Norman Stinchcombe reviews the latest classical CD releases
Meyerbeer ‘Le Prophète’: Soloists, Lyon Opera Chorus, Mediterranean Youth Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra / Sir Mark Elder (LSO Live 3 CD & SACD) ★★★★★
Premiered at the Paris Opera in 1849 Giacomo Meyerbeer’s grand opera ‘Le Prophète’ was huge in every way – length, ambition, scale and success. Its five acts lasted over six hours with elaborate staging and spectacular effects; the first use of electric arc light to represent the blazing sunrise, a full-size skating rink and an explosive ending when a German palace is blown up and everyone perishes in the flames. Wagner sneered about “effects without causes” but then nicked the ending for the climax of ‘Götterdämmerung’. Times and tastes change and grand opera is hardly performed now. No performances of ‘Le Prophète’ exist on DVD and the only full scale recording on disc – the 1970s showcase for Marilyn Horne and conducted by her husband Henry Lewis – has been deleted. Congratulations then to LSO Live for giving a new generation of listeners a chance to hear a monument of grand opera. Shorn of its visual excesses, this concert performance, recorded live at the Festival d'Aix-en-Provence last summer, fits snugly onto three well-filled discs and lets us concentrate on the excellent orchestral playing, choral singing and soloists.
The opera was inspired by the true story of John of Leiden, an innkeeper who was converted to Anabaptism and as a charismatic preacher sparked a revolution in Münster and, when overcome by megalomania, proclaimed himself king before his inevitable downfall and death. Meyerbeer focuses more on family than politics and a successful performance hinges on its principal trio of soloists playing Jean de Leyde, his plucky beloved Berthe and his formidable mother Fidès. American tenor John Osborn, Armenian soprano Mané Galoyan and American mezzo-soprano Elizabeth DeShong all rise to the formidable vocal challenges with distinction. Fidès requires a combination of Amneris and Brünnhilde and the part was owned by Marilyn Horne and no one will ever match her. It’s credit to DeShong that she’s not totally eclipsed. Listen to her and Osborn’s closing duet, with chorus, ‘Ah! viens, divine flamme’ as Münster palace collapses about them and you’ll hear what I mean. Galoyan is a passionate and youthful Berthe more convincing than the occasionally squally Renata Scotto (for Lewis) captured too late in her career. The minor roles are well taken and the choral singing is top notch as when the Lyon Opera forces are joined by the Maîtrise des Bouches-du-Rhône (Children's Choir) in ‘Le voilà, le roi prophète’. Sir Mark Elder ensures that the big score never sags and there are no longueurs while the LSO can charm in the pastoral episodes, swoon in the love scenes and swagger in the gigantic set-pieces. Fine presentation and sound help make this one of the outstanding classical releases of 2024.
Mahler, Symphony No.3: Jennifer Johnston, Women of the Minnesota Chorale, Minnesota Orchestra / Osmo Vänskä (Bis 2CD /SACD) ★★★
This recording, made in Minnesota’s Orchestra Hall in 2022, completes Osmo Vänskä’s Mahler symphony cycle which began in 2015. It has been an uneven one, reflected in the critical response to it, and I believe that is because Vänskä’s approach has been tailored to each individual work without an over-arching and consistent vision. If you want Mahler white hot, febrile and dyonysian then Bernstein and Tennstedt will deliver. For a cooler more analytical approach, with Mahler seen as precursor of the Second Viennese School, Sinopoli and Boulez provide stimulating insights. Vänskä’ is on the cooler end of the spectrum but also with Mahler’s lyricism and luscious melodies given their due. Here the symphony’s gigantic opening movement lacks the tremendous energy, and terror, that Bernstein and Tennstedt bring. The central movements work best, full of charm and light of touch with rapt singing from Jennifer Johnston. The glorious finale is broad and winningly played by the Minnesota forces. Vänskä’s Mahler cycle is consistent in one respect – it is by far and away the best recorded. The transparency of Bis’s recording, especially in SACD format, is stunning, with delicate details, often inaudible elsewhere, located in a lifelike aural picture. It’s been a triumph of digital engineering.
Eric Coates, ‘Orchestral Works, Vol. 4’: BBC Philharmonic / John Wilson (Chandos CD) ★★★★
John Wilson’s broad tastes in music have recently led him into award-winning recordings of symphonies by Rachmaninoff and Korngold and fine forays into French classical repertoire. He has, however, never forgotten the music with which he made his name – Hollywood film scores, great Broadway musicals and that niche known as “light music”. The master of the form was English composer Eric Coates (1886-1957) and anyone living in 1950s Britain will be able to hum his ‘Calling all Workers”, the theme to the Home Service’s show ‘Music While You Work’. In this fourth CD Wilson starts with the jolly ‘Music Everywhere’, a march used as the signature tune to early commercial television channel Rediffusion, but then concentrates on dance music from the waltz ‘Footlights’ to the ‘Four Centuries Suite’ a pastiche of dance forms from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries. The disc’s highlight is the inventive and witty nine-minute suite ‘The Three Bears’, a birthday present for the composer’s four-year-old son, with Goldilocks’ adventures played by the BBC Philharmonic under Wilson obviously enjoying themselves.
Weinberg, String Quartets Volume 4: Arcadia Quartet (Chandos CD) ★★★★
The music of Mieczysław Weinberg, the Jewish composer who fled his native Poland to communist Russia to escape from the Nazis, has had a welcome renaissance in recent years. His symphonies have been championed by the CBSO under Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla and his concertos, ballets and musical suites have been extensively played and recorded. The Arcadia Quartet’s survey of his String Quartets has provided, incidentally, interesting comparisons with those by Weinberg’s friend and musical mentor Shostakovich. This fourth volume in the series features Quartets Nos 6, 13, and 15. Quartet No.6 was composed in 1946 and is perhaps the finest of his early quartets, daringly angular and dissonant, so falling foul of the cultural commissars and subsequently banned. Weinberg didn’t compose another quartet until 1975, after the death of Shostakovich. No.13 (1977) is in a single movement, as was Shostakovich’s No.13 (1970) and is an intense quarter of an hour. No.15 (1979) leaves interpretation to the players – there are no titles, metronome markings or indications of expression – but the Arcadia’s cool and gnomic reading sounds convincing. The recording at Potton Hall in Suffolk, produced and engineered by Jonathan Cooper, is impressively life-like.