Classical – Page 3 – Library Blog

Operatic Highlights at WCL

June 28, 2023June 26, 2023 Corrina

NZ Opera’s production of Mozart’s Così fan tutte at the St James Theatre (14—18 June) seemed like the perfect time to display some of WCL’s collection of operatic treasurers at Te Awe Library. Across our branches, and at Te Pātaka, there are many books, CDs, and DVDs concerned with the art form that Samuel Johnson famously called an ‘exotic and irrational entertainment’. This blog introduces some well-known, and some less familiar, highlights that formed part of the Te Awe display.

Mozart and the enlightenment : truth, virtue, and beauty in Mozart’s operas / Till, Nicholas
Nicholas Till examines Mozart’s operas through the lens of Enlightenment sensibility, drawing together the strands of history, theology, sociology, literary theory, and even some psychology to anatomize the motivation and vision behind Mozart’s operas. Mozart’s collaborations with librettist Lorenzo da Ponte —Le nozze di Figaro (1786), Don Giovanni (1787) and Così fan tutte (1790) — each receive detailed contextual and musical analysis that considers Mozart’s own intellectual stance on philosophy and politics in that revolutionary decade. Till’s provocative hypotheses and detailed reasoning, combined with his clear fascination with Mozart’s operas, result in a stimulating and highly satisfying exploration of the significance of Mozart’s operas in the eighteenth century and in society today.

The young Kiri : the early recordings, 1964-70 / Te Kanawa, Kiri
This two-disc set of Dame Kiri te Kanawa’s early recordings offers a compelling aural portrait of the young singer, at the start of an extraordinary career. CD 1 is devoted to arias and art song, with Puccini especially well-represented in extracts from La bohème, Tosca, and Turandot, as well as showpiece arias from Johann Strauss’s Die Federmaus and Gounoud’s Faust among other treasures. CD 2 turns to musical theatre and popular song, demonstrating te Kanawa’s versatility in different styles of singing. A number of ensembles and collaborating musicians also make an appearance: the NZBC Orchestra, organist Peter Averi, singer Hohepa Mutu, and harpist Dorothea Franchi.

Fashion designers at the opera / Matheopoulos, Helena
Gianni Versace created a stunning dress for Kiri te Kanawa in Strauss’s Capriccio at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden in 1990; Zandra Rhodes has designed costumes for Verdi’s Aida, Mozart’s Magic Flute, and Bizet’s Pearl Fishers; the bejeweled gown worn by Mélisande in Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande at the Stadttheater Klagenfurt transformed the character into a source of golden light in a world of sinister, oppressive darkness. These are just a few examples of the work that leading fashion designers have produced for opera productions around the world, responding to the challenge of creating costumes in which performers can move and sing. Helena Matheopoulos profiles many many figures from the world in this collection of interviews, sketches, and resplendent full-color illustrations of the costumes in production.

Hänsel und Gretel : opera in three acts
When Richard Strauss conducted the premiere of Engelbert Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel at Weimar in 1893, he declared the piece a ‘masterpiece of the highest quality’. This 2011 production is a musical and visual feast, the action shifted from the terror-ridden Ilsenstein forest to a modern urban setting. Gretel and her brother live in a house of cardboard boxes, which they share with their loving but poverty-stricken parents. Rather than finding a gingerbread cottage, the habitation of Rosine Leckermaul (the witch) is amid the aisles of a supermarket offering every alluring and mass-produced confection. This production is superbly cast, every singer inhabiting the style with energy. Of special note is Wolfgang Ablinger-Sperrhacke’s turn as a matriarchal yet terrifying witch. Humperdink’s music is a captivating fusion of orchestral opulence and gemütlich spirit that draws on more than a century of German Romanticism, from Schubert and Weber to Wagner and Mahler.

The only way is up : reflections on a life in opera / McIntyre, Donald
It is impossible to summarise the career of Donald McIntyre in a paragraph, but fortunately The Only Way is Up more than compensates. A page-turning memoir of life as an aspirant All Black, and then as one of the foremost exponents of Wagner’s music, The Only Way is Up charts the successes and surprises of working on the stages of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, and the Festspielhaus at Bayreuth. McIntyre’s stories include appearances by leading conductors, directors, and fellow singers too numerous to mention here, but a particular highlight is McIntyre’s role in Patrice Chereau’s extraordinary ‘Centennial’ Ring Cycle at Bayreuth, a series of productions that revolutionized the staging of Wagner’s music dramas.

Dido and Aeneas : opera in three acts
Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas brings together opera and dance in a collaboration between the Royal Opera, and Royal Ballet at Covent Garden, with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment conducted by John Eliot Gardiner. A musical and visual spectacle, Wayne McGregor’s contemporary choreography fuses with Purcell’s music, realising in the dancers’ movement many of the intricacies in the score. Sarah Connolly (Dido) and Lucas Meachum (Aeneas) imbue their roles with magnificence befitting their royal status, Dido’s descent into despair truly wrenches the heart as she is undone by the witches’ cruelty. Although this production met with mixed responses in 2009, mainly to do with the size of the stage in relation to the intimacy of Purcell’s opera, McGregor’s seems vision is more successful on screen, where the cameras bring us closer to the action.

The partnership : Brecht, Weill, three women, and Germany on the brink / Katz, Pamela
Although the partnership between Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht is well-documented, Pamela Katz is the first author to bring to the fore the roles played by Lotte Lenya, Helene Weigel, and Elizabeth Hauptmann in the creation and performance of Weill and Brecht’s operas. Brech and Weill’s deconstruction and subversion of operatic conventions in The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny and The Threepenny Opera have been the subject of much research and discussion, but the significant involvement and influence of Weigel, Hauptmann, and Lenya in the creative process have never been adequately examined. This book does so, charting the development and early performance history of the operas in the tumultuous years of the Weimar Republic, as well as their creators’ flight from Germany in 1933.

Southern voices : international opera singers of New Zealand / Simpson, Adrienne
Adrienne Simpson and Peter Downes dedicated this book to the singers it profiles. Southern Voices is a trove of insights into the careers and reflections of a succession of truly great artists. The singers reflect on their early training and the formative experiences in local choirs and competitions that set them on the path to the most august heights of their profession. Malvina Major’s recollections of her triumph as Rosina in Il barbiere di Siviglia at the 1968 Salzburg Festival, working with Claudio Abbado; Inia te Wiata’s creation of roles in operas by Benjamin Britten; Patricia Payne overcame homesickness and uncertainty at the Opera Centre in London to find musical fulfilment on the concert platform before becoming a soloist with Covent Garden’s permanent company, and a guest soloist in productions all over Europe and the USA; Barry Mora’s successes in many roles over several seasons at Gelsenkirchen, before joining the permanent ensemble at the Frankfurt Opera, where experimental and provocative productions made the company a provocative centre of Regietheater in the 1980s. These stories, and many more, make Southern Voices a fascinating source of history, reinforcing the remarkable achievements of New Zealand singers on the international scene.

The birth of an opera : fifteen masterpieces from Poppea to Wozzeck / Rose, Michael
Michael Rose slices through centuries of myth-making and romanticising to document the creation of fifteen operas, from Monteverdi’s Poppea (first performed in 1643) to Berg’s Wozzeck (1925). Rose examines the manifold complexities of making operas, including the composers’ selection of libretti and collaboration with librettists (for example, the partnerships between Mozart and Lorenzo da Ponte, and Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal), the challenges and benefits of aristocratic patronage, grappling with censors, and parrying hostile critics and cabals. A rich array of primary sources, including exchanges of letters between composers and their collaborators, treatise extracts, and aesthetic manifesti, illuminate the making of Fidelio, Otello, Turandot among other works.

Pene Pati
Tenor Pene Pati is equally well-known here as an outstanding operatic tenor, and one-third of Sol3Mio.In the last five years, Pati’s career has been spectacularly ascendent. Currently performing the role of Rodolfo in Puccini’s La bohème at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris — a role he will reprise in Toronto with the Canadian Opera Company later this year — Pati’s recent schedule has seen him perform in Monte Carlo, Naples, Prague, and Berlin. In 2021, Pati signed an exclusive recording contract with Warner Classics, and this, his debut album, includes extracts from some of the operas in which his recent performances have earned particular acclaim: Verdi’s Rigoletto, Gounoud’s Romeo et Juliette, and Donizetti’s L’Elisir d’amore.

Opera, or, The undoing of women / Clement, Catherine
A foundational text in feminist musicology, Opera, or, The Undoing of Women (originally published in French as L’Opéra ou la Défaite des femmes in 1979) was contentious when it was first published in French 1979, and remains controversial today. As one of the first critical studies to apply feminist theory to the plots and texts of operas, considering specifically the situation of opera’s female characters, Clément unpicks the fates of Turandot, Cio-Cio San, Lucia, Tatiana, Violetta, Tosca, Isolde. Her analysis identifies several plot and character archetypes, to demonstrate how ’19th-century opera perpetuates a social order which requires either the death or the domestication of the female protagonist.’ Although Clément’s musical analyses are unsophisticated, her poetic language remains compelling, while her arguments remain relevant and provocative nearly 45 years after the book’s first appearance.

Exploring the visions of Bartok and Strauss

June 2, 2023June 7, 2023 Corrina

On Saturday 3 June, music by Richard Strauss and Béla Bartók bookends Myth and Ritual, the second concert in Orchestra Wellington’s 2023 Inner Visions season. This programme leads the audience into exotic territories through Salome’s infamous ‘Dance of the Seven Veils’ in Herod Antipas’s palace, Arjuna Oakes‘s new work Safe Way to Fall, and John Psathas’s Zahara (2006) — a saxophone concerto inspired by the journey of shipwrecked American sailors through the Sahara Desert in the early nineteenth century. Bartók’s The Miraculous Mandarin evokes another dangerous environment through its musical depiction of the traffic, noise, and viciousness of a big city.

In this blog, we introduce six books in the Wellington City Libraries collection that explore the pieces by Strauss and Bartók and offer a variety of personal and analytical perspectives on the inner vision that both composers realised in their music.

The subject matter of Bartók’s pantomime-ballet The Miraculous Mandarin (1926), with its dances and ‘seduction games’, and the unrestrained licentiousness and blasphemy in Strauss’s opera Salome (1905) caused both works to be censored in the early twentieth century. After its premiere in Dresden, Salome was initially proscribed in London, where its first performance (heavily cut) did not take place until 1913: despite Gustav Mahler’s best efforts, he could not persuade the censors in Vienna to permit a performance at the Hofoper; the New York premiere took place in 1907, but the piece was deemed ‘repugnant to Anglo-Saxon minds’ and not performed again at the Metropolitan Opera House until the 1930s. In 1909, however, the Scottish singer Mary Garden had performed the role, at the rival Manhattan Opera House in a French language production of Salome. A year earlier, in Paris, the astonished correspondent of the New York Times had witnessed Garden rehearse the ‘Dance of the Seven Veils’ wearing a body-stocking of ‘nearly transparent flesh-coloured silk’ with bare arms and feet beneath veils of ‘soft organdie’:

Nothing more thrilling than Miss Garden’s rendition of the dance has been seen recently on the lyric stage, and the bacchanalian finale is most wonderfully carried out. Miss Garden whirls and sways and stands on her toes until you are fascinated and wonder how she can do it; and finally she ends at the feet of Herod asking for the head of John the Baptist.

‘Mary Garden Makes a Thrilling Salome‘, New York Times, 25 October 1908

Continue reading “Exploring the visions of Bartok and Strauss” →

Women on the Podium: 20th & 21st century conductors imagined and real

May 9, 2023May 1, 2023 Corrina

The starting point for today’s blog about recent arrivals in our classical recordings collection is Music from and inspired by the motion picture Tár. Todd Field’s 2022 psychological drama about conductor Lydia Tár — an ambitious, driven, but chaotic woman (ferociously realised by Cate Blanchett) who is appointed director of the Berlin Philharmonic —has won many awards and been nominated for many more. Tár has also proved divisive for its depictions of the musical world and for its presentation of Lydia Tár as a woman and conductor in a profession where male composers and conductors still dominate the repertory and the podium. John Mauceri has summarised the debate in a pithy New York Times op-ed. Deutsche Grammophon has also climbed aboard the Tár train with a ‘multi-faceted concept album‘ that includes new pieces by Hildur Guðnadóttir alongside extracts from Elgar’s Cello Concerto in E minor, and Mahler’s Symphony No. 5. The concept behind the album, as director Todd Field explains, is ‘to invite the listener to experience the messiness involved in the making of music’ and the CD includes spoken-word content, rehearsal discussion, and short takes from recording sessions. If you have seen, loved, or loathed Tár, here is a great opportunity to hear new work by Guðnadóttir. The music is performed by the London Contemporary Orchestra, Dresden Philharmonic, London Symphony Orchestra, and the New Trombone Collective, with Cate Blanchett herself at the helm.

Turning from the world of fictional conductors to real ones, here is a selection of CDs, DVDs, and books by and about some eminent women currently at the top of their profession.

Candide / Bernstein, Leonard
One conductor whose criticism of Tár has been vociferous is one of the most eminent in her profession Marin Alsop, the first woman to be appointed director of a major USA orchestra, the Baltimore Symphony, in 2007. After gaining degrees in violin performance at Julliard School, Alsop was rejected three times by their conducting programme, before finding success by founding her own ensembles. In 1989 she won the Koussevitsky Prize for conducting at the Tanglewood Festival, the first time that the prize was awarded to a woman. At this Festival she also met Leonard Bernstein, who would become her mentor. Since that time, Alsop has conducted many of the world’s major orchestras in concerts and recordings. In 2013, at the time when she conducted the Last Night of the Proms, Alsop spoke of some of the residual prejudices facing women who wanted to conduct. Here, Alsop conducts a live semi-staged performance of Candide by her mentor Leonard Bernstein, three decades after he recorded the piece with the same orchestra. Guided by Alsop, the London Symphony Orchestra and Chorus play and sing with precision and wit. The cast includes Leonardo Capalbo (Candide) Anne Sofie von Otter (The Old Lady), Thomas Allen (Dr. Pangloss), Jane Archer (Cunegonde), and Marcus Farnsworth (Maximilian). All the singers bring the acerbic text (with contributions from Dorothy Parker, Richard Wilbur, and Stephen Sondheim) to life with their committed characterizations.

Continue reading “Women on the Podium: 20th & 21st century conductors imagined and real” →

Fundamental Forces: Orchestra Wellington’s first concert of 2023

April 14, 2023April 14, 2023 Corrina

The first concert of Orchestra Wellington’s 2023 Inner Visions season takes place this Saturday night at the Michael Fowler Centre. The programme, entitled ‘Fundamental Forces’, presents Prokofiev’s Scythian Suite, C.P.E. Bach’s Symphony in E minor, Stravinsky’s Violin Concerto in D (with soloist Natalia Lomeiko), and Haydn’s Symphony No. 39 in G minor. This powerful confluence of visions and forces, realised through an eclectic programme, prompted us to ask Orchestra Wellington’s Music Director, Marc Taddei, about the connections between these musical works:

‘We see the genesis of the Empfindsamer Stil and Sturm und Drang representing the Dionysian impulse in music (which is the theme of the season), with an example of a kind of apotheosis in the Scythian Suite (a New Zealand premiere, as far as I am aware). I like the idea of CPE Bach’s father being represented by a neo-classic homage by Stravinsky, which … presents the opposing Apollonian impulse.’

– Marc Taddei

So, how to learn more about Empfindsamer Stil (‘the style of sensitivity’), Sturm und Drang (‘storm and stress’), Apollonian rationality, harmony, and restraint, not to mention the unbridled passion and ecstatic excesses of Dionysius? Our collection holds the answers! In this post, we will highlight some material that contextualizes this music and its creators. Firstly, all members of Wellington City Libraries can access to Oxford Music Onlinevia the eLibrary – you just need your card number and PIN to log in. Oxford Music Onlineoffers concise articles about Emfindsamkeit and Empfindsamer Stil, Sturm und Drang, and Neo-classicism. Oxford Music Online also contains biographies of C. P. E. Bach, Haydn, Stravinsky, and Prokofiev.

In addition, there are several books that provide still greater breadth and depth of discussion, all by leading authorities in music history, engaging for general and specialist audiences alike. Our recommendations include:

The beloved vision : a history of nineteenth century music / Walsh, Stephen
Despite its title, Walsh begins the story of The Beloved Vision in the eighteenth century, demonstrating the pivotal role played by C. P. E. Bach and Haydn in the later development of nineteenth-century music. The alternately exquisite and visceral elements of Bach’s Symphony in E minor – exemplifying a sensibility attuned to the eloquent expression of drama and tenderness, the very epitome of Empfindsamer Stil – would find a later and more extreme expression in the Sturm und Drang of Haydn’s Symphony No. 39. Works such as these, Walsh argues, while firmly of the eighteenth century, were some of the earliest expressions of characteristics we’d come to associate with Romanticism. Walsh explores late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century thought concerning volatile expression in poetry, and how those ideals might find expression in music. Walsh’s discussion of Empfindsamer Stil and Sturm und Drang in their literary and musical manifestations, and as forms of reaction to the confident certainties of Enlightenment, provides useful context for listening to the music of both C.P.E. Bach and Haydn.

The Faber pocket guide to Haydn / Wigmore, Richard
Richard Wigmore’s concise exploration of Haydn’s life and music offers an ideal introduction to the composer, as well as offering insights into his work for the connoisseur. Wigmore discusses a range of Haydn’s work, anatomizing many of the subtle elements of his aesthetics that are often overlooked. The expressive depths of Haydn’s music, which are especially evident in such Sturm und Drang works as his Symphony No. 39, form a significant part of Wigmore’s broader discussion in this useful and comprehensive book.

Haydn : his life and music / Landon, H. C. Robbins
H. C. Robbins Landon’s Haydn: his life and music was one of the first comprehensive critical studies of the composer that explored Haydn on his own terms, considering the different phases of his career, his development as a composer, the struggle of balancing his duties as a Kapellmeister to the Esterhazy princes with his own creative ambitions, and the great fame that he experienced later in his life. This is a scholarly book, minutely researched, but the author used his sources so carefully that it’s also constantly engaging, leading the reader through the vicissitudes and triumphs of Haydn’s life and linking these with his music. One early review of Haydn: his life and music describes the ‘presentation as laconic’ and the author’s tone as ‘infectiously lively’ – qualities that are absolutely appropriate to Haydn himself.

Stravinsky : a creative spring : Russia and France, 1882-1934 / Walsh, Stephen
In the first installment of his two-volume biography of Igor Stravinsky, Stephen Walsh examines the composer’s early life, the development of his career, the extraordinary collaboration with Sergei Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes, and the years in Switzerland and France. Walsh highlights the relationship between Stravinsky’s pragmatism and business sense, his aesthetics, and his identity as a Russian composer outside his mother country. Walsh also explores in fascinating detail the genesis of Stravinsky’s Violin Concerto (1931) – a work of Apollonian balance and clarity – and the controversy the piece provoked. Stravinsky: a creative spring is a meticulously researched biography that brings the enigmatic composer vividly to life.

Sergei Prokofiev : a biography / Robinson, Harlow Loomis
Prokofiev’s Scythian Suite dates from 1915. Its music comes from the score of a ballet that Sergei Diaghilev had commissioned from Prokofiev for the Ballets Russes. Unfortunately, Diaghilev did not accept Prokofiev’s work Ala i Lolli, a story based on ancient Slavic mythology with a proposed scenario by the symbolist poet Sergei Gorodetsky. In the wake of the furore caused by Stravinsky’s score for The Rite of Spring and the drama of its premiere with the Ballets Russes, Prokofiev wanted to create a similar stir, with a similarly Dionysian score. After Diaghilev dropped the project, perhaps because he felt the music was derivative of Stravinsky’s Rite, Prokofiev instead transformed some of the music into the four-movement Scythian Suite, a virtuosic orchestral work that sketches out the storyline of the ballet. The story of Diaghilev’s commission, Prokofiev’s ambitions for the project, and the (small) scandal provoked by the premiere of the Suite are described in Harlow Loomis Robinson’s Sergei Prokofiev: a biography, along with an engaging account of the Suite‘s premiere:

One of those most offended by “The Scythian Suite” was Glazunov, who made a great show of leaving the concert hall eight measurers before the end …. Even the musicians were upset: the timpanist broke through the skin on his timpani, and [a] cellist complained to Prokofiev that he agreed to play only because he had a wife and three children to support.’

– H. L. Robinson

The Sound of 12 Stradivari

March 17, 2023March 10, 2023 Corrina

When the COVID-19 pandemic curtailed and restricted concert activity in 2020 and 2021, many artists developed unique recording projects that could go ahead in the new circumstances. One example of these innovative turns is Dutch violinist Janine Jansen’s new album, 12 Stradivari. The adventure with twelve exquisite and extremely valuable violins made by Antonio Stradivari in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries was the idea of Steven Smith, managing director of the internationally renowned fine violin dealers J. & A. Beare. Smith saw the opportunity to bring together a dozen of the world’s best violins by Antonio Stradivari on one recording and approached Jansen (who currently performs on the 1715 Shumsky-Rode Stradivarius) to curate the recording in collaboration with pianist Antonio Pappano. The result is a fascinating exploration of twelve unique instruments, each with its own extraordinary associations with many of the leading violinists of the last three centuries. Jensen’s selection of repertoire reflects the history of the violins, while also highlighting the differences in the sound and personality of each instrument.

This post explores Jansen and Pappano’s 12 Stradivari, and introduces some of the other recordings in the WCL collection that feature instruments from Stradivari’s Cremona workshop. To find out more about the history of the instruments, and how they were made, have a look at the excellent Tarisio site as well!

12 Stradivari
Jansen chose the repertoire for this recording to align with the history of the twelve violins and the musicians who played them. For the music of Fritz Kreisler, she plays his Syncopation on the 1734 ‘Lord Amherst’ violin, and his Liebesleid on the 1733 ‘Huberman’ violin, both of which were Kreisler’s instruments. Jansen plays the ‘Haendel’ Stradivari — the instrument long associated with the inimitable Ida Haendel (1924-2020) — in the first of Karol Szymanowski’s Mythes, op. 30, ‘La Fontaine d’Aréthuse’, a work that Haendel recorded in 1996. For Henri Vieuxtemps’ Romances sans paroles, op. 7, Jansen chose the 1710 ‘Vieuxtemps’ Stradivari on which the Belgian virtuoso performed between 1870 and 1881. Jansen’s choice of a variety of short character pieces and transcriptions provides a portrait in miniature of each violin, while also demonstrating her own artistry in both the well-known and rarer works she plays. Pappano’s stylish playing complements Jansen, in an intuitive partnership.

Violin concertos 2 & 4 Sinfonia concertante / Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus
In this recording, Maxim Vengerov plays the 1727 ‘Kreutzer’ Stradavarius (you can read more about his connection with this violin here). Violist Lawrence Power also plays beautifully in the Sinfonia Concertante, and the UBS Verbier Festival Orchestra makes a stylish contribution. Both Vengerov and Power offer rich, yet subtle, interpretations of Mozart, emphasizing the lyricism and wit of each piece. The central Andante of the Sinfonia Concertante is a particular highlight, while it’s also gratifying to hear Mozart’s Violin Concert No. 2 in G major, which is too rarely performed or recorded.

Violin concertos / Beethoven, Ludwig van
Another opportunity to hear Jansen, this time playing the ‘Barrere’ Stradavarius (1727) in Beethoven’s Violin Concerto in D, and Benjamin Britten’s Violin Concerto. The pairing of these two works is unusual, but it had been a longstanding desire of Jansen to present them in one recording, and the result is compelling. In Beethoven’s Concerto, she plays with lyricism and precision, exploring the gentle moments of the first and second movements with particular poetry. The finale, in contrast, is buoyant and joyous, exulting in the dialogues between soloist and orchestra. Likewise, in Britten’s Concerto, Jansen and the orchestra are true partners, working together to emphasize the tension that permeates this work.

1930s violin concertos. Vol. 1
The first volume of Gil Shaham’s 1930s Violin Concertos is an opportunity to hear the 1699 ‘Countess Polignac‘ Stradavarius, as well as five violin concertos from a turbulent decade. The concerti by Barber, Berg, Britten, Hartmann, and Stravinskhy reveal the diverse paths taken by these modernists. In addition, Shaham plays each piece with a different orchestra: Barber with the New York Philharmonic, Berg with the Staatskapelle Dresden, Hartmann with the Sejong Soloists, Stravinsky with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, and Britten with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. As an opportunity to hear a fine violinist play with several of the world’s leading orchestras, this recording is unrivalled.

Simply baroque / Ma, Yo-Yo
Yo Yo Ma has played the ‘Davidov’ Stradivarius cello – previously one of Jacqueline du Pré’s instruments – since the late 1980s. The instrument is named for Karl Yulievich Davydov (1838-1889), whom Tchaikovsky once dubbed ‘the czar of cellists’. Initially, Ma used the ‘Davidov’ primarily for baroque and classical repertoire, including this collaboration with Ton Koopman and the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra. Here, Ma performs several arrangements and transcriptions of popular extracts from Bach’s cantatas. ‘Erbarme dich’ from the St Matthew Passion works particularly well, as does the ‘Air’ from Bach’s Orchestral Suite No. 3. However, Ma’s performances of Luigi Boccherini’s cello concerti in G major (G. 480) and D major (G. 478) are the highlights of the disc, two galant works that Ma explores with drama and sensitivity.

Sonatas for fortepiano and violin. Vol. 3, K. 302, 377, 379 & 454 / Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus
Isabelle Faust plays the ‘Sleeping Beauty’ Stradavarius in this recording of four sonatas for keyboard and violin. Alexander Melnikov’s instrument is a fortepiano by Christoph Kern modelled on an Anton Walter instrument of 1795. The ‘Sleeping Beauty’ has an especially fascinating history, as Alessandra Barabaschi explains. In the third volume of their journey through Mozart’s sonatas, Faust and Melnikov perform the Sonata in E-flat major K. 302 (which Mozart composed in Mannheim in 1778 and dedicated to Maria Elisabeth, the Electress Palatine); the Sonatas K. 377 and 379, in F major and G major (composed and published in Vienna in 1781 and dedicated to Mozart’s piano pupil Josepha Auernhammer); and the Sonata in B-flat major, K. 454. Mozart wrote K. 454 for Italian virtuosa Regina Strinasacchi who was then touring Europe. At their concert, in Vienna’s Kärntnerthor Theater on 29 April 1784, Mozart had not yet committed the piano part of the Sonata to paper, and performed it from memory. Faust and Melnikov play with panache and humour. The timbre of the fortepiano and the resonance of the ‘Sleeping Beauty’ complement each other in an ideal fashion.

The late string quartets, String quintet / Schubert, Franz In 1990, the Emerson String Quartet recorded Schubert’s Quintet in C major D956 with one of the greatest cellists of the twentieth century, Mstislav Rostropovich (1927-2007), to be included on their CD of Schubert’s ‘late’ string quartets. For the members of the Emerson, this collaboration was the most memorable of their careers, almost overwhelmed by Rostropovich’s boundless zest for life, his idiosyncratic ideas about when and how to rehearse, and of course, his legendary musicianship. At the second rehearsal of Schubert’s Quintet in the Dreifaltigkeitskirche in the town of Speyer, David Finkel of the Emerson Quartet recalled that:

we were left in the musical dust as Slava took command of everything, summoning up metaphors, noticing details in the composition, stopping for detailed work, exhorting us to do more of just about everything we thought we were already doing. It was like being dragged by a freight train. It was exciting, exhausting, and unnerving to be playing with someone who could hear so acutely, whose understanding of the music was so deep, and whose charisma was so
overpowering.

In this recording, Rostropovich plays the 1711 ‘Duport’ Stradivarius, which was his instrument from 1974 until his death. It is likely that this is the instrument on which either Louis or Jean-Pierre Duport played Beethoven’s sonatas for the King of Prussia, with Beethoven at the piano; in the 1840s, the ‘Duport’ Stradivarius was the instrument on which August Franchomme would perform Chopin’s Cello Sonata, with Chopin playing the piano. Rostropovich would later record Chopin’s Sonata, a piece that the ‘Duport’ Stradivarius already ‘knew’. In his collaboration with the Emerson Quartet in their recording of Schubert’s Quintet in C major, the distinctive tone of Rostropovich’s cello is audible, but the ensemble is perfectly blended in a poetic interpretation of the piece.

Stylus phantasticus: New recordings of baroque music for violin

February 12, 2023February 10, 2023 Corrina

The late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries saw virtuoso music for solo violin burgeon, its proliferation driven by outstanding violinists extending the technical and expressive capacities of the violin. Consequently, the status and prestige of the violin increased as it became associated with the highest realms of eloquent musical art. While the six sonatas and partitas for solo violin by J.S. Bach are arguably the pinnacle of this repertoire, many other composers (especially violinists from Germany and Italy) provided the foundations for Bach’s solo works.

Three new recordings added to our collection by violinists Rachel Podger, Isabelle Faust, and Alina Ibragimova, illustrate the extraordinary riches of the era, including examples of the stylus phantasticus, a style of composition especially characteristic of the early-to-mid baroque era. Athanasius Kircher, a polymathic Jesuit priest and author of Musurgia Universalis (1650), wrote of the stylus phantasticus that:

The fantastic style is especially suited to instruments. It is the most free and unrestrained method of composing, it is bound to nothing, neither to any words nor to a melodic subject, it was instituted to display genius and to teach the hidden design of harmony and the ingenious composition of harmonic phrases and fugues. – Athanasius Kircher

In the following recordings, these attributes emerge especially in the music of Gasparini, Tartini, and Vilsmayr, while every work displays the genius of the composer and the performers alike. Read on for a more in-depth review into these recordings below!

Tutta sola / Rachel Podger
Following her landmark 2019 recording of J. S. Bach’s Suites for solo cello (BWV1007-1012), the first recording of these works transcribed for violin, Rachel Podger’s most recent recording explores fascinating seventeenth- and eighteenth-century solo violin repertoire, including some tantalising surprises from manuscript collections. She opens the CD with a transcription of J.S. Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor, which is remarkable enough, before taking her listeners on a journey through more obscure territory. Diverting short pieces by Gasparini, Vitali, Lonati, Purcell, and Corelli, from the collection Select Preludes or Voluntaries for the Violin by the Most Eminent Masters in Europe (London: 1705) are interspersed between more substantial works: Podger plays a Partita from the Artificiosus Concentus pro Camera by Johann Joseph Vilsmayr, an Austrian violinist who was likely a pupil of Biber, composer of the Rosary Sonatas. In this partita, the dance movements are separated by a series of graceful arias. Concluding the recording is the ‘Piccole Sonata’ by Giuseppe Tartini, imbued with hints of folk music from Tartini’s birthplace in Pirano. Throughout every piece, Rachel Podger’s playing moves effortlessly between delicacy and high drama.

Isabelle Faust plays Bach / Bach, Johann Sebastian
Bach’s biographer Philipp Spitta wrote of his subject’s solo violin music that: ‘The overpowering wealth of forms pouring from a few and scarcely noticeable sources displays not only the most perfect knowledge of the technique of the violin, but also absolute mastery of an imagination the like of which no other composer was ever endowed.’ Violinist Isabelle Faust demonstrates the veracity of Spitta’s words in a new collected edition from Harmonia Mundi that brings together a range of her solo and ensemble performances. In eight CDs and one DVD, Faust presents not only Bach’s solo sonatas and partitas, the sonatas for violin and harpsichord with Kristian Bezuidenhout, and the concerti in A minor and E major, but also a wealth of Bach’s orchestral and chamber music in which the violin takes a leading role. The inclusion of the sinfonias from Bach’s cantatas Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis BWV21, Ich liebe den Hochsten von ganzem Gemute BWV174, and Himmelskonig, sei wilkommen BWV182 highlight the beauty of the autonomous instrumental music in the cantatas, as well as the quality of the ensemble between Faust and her colleagues, but removed from the context of their cantatas these overtures seem oddly isolated. However, the ensemble presentation of the Trio Sonatas in C major (BWV529) and D minor (BWV527) more than compensates, the musicians bringing vividly to life the intricacies of Bach’s counterpoint.

Fantasias for solo violin / Telemann, Georg Philipp
Telemann’s solo Fantasias represent a unique contribution to the violin repertory, but have been overshadowed by Bach’s sonatas and partitas. Telemann published the collection in 1735, and alongside his twelve Fantasias for solo flute and twelve Fantasias for solo viola da gamba, these works demonstrate Telemann’s understanding of each instrument’s capacities. The violin Fantasias explore a range of keys and affects with pure unadorned melody and complex contrapuntal writing. Alina Ibragimova, one of the most versatile violinists of the day – equally at home on a modern or period instrument, as a concerto soloist or chamber musician – plays beautifully and eloquently throughout this recording. She transcends every technical and musical complexity with ease, creating a uniquely persuasive character for every Fantasia.

Wellington City Libraries

Te Matapihi Ki Te Ao Nui

Category: Classical