The Kreisler Preghiera turns up again in Rachmaninoff Complete Works & Transcriptions for Violin & Piano, a simply stunning CD from the American violinist Annelle K. Gregory and the Russian pianist Alexander Sinchuk (Bridge 9481).

From the opening bars of the Romance in A Minor, a very early student work when the composer was scarcely into his teens, it’s clear that this is going to be a very special album. Gregory has a quite gorgeous tone, is absolutely secure technically and plays with power, richness and assurance. Sinchuk matches her every step of the way.

And what music this is to display such deeply glowing and emotional playing! Given that 17 of the 20 tracks are arrangements or transcriptions it feels like Rachmaninoff’s Greatest Bits at times, but with performances like these, who cares? Rachmaninoff wrote only three pieces for violin and piano – the opening unpublished track, which remained unknown until 1951, and the Deux Morceaux de Salon Op.6; of the transcriptions here from other sources six are by Jascha Heifetz and five are by Fritz Kreisler.

The Preghiera is perhaps a bit more rhapsodic than Kremer’s version, the latter’s feeling more like the prayer suggested by the title, but both are simply beautiful interpretations. There’s a lovely Vocalise in an arrangement by the early-20th-century Russian-American violinist Mikhail Press, whose students included the legendary Dorothy DeLay, and Kreisler’s transcription of the 18th Variation from the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini brings a dazzling CD to an end.

There is more superb string playing on Divertimenti, the new CD from the Miller-Porfiris Duo (millerporfirisduo.org) of violinist Anton Miller and violist Rita Porfiris featuring duos by Robert Fuchs, Ernst Toch and Bohuslav Martinů. The players, who met at Juilliard over 20 years ago, have been playing together since 2005, and you would have to go a long way to hear better duet playing than this.

Fuchs died in 1927, and consequently did not experience the growing Nazi influence in Austria in the 1930s. His students included Erich Korngold and Alexander Zemlinsky (both of whom fled Nazi Europe for the United States) and Gustav Mahler. His 12 Duette Op.60 date from 1898, when Fuchs was on the faculty of the Vienna Conservatory, and are beautifully crafted short pieces redolent of Vienna in the years before the Great War.

Toch was born in Vienna and entered Fuchs’ composition classes at the Conservatory in 1900 at the age of 12. He emigrated to the United States in 1934, settling in Los Angeles and writing numerous film scores. His Divertimento Op.37 No.2 for Violin and Viola is a short (under ten minutes) three-movement work with a brilliant Vivace molto that packs a real punch. Porfiris quite rightly notes the work’s “expressive dissonance and frenetic energy.”

Martinů also emigrated to the United States, in his case in 1941 after being blacklisted by the Nazis in France. He was successful in America, but never really felt happy or settled, finally returning to Europe in 1956. His Duo No.2 for Violin and Viola H.331 was written in 1950, and is a bright, melodic three-movement work with decided Czech rhythms.

Miller and Porfiris are in great form throughout the CD, both playing with a warm, rich tone and with a clarity, spirit and brightness that serves these delightful works perfectly.

The husband and wife team of violist Yuri Gandelsman and pianist Janna Gandelsman are the performers on Russian Giants, a CD of works by Sergei Prokofiev, Dmitri Shostakovich, Mieczysław Weinberg and Igor Stravinsky (Blue Griffin BGR 413).

Prokofiev’s Suite from Romeo and Juliet is a selection of six short pieces from the composer’s Ten Pieces from “Romeo and Juliet” Op.75 for solo piano, which was extracted from the ballet score between its composition in 1935 and its premiere in 1938; the transcriptions for viola and piano were made by Prokofiev’s contemporary Vadim Borisovsky, the founding violist of the famed Beethoven Quartet.

Shostakovich’s Sonata for Viola and Piano Op.147 was the last work the composer completed, mostly written in his hospital bed as he lay dying of lung cancer in the summer of 1975. Replete with references to the composer’s own works as well as to those of other composers, the music belies Shostakovich’s weakened physical condition, its harmonic ambiguity finally resolving with a quiet C-Major ending that the composer called “radiance.”

Weinberg was a close friend of Shostakovich and much influenced by him; indeed, his 1945 Sonata for Clarinet and Piano Op.28, heard here in its official viola version, makes specific references to the latter’s music in the opening movement. Weinberg’s Jewish heritage is clearly felt in the middle movement.

Stravinsky’s brief Elegy for Solo Viola was written in 1944 on a commission from the Pro Arte Quartet violist Germain Prévost in memory of the group’s founding first violinist Alphonse Onnou, who had died earlier that year.

There is fine playing throughout the CD from both players, although the tone of Gandelsman’s1748 Paolo Testore viola doesn’t seem to have quite the dynamic range that it did on his 2012 Hindemith CD. Balance and recorded sound are excellent.

Lagniappe! (the Louisiana Cajun French word for a bonus gift or something extra) is the seventh volume in the series of Offenbach Cello Duets from Human Metronome (humanmetronome.com), this one featuring the Duets Op.19 Nos.1-3 and Op.20 Nos.1-3 in performances by Paul Christopher and his student Milovan Paz (HMP 107-2016).

Offenbach was a virtuoso cellist who earned his living as a performer before establishing himself as a composer. He produced three sets of cello duets, usually of increasing technical difficulty: Op.19-21 and 34 (École de Violoncelle); Op.49-54 (Cours méthodique); and Op.78. The complete Op.49-54 was covered in five of the first six CDs – the final volume was reviewed in this column last September – with Op.21 being included on a separate volume. Christopher notes that they haven’t yet found all of the music for Op.34, so there may well be an eighth CD in the future. I can’t find any mention of a recording of Op.78 anywhere.

Don’t be misled or discouraged by the use of titles like School and Method: these works may have had pedagogical intent behind their composition, but they are full of the melodic invention and beauty that made Offenbach’s operettas such a success, and can – and should – stand alone as concert recital pieces.

Christopher and Paz play as superbly and have as much fun as they did on the previous volume, where Christopher said that he felt the duets “transcend their original purpose and are the high water mark for the cello duets genre.” Everything here continues to support that view.

This whole series adds up to a pure delight for cellists of all ages and abilities.

Thomas Hell has tackled a work with a stormy critical past, in his new recording Ives Concord Sonata (Piano Classics PCL 0112). Subtitled Concord, Mass. 1840-1860, Ives wanted to reflect the changing tide of American literary and philosophical thought in the mid-19th century. Each of the four movements carries the name of a significant figure of the period: Emerson, Hawthorne, The Alcotts, Thoreau. The work is quite large requiring nearly 50 minutes to perform.

Hell provides some useful thoughts on his approach to this piece. Given Elliott Carter’s early criticism of its lack of form, Hell describes the sonata’s components and how its disparate elements actually hold it together. This intellectual commitment to the work is what sustains Hell’s performance through the daunting challenge of the first two movements. The technical demands are considerable. Hell even claims a few of the pages could be the most difficult in all the piano literature.

Ives enjoyed making musical references in this sonata, alluding to material from Beethoven to Stephen Foster along with a little ragtime. It’s a rich work and a challenge to deliver. Hell has a very solid understanding of what Ives is doing, and the benefit of having spent a good deal of time considering it. His real task, however, is to make much of it accessible to the listener at first hearing. On that count he exceeds expectations. Hell plays with dexterity, intention and focus. His grasp of the material is obvious and his ability to convey it is compelling.

Andrew Tyson takes on an enormous task in his latest disc, Ravel, Scriabin – Miroirs, (Alpha Classics Alpha 277). His objective is to give voice to composers wandering through the universe of free-flowing impressionism in search of transcendence over their instrument and its musical forms.

Scriabin’s Piano Sonata No.3 is the first challenge with its daunting stream of keyboard consciousness. The writing is replete with countless inner voices and Tyson masterfully brings them each to the surface for their brief appearance. It’s an amazing technique and quite magical in its effect. Tyson is never completely bound by any rhythmic strictures. He’s clearly at ease with the ebb and flow of Scriabin’s language, even in the second and fourth movements, where stronger tempos dominate.

Ravel’s Miroirs calls for more containment and Tyson senses this innately. His restraint is subtle yet his playing as seductive as ever. His command of colour is remarkable. The Bechstein used in the recording surrenders harp-like glissandos throughout his playing of Noctuelles. La vallée des cloches, similarly, is exquisite for its distant, mellow echoes and brighter tolls.

Scriabin’s Piano Sonata No.10 Op.70 concludes the disc’s program. It’s Scriabin’s final published work in the form. Tyson recaptures the mysticism of the earlier work on the recording and takes it even further. His execution is fluid and unbroken. His playing is passionate and ethereal. He’s a truly gifted artist with an extraordinary bond to this repertoire.

Beth Levin has a distinctive and unmistakable presence at the keyboard. Her newest recording, Bright Circle – Schubert, Brahms, Del Tredici (Navona Records NV 6074) demonstrates how her nearly pedal-less playing can open new perspectives on standard repertoire. Her performance of Schubert’s Piano Sonata No.20 D959 is a good example of how a drier sound benefits the musical material by reducing sustained background harmonies. The resulting clarity emphasizes the core elements of Schubert’s ideas as well as allowing other nuances to emerge unimpeded. The third movement Scherzo is a terrific example of how Levin is able to reset our expectations of familiar material using a relaxed tempo and crisp articulation. This may well have been how early pianos sounded, with their lower string tension and shorter resonance times.

Levin is, nevertheless, a deeply expressive player who never misses an opportunity for dynamic contrast and tonal shading. In the Brahms Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Handel Op.24, Levin uses her light pedalling to great effect in keeping the inner voices of the closing fugue wonderfully accessible. Other variations, No.2 and No.4 in particular, are perfectly supported by an economical and tasteful application of sustained legato playing.

The CD concludes with David Del Tredici’s Ode to Music. Schubert’s often sung An die Musik is the thematic kernel of this work. Del Tredici apparently offered to transcribe a favourite piece for the Dorian Wind Quintet, who responded with the choice of the Schubert Lied. Once completed, the transcription was further transcribed for keyboard by one of Del Tredici’s friends who was so impressed that he wanted his own version for piano performance. While it begins conventionally, the work evolves quickly into its contemporary iteration but does so without ever letting go of its strong Romantic impulse.

Organist Carson Cooman brings another hi-tech pipe organ recording to the market with his new release Andreas Willscher, Organ Symphony No.5 (Divine Art dda 25150). This CD is another performance using the Hauptwerk system whereby digital samples of entire pipe organs and their acoustics are played back from stored memory in live performance at a location other than the original site. In other words, not in the church where the organ resides.

The authenticity of the sound produced through this method is indistinguishable from a recording made in the church, in this case, the Laurenskerk, Rotterdam, Netherlands. The instrument recorded is a Danish build of 1973 by Marcussen & Son.

Cooman has chosen to record the 12-movement Organ Symphony No.5 by German organist and composer Andreas Willscher. It’s a substantial work of 73 minutes and rich with colourful registrations and dynamic effect. Its mildly programmatic subject is “Of Francis’ Preaching about Holy Poverty.” The four movements marked Allegro are each brilliant and thrilling, with bold pedal lines that need durable speakers to deliver them without distortion. The quietest movements are equally impressive for the reverberant space around their sounds. The symphony’s longest movement is half silence, set between long held chords. A meditative injunction comes with this movement and listeners should be prepared.

These Hauptwerk projects are important for the access they offer to instruments whose onsite recording costs would otherwise leave them unheard. Cooman has made an excellent choice of combining instrument and repertoire.

Orlando di Lasso – Laudate Dominum
Studio de musique ancienne de Montréal; Andrew McAnerney
ATMA ACD2 2748

Sing Your Song – Music by Matthew Emery
Amabile Choirs of London
Centrediscs CMCCD 23617

Sixteen unique choral works by Canadian composer Matthew Emery are performed here with passion. An alumnus of London’s Amabile Boys & Men’s Choirs, Emery uses his experience with choirs’ abilities to create soundscapes of shifting harmonies and glorious colours. One of CBC Music’s 30 hot Canadian classical musicians under 30 for 2016, Emery is a musical individualist in his tonal yet offbeat harmonies, word settings and phrasings.

A number of the songs deal with death and parting. In the opening track Sweetest Love, John Donne’s words are set to tonal harmonies with the occasional atonal note sneaking in. Especially moving are the high notes on the word sleep. Likewise in Still Colors (Velvet Shoes), the astounding tight ensemble performance with low and high harmonies drives the reflective mystery of this parting song.

All is not sadness. Let Your Voice Be Heard is a rousing song with a nod to minimalism as the line “let your voice be heard” is repeated as a reminder to be yourself. The Newfoundland folk song Haul on the Bowline has men’s voices working hard to get a boat to shore, while percussion and fiddle add a traditional flavour. The closing title track Sing Your Song is an upbeat work with driving percussion and piano adding to the pop music and sing-along qualities.

All the Amabile Choirs of London give first-class enthusiastic performances. Matthew Emery composes choral music at its very, very best.

Schubert – Winterreise
Matthias Goerne; Markus Hinterhäuser
Cmajor 738008

It is fascinating to observe how new pressures from audiences and technology constantly induce change in the way we consume art. Vinyl and tape having been first supplanted by CD, DVD and Blu-ray, quickly gave way to live streaming and playing hi-fi music on definitively low-fi smartphones. None of this has ever happened without controversy – remember the brouhaha accompanying the introduction of surtitles in most opera houses of the world?

Here is a recording of a conventional voice and piano performance augmented, or diminished (choose your side), by visual projections designed by William Kentridge. Only vaguely related to the music, these graphic designs and animated images seek to appease the multisensory needs of modern audiences. Or are they designed to stop them from checking their Twitter feed or Facebook updates during the concert? Whatever their purpose, they surely did not work for me, detracting from the performance, rather than enhancing it. And what a performance! Goerne, who is surely one of the world’s leading singers of Lieder, especially by Schubert and Mahler, is in fine voice here. Compared to previous recordings, his voice sounds rounder, more velvety and supported across the tessitura, while developing a darker, more intriguing timbre. So, this is a great performance, whether you close your eyes (me) or keep them wide open (some of my ADHD, millennial, image-hungry colleagues).

Puccini – Complete Songs for Soprano and Piano
Krassimira Stoyanova; Maria Prinz
Naxos 8.573051

In the booklet that accompanies this CD Robert Ignatius Letellier writes that these simple song settings “could hardly be more different from [Puccini’s] operas.” Perhaps so; yet it seems to me that an unsuspecting listener, when confronted with any one of the songs here, would immediately cry out: “Puccini!” While the writing of songs must always have been a by-product of his main work, it is remarkable that they date from so much of his creative life. The two oldest are from 1875, when Puccini was in his 17th year; the last is a pompous proto-fascist song which hymns Rome and Victory and which dates from 1919. Of the songs presented 17 are solos, the remaining two are soprano-mezzo duets. Here modern technology allows the soprano to sing both parts.

Krassimira Stoyanova is a Bulgarian soprano, who has sung in many of the world’s leading opera houses. Her repertoire includes Dvořák’s Rusalka as well as the Marschallin in Strauss’ Rosenkavalier and the title role in Ariadne auf Naxos, but the centre of that repertoire is clearly the music of Verdi (and definitely not Puccini). On this recording her voice comes across as full and warm. She does justice to the demands of these songs. Even if Puccini’s songs can never be seen as holding the centre of his work, it would be a pity to be without this recording. Many of the songs are attractive. They would often lead Puccini to further explorations in his operas as the essay in the booklet suggests and documents.

Buxton Orr – Songs
Nicky Spence; Iain Burnside; Jordan Black; Edinburgh Quartet; Nikita Naumov
Delphian DCD34175

The works of the Scottish composer Buxton Orr (1924-1997) were not previously known to me. That is clearly my loss as the songs on this recording are attractive and show an interesting range. The disc opens with a lush setting of a lush poem by James Elroy Flecker. It then progresses to settings of early Scottish poems by Blind Harry, Dunbar, King James I, Robert Burns and John Skinner before turning to the comic worlds of Edward Lear and the Cornish poet Charles Causley. The record then ends with a group of six songs, Songs of a Childhood, again set to Scottish texts. There is an informative essay in the accompanying booklet (by Gary Higginson) but the reference to Burns is misleading. Higginson writes that the words of Tibby Fowler were collected by Burns but it is the tune that is traditional and Burns wrote the words himself (though they may incorporate some traditional elements).

These are all tenor songs and the singer, Nicky Spence, has an attractive lyric voice. He is also sensitive to the different demands of the various songs. There are small accompanying ensembles; the pianist (Iain Burnside) and the clarinetist (Jordan Black) are especially good.

Temps Nouveau
Michèle Losier; Olivier Godin
ATMA ACD2 2720

Aida Garifullina
Aida Garifullina; ORF Radio-Symphonieorchester Wien; Cornelius Meister
Decca 478 8305

Saverio Mercadante – Francesca da Rimini (Pier Luigi Pizzi, direction; Gheorghe Iancu, choreography)
Soloists; Orchestra Internazionale d’Italia; Fabio Luisi
Dynamic 37753

Saverio Mercadante composed some 60 operas, but unlike his contemporaries Rossini, Donizetti and Bellini, he’s completely unrepresented in today’s active repertoire. Francesca da Rimini wasn’t even performed until this world-premiere production at the 2016 Valle d’Itria Festival.

The ill-fated 13th-century adulterous lovers, Francesca da Rimini and Paolo Malatesta, have been depicted in Dante’s Inferno and many operas, notably by Zandonai and Rachmaninoff. Historically, Lanciotto Malatesta killed his wife and brother upon discovering them in flagrante. In Mercadante’s version, Lanciotto instead sentences them to death. Francesca’s father, Guido, rescues them but when Lanciotto tracks them down, they commit suicide.

There’s some lovely music here, particularly Francesca’s Act One aria recalling past pleasures, and her love duet with Paolo, both episodes enhanced by prominent harp arpeggios. Soprano Leonor Bonilla (Francesca), mezzo Aya Wazikono (Paolo) and tenor Merto Süngü (Lanciotto) are dramatically convincing while negotiating the score’s coloratura demands. Bass Antonio Di Matteo adds forceful stature as Guido.

A grey architectural backdrop serves as a wall of the palace, the dungeon and the convent where the lovers die. Wind-blown, flowing robes, gowns and curtains create incessant stage movement. Conductor Luisi keeps the music moving as well, but Francesca still takes over three hours to unfold. What the booklet notes call “Mercadante’s propensity to a slower theatrical pace” likely contributed to posterity’s neglect of his operas. There’s enough good music, though, to make Francesca worth watching and pique curiosity about Mercadante’s many other forgotten works.

Andrea Andermann presents 3 Live Films: Rigoletto in Mantua; La Traviata in Paris; Tosca in Rome
Various Artists; Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale RAI; Zubin Mehta
Rada Film Production 2.110374-77

Firstly a large marquee credit must go to Andrea Andermann who produced these three made-for-television films of Verdi’s Rigoletto and La Traviata, and Puccini’s Tosca. Dreaming big with an uncompromising attention to detail Andermann brought together the finest production team, found classic locales and a stellar cast featuring Placido Domingo, Julia Novikova, Eteri Gvazava, Catherine Malfitano, and of course, the great Zubin Mehta to conduct and a legend, Vittorio Storaro to film it all. Still, one must also confess to wondering how on earth the producer, and directors Marco Bellocchio (Rigoletto) and G.P. Griffi (Traviata and Tosca) were going to make the grandeur of design and scale work for the small screen. More than anything the solution came in the form and miracle of Storaro for it is the cinematographer who made the grandeur of locations look equally grand for television – and therefore DVD as well. His use of lighting to bring lifelike proportion to characters on screen was no less extraordinary as was his ability to make long shots and big close-ups leap out at you.

You absolutely cannot go wrong with perfect scores and librettos in the hands of Mehta, who brought all of this to life aided and abetted by superb (film) direction, casting and the creation of atmosphere so transcendent that it felt as if you had been teleported to the Italy of a time long gone by. And then there was the conjuring of Verdi in the Mantua of Rigoletto, and the Paris of the real Marie Duplessis, the fallen woman Violetta Valery of La Traviata.

In both cases the intense melodrama of Verdi’s works becomes the very epitome of the word “operatic” as he addresses themes of love, betrayal, violence, power and death. Above all there is his genius for matching unforgettable melodies to moments of high drama that sustains his name even today. Of course there seems no one better suited than Domingo to play Rigoletto despite having to sing well below his preferred tenor range, for Verdi cast his principal character here as a baritone. Domingo pulls it off with aplomb. Still he is almost completely upstaged by the pristine soprano of Novikova. A more perfect Gilda there will not be in this lifetime nor is there likely to be a La donna è mobile as devastatingly wonderful as Vittorio Grigolo’s Duke of Mantua.

The music of La Traviata cannot be faulted although it flopped at its Venice premiere on March 6, 1853. And yet the opera – based on the life of Marie Duplessis, written by Alexander Dumas fils in La Dame aux Camélias (1852), grew to become one of the world’s favourite operas. Griffi’s film is just as lyrical and dramatic as the arias, including opera’s most famous brindisi, Libiamo ne’ lieti calici, sung here by José Cura (Alfredo Germont), Violetta’s lover. The extended duet between Violetta and Giorgio Germont and Violetta’s swooning last testament are perfectly nailed by Rolando Panerai and Eteri Gvazava.

Another casting coup appears in the form of Catherine Malfitano who plays the lead in Puccini’s memorable opera and appears to be as inspirational to Griffi in the role of Tosca as Sarah Bernhardt was said to have been for Puccini himself. Her fiery temperament that powers Act II as Tosca confronts Il Barone Scarpia (Ruggero Raimondi) as each uses sex as a weapon until Scarpia dies at her feet is the high point of the opera. Keeping pace with the action, Puccini’s orchestration is at its stormiest forever after as passion is substituted for poetry.

Wagner – Das Liebesverbot
Soloists; Chorus & Orchestra of the Teatro Real; Ivor Bolton
Opus Arte OA 1191 D

Finding a decent position as Kapellmeister with a provincial opera house, 20-year-old Wagner took Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure as a source to write an opera, his second, where a tyrant tried to reform society by banning all fun and lovemaking, but ended up made a fool by a clever, beautiful woman. Das Liebesverbot (Forbidden Love) did get performed in Magdeburg and predictably failed disastrously and was buried for some 150 years, but now rediscovered comes to us from Spain’s Teatro Real, Madrid, in this immensely entertaining, creative and gorgeously colourful show you’ll love. Failure aside, the action is quick-moving, full of surprises and humour, the music full of Italian charm and melody, lively rhythms and all very un-Wagner. We with 20/20 hindsight will be amazed at the young fellow’s uncanny feel for theatre, his writing for voices and ensembles, his orchestrating skill and occasional outcroppings of genius.

Brilliantly directed by Kaspar Holten with an ingenious multilevel set lit with neon lights, stairs, hidden corridors and cavernous spaces that can become a noisy bar in one moment and a nunnery or a prison the next, a young, wholesome, talented cast propelled by conductor Ivor Bolton who, like an energized bunny, moves the whole rip-roaring show like a steamroller. I am gratified by seeing leading lady Manuela Uhl again with her gorgeous and powerful high soprano towering above the cast, but Christopher Maltman as Friedrich the hypocritical tyrant, principal baritone (Cardiff’s Singer of the Year), is a worthy foil. Even the lesser roles are all excellent: Peter Lodahl, Ilker Arcayürek – two strong and sensitive tenors who end up winning the girls – plus the hilarious police constable Ante Jerkunica pining after the luscious subretta Maria Hinojosa.

Vaughan Williams – Riders to the Sea; Holst – At the Boar’s Head
Soloists; Warsaw Chamber Opera Sinfonietta; Lukasz Borowicz
Dux DUX 1307-1308

This fine CD set is an innovative collaboration between Warsaw’s 2016 Easter Ludwig van Beethoven Festival and the Yale Opera Program directed by Doris Yarick-Cross. Riders to the Sea is convincing and gets even better towards the end. The libretto is an abridgement of the celebrated play (1903) by John Millington Synge who, staying in the Aran Islands off the west coast of Ireland, saw a body wash up on shore. Synge was well-versed in local speech and customs and knew the threat of tremendous storms to fishermen. Vaughan Williams’ chamber opera reflects the story’s pathos and resignation in melancholy, restless parallel chords underpinning the idiomatic rhythm and line of the singers’ dramatic recitative. Compared to the play though, folklore and overall Irishness are much reduced with no Celtic music or Irish accents; the music is early modernist with considerable dissonance. The orchestra is less than classical-sized, but directed by Łucasz Borowicz, the Warsaw Chamber Opera Sinfonietta strings are precise and full-bodied. Woodwinds provide evocative solos and added ocean-wave sounds are effective.

Maurya is the mother of five sons lost to the sea. The tragedy becomes unbearable when Kathleen Reveille sings eloquently of the sixth and last, “Bartley will be lost now,” in her rich, haunting mezzo-soprano backed by the wailing women’s chorus. Soprano Nicole Percifield and mezzo-soprano Evanna Chiew as her daughters, and baritone Gary Griffiths as doomed Bartley, emerge as distinct personalities with clear diction and emotional depth.

Gustav Holst’s At the Boar’s Head (1924; the Boar’s Head is a pub) arose from the idea of fitting scenes from Shakespeare’s Henry IV involving the character Sir John Falstaff to English folk-song tunes. To appreciate this one-act comic opera, with material familiar to English audiences then but less so to us now, one must read the libretto beforehand and check out Elizabethan English vocabulary (sometimes bawdy or sexist). Fortunately, Shakespeare’s dialogue and rhetoric are outstanding and with coaching by Yarick-Cross, this cast’s projection and tone are impeccable. As the opera progresses events become more and more tangled as does the music, for example when Falstaff and Doll Tearsheet sing a ballad while young Prince Hal (the future Henry V) delivers an aria with the text of Shakespeare’s sonnet “Devouring time, blunt thou the lion’s paws.” Excitement mounts as Falstaff’s enemies start to appear; I won’t reveal the ending.

Bass-baritone Jonathan Lemalu is spirited and sounds wonderful as Falstaff. Tenor Eric Barry is smooth and pure-voiced as Prince Hal, especially in the sonnets which also include When I do count the clock that tells the time. I would have liked to hear more of Hal’s nasty side in his singing. As in the Vaughan Williams, Nicole Percifield as Doll and Kathleen Reveille as the Hostess are convincing dramatically and musically. With roles for bass Pawel Kołodziej and three baritones the production becomes a feast of low male voices, recommended for those interested in Shakespeare and English song.

Bernard Rands – Vincent
Soloists; Indiana University Philharmonic Orchestra and Opera Chorus; Arthur Fagen
Naxos 8.669037-38

Not every artist’s life can be called operatic. Yet the life of Vincent van Gogh certainly fits the bill. Born into a family dominated by an Old-Testament-God-like father, Theodorus, a preacher, Vincent was destined to fail at everything he tried.

He fails as an art gallery director in Paris. His feverish religiosity first garners him a position as a rural preacher, only to have that zeal undermine the position. His attempts at relationships are pathetic: he tries to marry and “save” a prostitute, only to have his noble intentions rejected. His friendship with Gauguin collapses, leads to (or according to some scholars, not at all) the famous ear-cutting episode. The only constant in van Gogh’s life is the love and support of his younger brother Theo, the source of money, paints and canvasses. Alas, progressive epilepsy and beginnings of mental illness (perhaps with a touch of lead poisoning) defeat Vincent. The final irony is of course the sale of his first paining shortly after his death and then posthumous fame.

This is an epic life, condensed here into two acts of beautifully representative music. The only flaw is the lack of an overture. This element, so brilliantly deployed not so long ago by Bernstein in Candide, is increasingly eschewed by contemporary composers, here to a fine work’s detriment.

Sigmund Romberg – The Student Prince
Petersen; Wortig; Blees; Ezenarro; WDR Radio Choir and Orchestra; John Mauceri
CPO 555 058-2

I presume that those of us who enjoy operetta, and others, are familiar with the many deservedly popular songs from The Student Prince, if only from the movie version featuring the singing voice of Mario Lanza shown again recently on TCM. Sigmund Romberg was born in Hungary, studied in Vienna, emigrated to the USA in 1909 and in 1914 became a US citizen. The Student Prince with lyrics by Dorothy Donnelly opened on Broadway in December of 1924 and ran for an astonishing 608 performances, a record number that stood through the 1920s and 1930s. It even outpaced Jerome Kern’s Show Boat that played for 572 performances. The many memorable songs include the Serenade (Overhead the Moon Is Beaming), Deep in My Heart, Golden Days and, of course, the rousing Drinking Song.

The cast of classically trained singers under John Mauceri, who is at home in all genres of music from symphony hall to Broadway, are well-chosen for their roles. There are nine soloists, the leading roles sung and spoken by Dominik Wortig as Karl-Franz, Anja Petersen as Kathie, Frank Blees as Dr. Engel, Arantza Ezenarro as Gretchen and Vincent Schirrmacher as Graf Hugo-Detlef. This winning, naturally balanced recording of the complete score includes some dialogue and the entr’acte music and opening ballet for Act Three.