.

What we do get, however, is a collection of delicious bonbons, an extravagant melée of delights, all delectably performed by American mezzo-soprano Susan Graham, who has, like her compatriot Frederica Von Stade, made quite a speciality of French music. In fact I remember seeing Graham for the first time in a Covent Garden production of Massenet’s Chérubin. Here she captures to perfection the style of the period and is by turns sexy, playful and coy. At one point, due to the magic of overdubbing, she even trios with herself, on Hahn’s O mon bel inconnu from his operette of the same name, in which three women answer the same lonely-hearts and fall in love with the same man.

Undemanding music, perhaps, but pure joy and wonderfully performed by Graham with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra uder Yves Abel.

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Claudia Muzio – Arias

Claudia Muzio had a patchy recording career. She made her first recordings in 1911 when she was around 21 (there is some doubt as to her year of birth), an aria and a duet, then from 1917 to 1918 she recorded plentifully for Pathé. In the early 1920s she made recordngs for Edison, but then there was nothing between 1924 and 1934 when she made what are her most famous recordings for Columbia. It would seem that the years of her greatest glory were probably when she was performing in Chicago in the early 1930s, and this is precisely the time she was silent to the gramophone. The Columbias were made a couple of years before her early death from an unspecified illness in 1936, when she was not in the best of health or in very happy circumstances.

Save for the 1911 recording of Si, mi chiamano Mimi (the first recording made by Muzio) this issue concentrates on the recordings on the Columbias. Occasionally we are aware this is not a voice in perfect health, of a shortness of breath and the inability to swell the tone at climaxes, but the voice is still unfailingly lovely and, in any case, what really singles her out is her interpretive ability. She brings something personal to all that she does. One sees the face and every fleeting change of expression. These are the qualities that make Muzio special.

Even in that very first recording of Mimi’s Si mi chiamano Mimi, though the artistry is still unformed, one registers a change of expression when she sings the phrase ma quando vien lo sgelo. Already she is doing more than simply singing the notes. That said, coming, as it does, at the end of all the later recordings, one also notes how much she developed in the interim, as we actually have a direct comparison with her 1935 version of the aria, an altogether more detailed and moving rendition.

Lauri-Volpi described her voice as one “made of tears and sighs and restrained inner fire” and certainly some of the most famous tracks here are the tearfully emotional ones, like her Addio del passato, the letter reading almost unbearably moving, the aria almost more felt than sung, though, as noted by Callasinanaplus below, a little too much of the verismo soprano’s emphasis on external declamation, creeps into her delivery. A true bel canto soprano, like Callas, creates as great an effect by working within the musical framework.

Predictably then it, is the tragic verismo arias that make the greatest effect, but she could also smile and charm, as she proves in the the delightful Bonjour, Suzon and Les filles de Cadiz. But hardly a track passes without some distinction. I only wish room had been found for Donaudy’s O del mio amato ben, a Muzio speciality, sung without sentimentality or mawkishness, but beautfully shaded and phrased so that the song emerges as a mini masterpiece.

If you don’t know Muzio’s work, I urge you to right that wrong.

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Jill Gomez – A Recital of French Songs

The Trinidadian/British soprano Jill Gomez was a mainstay of my early opera going life, and I heard her on more than one occasion. I particularly remember seeing her as the Countess in Le Nozze di Figaro and Elizabeth in Henze’s Elegy for Young Lovers with Scottish Opera, as Ilia in Idomeneo and the Governess in the The Turn of the Screw with English Opera Group and as Tytania in A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. The voice was not large, but she was a strikingly good looking woman with a great stage presence and also a good actress. She is probably best known for creating the role of Duchess of Argyll in Thomas Adès’s Powder Her Face and singing the title role in William Alwyn’s Miss Julie.

I have known and loved this recital since I bought the original LP soon after it was first released in 1974, and was delighted to find that it had been reissued on CD. The programme is attractive and Gomez has a lovely voice, which she uses imaginatively and musically. Indeed one wonders why such accomplished singing has received so little attention.

We start with a group of songs by Bizet, possibly of slight musical value but direct and charming in their appeal. Gomez is delectably light and airy but also delivers a deliciously sensuous and coquettish Adieux de l’hôtesse arabe, which is probably the most well known of the group. The Berlioz items, especially La belle voyageuse, are also sung with distinction and charm.

The Debussy Proses lyriques are not performed as often as some Debussy songs, and they are quite hard to bring off. Gomez is fascinating and vividly personal, superbly seconded by John Constable’s realisation of the tricky piano part. In many places I was reminded of Mélisande’s music in Pelléas et Mélisande. A superbly characterised Noël des enfants qui non plus de maisons brings this excellent recital to a close.

Gomez brings something personal to all that she does and John Constable provides estimable support throughout. Highly recommended if you can get hold of a copy.