I have to say that I was unreasonably excited to learn about a new CD from Bryn Terfel called Songs of the Sea. I’ve seen Bryn in recital and, besides being a fantastic singer, he’s a big personality and very good when he steps away from classic art song rep and especially when he sings in Welsh. There were also some interesting collaborators on the disk; Simon Keenleyside, Calan, Sting and Fisherman’s Friends for example. Plus there were some interesting language choices. Besides English and Welsh there are songs in Breton and Norn. Continue reading
Soggy Songs of the Sea
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Britten’s Owen Wingrave is a curiously neglected opera. It’s rarely performed live and the only recorded versions are 2 CD recordings plus DVDs of TV productions. The earliest of each feature Benjamin Luxon in the title role and Peter Pears as General Wingrave. The 
There’s a story behind violinist Christopher Whitley’s new solo album Describe Yourself. Entering the 2017 Canada Council for the Arts. Musical Instrument Bank Competition, he found himself required to offer a Canadian composition. The chosen piece was Jeffrey Ryan’s Bellatrix. He was successful and so this album is played on a 
Frank Horvat’s Fractures is a very interesting new CD. It sets eleven texts for soprano and piano on the themes of fracking, environmental degradation and climate change. It’s a tough listen; not because it’s preachy or hard on the ear but rather because there is a degree of irony in the texts, the music and the performance that somehow makes the situations described even more horrible.
The latest Palazetto Bru Zane’s retrieval from the valley of lost things is Louise Bertin’s Fausto of 1831. It’s unusual in two respects. First of all it’s written by a woman (and quite a young one – she was 26) and secondly it’s an Italian language opera by a French composer written for the Théâtre-Italien in Paris; a theatre which produced mainly operas by Mozart and Rossini (its long time artistic director) with a few from other contemporary Italian composers such as Bellini and Donizetti; some composed for Paris, some imports. 
The new CD from husband and wife team Magdalena Kožená and Sir Simon Rattle consists of four sets of folk songs arranged for mezzo-soprano and orchestra; all of them pretty well known. There are the Five Hungarian Folk Songs of Bartok, Berio’s Folk Songs (all eleven of them), Ravel’s Cinq mélodies populaires grecques and Montsalvatge’s Cinco canciones negras.
Tarot is a new recital CD from tenor Timothy Stoddard and pianist Ellen Fast featuring recent works by American composers. There are four song cycles on the record. The first, Mortally Wounded, features settings by Mark Markowski of eight poems by Lorca in English translation. These are interesting and treat Lorca’s quintessentially Spanish themes sympathetically. The music is basically tonal but complex with flamenco inflected rhythms. It’s beautifully sung and played with diction so good that the absence of texts and translations is not worrisome. 
I first came across Russian soprano Ekaterina Siurina as Zerlina in the 2008 video recording of Mozart’s Don Giovanni from Salzburg. She had had plenty of success already in coloratura roles such as Gilda and Adina and was, I thought, the best Zerlina I had come across. Fast forward to 2015 and she sang a very fine Violetta at the Four Seasons Centre opposite her husband Charles Castronovo. A few years on and it’s not terribly surprising that she’s starting to venture into slightly heavier lyric-dramatic territory. This is reflected in her recent album Where is My Beloved? recorded in 2022 with the Kaunas Symphony Orchestra conducted by Constantin Orbelian. 
Unfinished Business is a CD of music by Toronto based composer Tristan Zaba. It’s mostly songs for soprano (McKenzie Warriner) and piano (Paul Williamson) but the second and longest track; Matryoski and Blue Vase is a solo piano piece that plays with different textures and densities; sometimes very spare, sometimes very busy, for twelve minutes. There’s also a shorter, ceaselessly busy piece Swan Dive.
Once in a while one comes across a really impressive new opera and I would put The Lord of Cries; music by John Corigliano, text by Mark Adamo, into that category. It’s an example of how opera is good at telling “big stories”. In this case the base material is Euripides’ Bacchae but Adamo has relocated it to 19th century London and very cleverly layered onto it the core elements of Bram Stoker’s Dracula to create a multi-layered and subtle psychological thriller.
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