The sound track of Essential Opera’s on-line video of Monica Pearce’s COVID era opera December has now been issued as a CD. You can read my review at La Scena Musicale.
December
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Category Archives: CD Review
Boulanger’s La ville morte
My review of Catapult Opera’s recording of Nadia Boulanger’s La ville morte is now available at La Scena Musicale.
Wallis Giunta sings Weill’s Seven Deadly Sins
My review of the recent CD of Weill works including The Seven Deadly Sins with Wallis Giunta as Anna I and II is now published at La Scena Musicale.
Couperin’s Leçons de Ténèbres
Leçons de Ténèbres is a genre that became popular in France in the 17th and 18th century. It’s a set of texts from the Vulgate version of the Book of Jeremiah to be sung on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday of Easter week. Over time setting these texts became something of a competitive exercise as they came to play a similar role to Handel’s oratorios in 18th century England. They were musical works that one could listen to during Lent when most other musical outlets were unavailable. The fashionable set would roam from church to church in search of the finest settings and the finest singers. Continue reading
Juno awards 2026
The nominations for the 2026 Juno awards have been announced and four of the nominees are recordings that I have reviewed here or elsewhere. Continue reading
Lise Davidsen at the Met
Soprano Lise Davidsen recently gave a recital at the Metropolitan Opera with pianist James Baillieu. The live recording of that gig is now being released by Decca in various formats. My gut reaction was to think that a piano recital at the Met is not such a great idea but the recording turns out to be terrific.
It starts out with a couple of opera arias, There’s a powerful but very beautiful account of “Vissi d’arte” and a very stylish account of “Morrò, ma prima in grazia” from Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera. In this one she shows some interesting colours as well as terrific, clean, high notes. Continue reading
Allan Clayton performs Hans Zender’s version of Winterreise
Hans Zender’s 1993 “composed interpretation” of Schubert’s Winterreise is really interesting. It’s scored for tenor and a twenty-five piece ensemble including accordion, guitar, loads of percussion and a wind machine. It’s also over eighty minutes long with the additional material being mainly intros and outros. A new recording by Allan Clayton with the Aurora Orchestra conducted by Nicholas Conlon has just been released. It’s fascinating.
I’m just going to pick up on a few of the tracks to try and give a flavour of what’s going on. It all starts with “Gute Nacht”. Here the singing doesn’t start until almost the four minute mark after an intro including a lot of extended technique for the strings. To begin with, the singing is extremely beautiful and few singers do “beautiful” better than Clayton, then around the six minute mark it goes wild with accordion coming in and Clayton “uglifying” his voice for a minute or so before a more conventional ending. Continue reading
Mr. Dowland’s Dream
So following on from Ruby Hughes’ Dowland heavy album Amidst the Shades we have soprano Clara Brunet and lutenist Bor Zuljan with Mr. Dowland’s Dream. It’s similar in some ways but very different in others. For a start Zuljan is playing an orpharion; which sounds a bit like a lute with a reverb pedal. Mostly he’s using a nine course instrument by Bruce Brook, after a 1617 instrument by Francis Palmer, and sometimes he’s playing an electric orpharion of ten courses by César Arias with magnetic pick ups. Net result, the sound world is rather different from the Hughes album. Continue reading
Zanetto
Pietro Mascagni is really remembered for only one opera; the one act Cavalleria Rusticana, which was sufficiently successful for its composer to be considered for a while a probable successor to Puccini as the next “great Italian opera composer”. That didn’t happen of course and the only other of his works to get even occasional stagings are L’amico Fritz. and Iris though he wrote a total of fifteen. Now there’s a recording of his one act opera Zanetto which was made at a live, semi-staged performance in Berlin in June 2022. Continue reading
Amidst the Shades
Amidst the Shades is a new album from British soprano Ruby Hughes accompanied by Jonas Nordberg on lute and archlute and Mime Yamahiro Brinkmann on viola da gamba. It’s a very beautiful record starting, as one might expect, with a selection of English song from the 16th and 17th century plus some pieces for solo lute. There are songs by John Dowland, including the well known Can She Excuse My Wrongs (possibly to a text by Robert Devereux; if so clear who “she” is). Robert Johnson makes an appearance with three songs including two Shakespeare settings. John Danyel also features along with instrumental music by Anthony Holborne and Tobias Hume. Continue reading
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