Norman Stinchcombe reviews the latest classical disc releases
Donizetti ‘Songs’ Volumes 1 & 2: Brownlee, Alaimo, Rizzi (Opera Rara 2 CDs available separately) ★★★★★
Opera Rara has won the award for outstanding classical record label of the year which is a just reward for its unstinting devotion to rare repertoire, especially the music of Donizetti. Their latest ambitious project is an eight volume survey of Donizetti’s songs, around 200 of them, many of which have never been heard in living memory. It was a labour of love for Opera Rara’s Repertoire Consultant Roger Parker who began it as a Covid lockdown project in 2020 and eventually found him researching archives and collections at home and in Italy, France, Austria, Sweden and Australia. It has resulted in a new edition of the Donizetti solo songs, a collaboration with Ian Schofield, and will be published by Casa Ricordi and made publicly available. We can hear the first two selections now; the first for tenor, sung by Lawrence Brownlee, the second for baritone, featuring Nicola Alaimo, both accompanied on piano by conductor Carlo Rizzi. On first seeing the scores Rizzi was “immediately struck by the huge variety within the collection. Melodic beauty is there, of course, but the songs range from extreme simplicity to those that are complex and experimental”. Both singers excel and show their versatility in songs that in the 1830s, when Donizetti’s Italian operatic career was at its height, focus on archetypally Romantic figures – the world of Walter Scott’s novels and Byron’s poetry is never far away. In the next decade, when resident in Paris and Vienna, the sources become more modern and the harmonies more daring. Both volumes are full of surprises even for those who know Donizetti’s operas well. Opera Rara’s presentation is, as always, exemplary; the CDs and booklets housed in sturdy cardboard cases with the latter containing essays, full texts and translations and individual notes on the dozens of songs.
Donizetti, ‘L'elisir d'amore’: Sierra, Avetisyan, Pinkhasovich. Terfel, Royal Opera House Orchestra & Chorus / Quatrini (Opus Arte DVD) ★★★★★
From the unknown Donizetti to one his best-loved works. The tuneful comic opera has been lucky on DVD with all-star pairings of flighty Adina and lovelorn Nemorino –Netrebko & Villazon, Gheorghiu & Alagna – and a delightfully traditional performance from Glyndebourne. This one tops them all, being beautifully sung, riotously funny and well-staged by director Laurent Pelly. American Nadine Sierra soprano is amazingly sexy and seductive as Adina with a voice to match, all pearly trills and luscious legato. Tenor Liparit Avetisyan, a pot-bellied and jowly Nemorino, looks like a loser but sings like an angel in ‘Una furtiva lagrima’. Boris Pinkhasovich, as his rival Belcore, sings elegantly too. Presiding over the fun is Bryn Terfel’s burly and bumptious Doctor Dulcamara dispensing the elixir and plenty of laughs. The conductor is Sesto Quatrini who keeps up a swift and lively pace with excellent support from orchestra and chorus. Guaranteed to lighten a winter’s evening.
This year is the 150th anniversary of Schoenberg’s birth and two new CDs pay tribute to his work. ‘Pierrot Portraits’: Claire Booth, Ensemble 360 (Onyx CD) ★★★★ uses the composer’s ‘Pierrot lunaire’ as the focus of an album that moves backwards and forwards in time to put that shocking work (to Schoenberg’s contemporaries) into context. Booth’s vocal acrobatics make the work sound as disturbing and weird as it’s meant to be – the vocal equivalent of German expressionist art, of which Schoenberg was an admirer. There’s a very different ‘Pierrot’ from Schumann’s ‘Carnaval’ and Thea Musgrave’s 1985 trio for violin, clarinet and piano depicting Pierrot, Columbine and Harlequin. Ensemble 360’s playing is expert in all the varied styles of the works. Schoenberg-in-context is also the programme of ‘Transfigured’: Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective (Chandos CD) ★★★★ There are four songs by Schoenberg’s contemporaries Alma Mahler, and ‘Maiblumen blühten überall’, for soprano and string sextet, by her teacher Zemlinsky winningly sung by Francesca Chiejina with fine instrumental support. There’s an early Quintet for strings and piano by Schoenberg’s pupil Webern. The central work is Schoenberg’s ‘Verklärte Nacht’, played in its original string sextet form and here opinion may be divided but many listeners will find the Kaleidoscope’s swift, flowing approach a refreshing change from heavy maudlin performances.
Chopin, Debussy, Ravel, Schumann: Peter Donohoe (Somm Recordings CD) ★★★★★
Peter Donohoe is now in his 70s but playing as well as ever and experiencing an Indian Summer in the recording studio with a series of outstanding discs for Somm. This one is built around two sets of waltzes – a selection of fifteen of Chopin’s and Ravel’s ‘Valses nobles et sentimentales’. Donohoe chooses his own order for the Chopin waltzes so that, as says, “the bigger and more virtuoso ones are mixed in with the more intimate ones.” I found his plan very satisfying with plenty of contrasts but without any jarring – the opening lyrical E flat Op 18 is succeeded by the A flat Op 69 No 1 in a way which sounds and feels natural. The famous Op.64 No.1 in D flat major ‘Minute Waltz’ takes a second under two minutes but feels absolutely right, a sparkling Molto vivace without a note being skimped or gabbled. The disc’s opening work, Schumann’s ‘Abegg Variations’, is likewise judiciously paced and Somm’s excellent lifelike recording lets us hear the bass line clearly. In Ravel I find more colour from Jean-Yves Thibaudet and Angela Hewitt’s recordings but Donohoe reveals many details and in his hands the Epilogue is magical. Debussy’s miniature ‘La plus que lente’ is a delightful envoi for the recital.
Bruckner ‘From the Archives’ Volume 4: (Somm Recordings 2 CDs) ★★★
A music magazine recently published a list of recommended Bruckner symphony recordings. I was puzzled by the omission of any by conductor Christoph von Dohnanyi whose Cleveland symphony recordings, the sixth and ninth especially, would be among my recommendations. On Somm we can hear Dohnanyi, now 95, as an up-and-coming conductor in a 1963 stereo radio broadcast of Bruckner’s awe-inspiring fifth symphony. Anticipating his later style Dohnanyi favours a lean sound and flowing speeds – his Cleveland recording is even slightly quicker. The Adagio will be a stumbling block for some. Noble certainly but is it really “sehr langsam”? Bruckner’s String Quintet in F, also with a beautiful Adagio, is poorly represented on disc, all the best recordings are deleted. Here it receives an enjoyable performance (mono 1956) from the Vienna Konzerthaus Players, with Bruckner’s Intermezzo for String Quintet as a bonus.
Dvorak: Melbourne Symphony Orchestra / Martín (MSO CD & SACD) ★★★★★
Recordings by Australian orchestras are usually overlooked, I can only assume through cultural snobbery. The Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, founded in 1906, is older than many in Britain and anyone doubting their ability should listen to the fine new disc of Dvorak’s fifth and sixth symphonies under the orchestra’s chief conductor Jaime Martin. This is the first in a five-disc cycle of Dvorak’s nine symphonies from this partnership and whets one’s appetite for the rest. These two symphonies are, “where Dvorak’s talent begins to full emerge”, writes Martin and it’s a shame we so seldom hear them in the concert hall. The fifth, in the sunny key of F major, is a delight with the MSO clarinets revelling in the folksy opening bars in a movement that revels in Bohemian melodies – listen to the rumbustious horns. The solemn slow movement, cellos to the fore is succeeded by a pulse-racing scherzo, and ending with an initially dark but finally jubilant finale. Dvorak orients the sixth towards Vienna, as also in the seventh, but the Scherzo is pure Bohemia, a driving ‘Furiant’ dance with Martin urging his players on. The orchestra is strong in every department and the recording quality is outstanding.
Rósza & Bartok: Simovic, London Symphony Orchestra / Rattle / Edusei (LSO Live CD & SACD)★★★★
Orchestral players enjoy seeing one of their number step forward as soloist, as do concert regulars, for it reveals the depth of individual talent our orchestras possess. Roman Simovic, the LSO’s leader since 2010, is no stranger to the role having played as a soloist with orchestras around the world, including the CBSO. Here he performs two radically different concertos, Bartok’s second (1938) and Miklós Rósza’s from 1953. Bartok’s is named his second only to distinguish it from a youthful work not performed in his lifetime, it’s really his only authentic one. A tough nut too, sometimes astringent, often ferocious but Simovic finds lyricism there too and the slow movement’s variations are well delineated. Rósza was a composer of brilliant film scores crowned by his Oscar for the epic ‘Ben Hur’. His concerto, premiered by Heifetz in 1956, has a lovely, mysterious slow movement which Simovic revels in and a robustly energetic finale. Simovic’s colleagues give him excellent support under Kevin John Edusei (Bartok) and Simon Rattle (Rósza).