My review of Californian composer Mark Abel’s CD 4.4.2 featuring Canadian mezzo-soprano Simone McIntosh is now available at La Scena Musicale.
4.4.2
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Category Archives: CD Review
Ein Traumspiel
My review of the recent CD release of Aribert Reimanns’s first opera Ein Traumspiel is now on-line at La Scene Musicale. The disk also includes his rather unusual Denn Bleiben ist nirgends.
Sankofa: The Soldier’s Tale Retold
My review of the recording of Art of Time Ensemble’s adaptation of Stravinsky’s The Soldier’s Tale is now on-line at La Scena Musicale. Sankofa is a very moving reframing of the story to relate the experiences of a young man from the Caribbean trying to join the Canadian Army in WW1.
Yiddish Glory again
Way back in 2018 I wrote about a CD called Yiddish Glory: The Lost Songs of WW2 (though I don’t think I wrote an actual review of the CD… I should fix that). Since then various participants in that project including UoT’s Professor Anna Shternshis plus the members of Payadora Tango Ensemble and Likht Ensemble among others have unearthed more lost songs from the ghettoes, labour camps, DP camps and so on. I’ve written about some of it and some of it features on Payadora’s Silent Tears CD. Other songs were released on the Yiddish Glory Youtube channel during COVID.
Searing Elektra from Ed Gardner
Ed Gardner and the Bergen Philharmonic have produced some stunning recordings for the Chandos label. The new release of Richard Strauss’ Elektra is no exception. Indeed this is likely now the first choice audio recoding of this work.
It’s a very strong cast. Iréne Theorin has enough heft for the title role but she’s also surprisingly lyrical where appropriate, Jennifer Holloway is a sweet toned and sympathetic Chrysothemis and Tanja Ariane Baumgartner sounds suitably unhinged as Chrysothemis without sounding like her voice is past its sell by date. Iain Paterson is an interesting Orest. He’s kind of eerily creepy especially in his first scene with Elektra. I rather liked it. All the other roles are perfectly adequate too and so is the chorus.
But isn’t the real glory of Elektra the orchestral writing? Gardner gets the most out of it with a reading that’s both very dramatic and surprisingly lyrical. It’s taut too. The tension just goes on and on. The Bergen players respond splendidly.
The recording was made in the Grieghallen in December 2023 from live concert performances. It’s splendid and has been released as a hybrid SACD. The high resolution tracks are as good as any recording I’ve heard but this does mean that the dynamic range is realistically extreme! With the volume set to a realistic level for the voices, the orchestral climaxes are very loud indeed so unless you have no neighbours within miles you might prefer headphones. The climaxes though are super clean and detailed so not particularly fatiguing to listen to. There’s a booklet with useful info and full text and translation. The SACD physical release can, of course, be played like a standard CD on most CD players and the album is also available digitally as MP3 and lossless in 44.1kHz/16 bit and 96kHz/24 bit versions.
And what did my Elektra think? She thought it was perfect music for an extended nap!
Catalogue information: Chandos CHSA 5375(2)
Britten from Monaco
The Orchestre Philharmonique de Monaco and their conductor Lawrence Foster recently recorded a collection of Britten works to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the composer’s death. It’s a bit of an odd mix but it’s nicely done. The first piece is The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra. This was composed for a commission by the British Ministry of Education to accompany an educational film for schools showcasing the various instruments of the orchestra. I find it hard to imagine that happening now. Anyway, it’s performed here, as it often is, without narration. It’s quite a sprightly and satisfying performance. Continue reading
Daughters of Donbas – CD Launch and film screening
On Friday evening I attended the CD launch for Daughters of Donbas’ new album Songs of Stolen Children at the Tranzac. Let me try and provide some context. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has now been going on for four years and, of course, before that, in 2014, Russia seized the Crimea and territories in the Donbas. The Russians are determined, as they have been since the 18th century, to erase Ukraine as a separate polity and write Ukrainian culture out of the historical record (as they have done with others such as the Crimean Tartars). A relatively recent step in this campaign is the kidnapping of over 20,000 Ukrainian children who have been deported to “re-education” camps in Russia where, cut off from their families, they are trained to be good little Russians. Parallels with events closer to home are a bit obvious. Daughters of the Donbas is a band and a project dedicated to keeping this issue alive. Continue reading
Intriguing recital album from Laura Choi Stuart
Rituals combines songs by Charles Ives, Reynaldo Hahn and William Bolcom around a theme of “living the good life”. The eight Ives songs set texts either by himself or by 19th century English poets in a characteristically Ivesian way. There are folksy bits and hymn tunes (a setting of Arnold’s “West London”) plus some crazy loud piano (“Paracelsus”). Laura Choi Stuart sings them idiomatically and clearly with excellent accompaniment by Tanya Blaich. It’s a vision of the good life rooted in community and collective memory. Continue reading
The Spectre’s Bride
Dvořák’s Svatební košile (The Spectre’s Bride) is a dramatic cantata for three soloists, chorus and orchestra. It tells the story of a pious young woman who is surprised while praying by her thought-to-be-lost fiancé. He takes her on a breakneck journey during which he progressively divests her of her prayer book, rosary and cross. She’s a bit slow to catch on but when he invites her to join him in a graveyard she decides to make her escape. Her place of refuge turns out to be a morgue with a fresh corpse in it. The inhabitants of the graveyard call on the corpse to open the door and give the girl up but just in time she remembers to pray to the Virgin and a chorus of cocks announce the dawn driving the dead back into their graves. It just needs Vincent Price or Christopher Lee! Musically it’s very Dvořák; skilful high Romanticism with some folky touches, especially in the vocal writing. It lasts about eighty minutes and it’s well worth hearing. Continue reading
December
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.
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