So what do you get when you try to use music to explore The Ultimate Question of Life the Universe and Everything or at least that part of it that deals with epistemology and metaphysics and the relationship between music and text? Maybe you get something like Kate Soper’s The Understanding of All Things which consists of three works separated by two improvisatory passages.
James Kallenbach’s 2017 work Antigone: The Writings of Sophie Scholl and the White Rose Movement is a sort of cantata for female voices and cello quartet on the theme of what we must/can do when the diktats of authority clash with what we know to be undeniably just. The piece lasts just over half an hour and intersperses the words of Sophocles’ Antigone with those of Sophie Scholl. It’s tremendously effective and moving. The texts fit seamlessly and the soundscape of female voices (the Lorelei Ensemble collectively and singing various solo parts) and four cellos seems really apt as well as being rather beautiful in a meditative sort of way. Beth Willer conducts
Deutsche Grammophon has just re-released the recital by Bryn Terfel and Llyr Williams that was recorded live at the Verbier Festival in 2011. It’s a generous package. It kicks off with a couple of exquisitely sung Schubert songs which are followed by Schumann’s Liederkreis Op.39. This is gorgeous lieder singing with the voice sounding very fresh, the diction spot on and lovely accompaniment.
After the interval there’s Ibert’s Chansons de Don Quichotte and Quilter’s Three Shakespeare Songs. These too are beautifully done. Then it’s on to the lighter stuff that Bryn always seems to throw in on these occasions and which does help making listening to the recording seem more like being at a live concert. Among other things there’s a lovely Ar Hyd y Nos and The Green Eyed Dragon. You have to admire a singer who can manage four languages with such clarity and feeling and still be personable and funny.
Mr. Emmet Takes a Walk is the latest in the series of rereleases of works by Peter Maxwell Davies performed by the Manchester ensemble Psappha. The work premiered in 2000 and was recorded in 2005 and it’s the composer’s penultimate work for the stage. (FWIW I’ve heard five of PMD’s stage works but never seen one performed).
The libretto, by David Pountney, describes what goes on in Mr. Emmet’s head as he prepares to commit suicide by having a train run over his head. It’s a series of blackly comic episodes including. negotiating a deal with Hungarians in a Japanese hotel, a sinister encounter with a heating engineer, a cabaret act and more. The scenes are interspersed with pre-recorded lists of “things to remember” including “things to dislike” like Americans and New Labour. Like other PMD pieces the instrumentalists are sometimes incorporated i the stage action.
Stories Out of Cherry Stems is a recording of four works for soprano and various accompaniments written by American composer Peter Dayton for soprano Katie Procell. There four works are:
So continuing my exploration of music by contemporary female composers I listened to Rebecka Sofia Ahvenniemi’s Soundtrack for an Imaginary Opera. Ahvenniemi is both a composer and a philosopher who is inviting us, in this work, to reflect on opera as a social construct as much as text and music. There’s lots of information on what she’s getting at plus all the texts at this link.
The texts here are a mix of fragments from opera and other works plus a made up “operatic language” which is a sort of cod Italian. The pieces are all very different with the soundworlds created by what the composer calls “musical dumpster diving”. So, in the first track; “Beauty Hurts”, which riffs off Monteverdi’s Orfeo there are bits of “Monteverdi like” music mixed with strings slipping from arpeggios into slides plus lots of percussion and synthesizer. The second track; “Punish Me”, uses a variety of vocal techniques; speech, whispering, something akin to Sprechstimme and a kind of pop style, backed up by booming percussion and shimmering strings. Continue reading
Donizetti’s three “Tudor Queen” operas; Anna Bolena, Maria Stuarda and Roberto Devereux (of which, despite the title, the real star is Elizabeth I) are often seen as a sort of trilogy and have occasionally been performed as such with a single soprano starring in all three. It’s a feat Sondra Radvanovsky managed at the Metropolitan Opera in the 2015/16 season. It’s not particularly surprising then that she should have been sought after by Lyric Opera of Chicago to star in a show featuring the final scenes of each opera which was recorded live at the Lyric in December 2019. Continue reading
The latest release in the CD/book series from the Palazetto Bru Zane is Saint-Saëns’s 1893 opéra comique, Phryné, loosely based on an incident in the life of the famous 4th century BCE courtesan. It’s a two-act piece lasting about 65 minutes. The original was given with spoken dialogue, but as so often with this genre, recitatives (here added by André Messager in 1896) have been used in this recording, as they were in most contemporary performances.
The plot is straightforward enough. Dicéphile is a rather pompous magistrate and has just been honoured by the city with a bust. His nephew/ward Nicias is in love with Phryné, but also broke and about to be arrested for debt. With the help of Phryné’s servants, he beats up the officials sent to arrest him and hides in her house, where, after the usual confusion, she admits to being in love with him. Dicéphile shows up to find that his bust has been disfigured with a wineskin and remonstrates with Phryné, who quickly changes the subject to her upcoming trial on a charge of impiety. Dicéphile is overcome by her (obvious) charms and agrees to drop the charges. He also agrees to share his fortune with Nicias and all live happily ever after. Continue reading
Hans Abrahamsen’s let me tell you is a work for orchestra and soprano setting text arranged by Paul Griffith from Ophelia’s lines in Hamlet. It was written for and dedicated to Barbara Hannigan who recorded it in 2015 (I think) with the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks and Andris Nelsons.
It’s a piece in seven sections of varying moods expressing different aspects of Ophelia; both in the play and in the afterlife of the character in paintings etc. Generally the music sits on the fractured edge of tonality with a melodic line that owes something to folk music. Sometimes it’s extremely slow with a bassy, brooding air and other times it’s bright and busy.
So continuing my exploration of somewhat off the wall contemporary Icelandic music I come to Jóhann Jóhannson’s “oratorio” Drone Mass. The inspiration and textual base is the gnostic “Coptic Gospel of the Egyptians” discovered in 19435. These appear to be very obscure texts and Jóhannson really just uses syllable combinations from them to create a series of vocalises. These are then set for string quartet, eight member choir and electronics.
The musical style is minimalist in a way that’s a bit like Górecki or Pärt but with electronics. It’s quite hypnotic with some really tectonic bass supplied by the electronics in places. The vocal style varies from something like renaissance polyphony to something more rhythmically articulated. It’s the sort of music one easily gets sucked into. Across the 50 minutes or so of music there’s enough variation of style to keep things interesting.
operaramblings 