Vocal and Choral

Walter Braunfels – Lieder/Songs
Marlis Petersen; Konrad Jarnot; Eric Schneider
Capriccio C5251

Walter Braunfels was a highly esteemed composer of operas between the two world wars and was later renowned for his religious choral music. Yet owing to his ancestry (his grandfather had been born Jewish) Braunfels ultimately had the misfortune of having his professional career terminated and his music marked as “degenerate“ by the Nazis. Adding insult to injury, his late Romantic style fell into disfavour after World War II, a time when modernism was gaining a much stronger foothold.

Hence, this disc of his complete lieder featuring baritone Konrad Jarnot and mezzo-soprano Marlis Petersen with pianist Eric Schneider on the Capriccio label is a worthy means of righting past injustices. Braunfels had little interest in solo vocal music during his later years, so the works on this recording are all from the early part of his career, spanning a 30-year period from 1902 onwards.

Staring off with the set of Sechs Gesänge Op.1, Jarnot offers a compelling and sensitive performance of these dark and brooding miniatures. Indeed, the term “miniature” seems to apply to most of the songs on this CD; only one reaches the four-minute mark while several are under a minute in length. Despite their brevity, these works are a wonderful study in contrasts. Petersen’s lyrical performance of the two versions of the Federspiel suites, each song a musical depiction of a bird, from the common nightingale to the more exotic wagtail – is all lightness and charm. Not surprisingly, certain songs exhibit influences of other composers, most noticeably Richard Strauss in the lushly romantic Herbstgefühl – and is that a bit of Brahms in Abbitte from the Lieder Op.4?

Throughout the disc, Schneider handles the elegant piano writing with much finesse.

While this CD may not feature the best of Braunfels’ music nor be the most ideal introduction, it does provide a degree of exposure to a composer whose music most decidedly warrants greater recognition.

Stephen Chatman; Tara Wohlberg – Choir Practice
University of British Columbia Opera Ensemble; Nancy Hermiston; UBCSO; Jonathan Girard
Centrediscs CMCCD 22616 (musiccentre.ca)

Anyone involved in community choirs will appreciate this lighthearted parody of the personalities we both encounter and display during rehearsals; from establishing a pecking order amongst ourselves to our complicated relationships with music directors, for better or worse. Stephen Chatman, well familiar with the milieu, and his writing partner Tara Wohlberg exaggerate the dynamic hysterically in this one-act opera, premiered and recorded at the University of British Columbia.

Under the direction of faculty members Nancy Hermiston and Jonathan Girard, the opera ensemble and instrumentalists clearly enjoy quite a lark with the performance, producing dissonant chaos, artless arpeggios and pursuing their own agendas with opinions on repertoire, with a liberal sprinkling of famous musical snippets from favourite pieces that serve as insider jokes for the audience as they recognize quotes from Mozart, Wagner and Philip Glass. Sexual innuendo and double entendre abound as well, in ridiculous manifestations with appearances from characters such as the clown, the diva, the belly dancer and the stutterer. Of course, eventually, out of the cacophony and bad behaviour, conductor “Willy Stroker” patiently coaxes out a harmonious and unified performance with the help of one of his more “visionary” choristers. Simple, unabashed fun and slapstick entertainment.

Carlisle Floyd – Wuthering Heights, An Opera in Three Acts
Jarman; Markgraf; Mentzer; Rideout; Buck; Shelton; Florentine Opera Company; Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra; Joseph Mechavich
Reference Recordings FR-721SACD (referencerecordings.com)

In 1955, soprano Phyllis Curtin was the first Susannah in what would become Carlisle Floyd’s most performed opera. Floyd then composed an aria for Curtin’s New York recital, setting words of Cathy Earnshaw from Emily Brontë’s classic novel. The fervent aria, I’ve dreamt in my life, inspired the Santa Fe Opera to commission this full-length work, the aria appearing in the second of the opera’s three acts. In 1958, Curtin created the role of Cathy in Santa Fe and New York, yet this two-CD set is the opera’s first commercial release, recorded in concert in January 2015, with Floyd, in his 89th year, acting as artistic advisor.

Wuthering Heights surely merits many more productions than it’s received in the past, with listener-friendly melodies leading to rhapsodic or powerful cinematic-style climaxes, supporting intensely dramatic characters and confrontations. Floyd’s self-written libretto omits the novel’s many chapters about Heathcliff’s childhood and later life, the opera ending with Heathcliff’s lament over Cathy’s death.

Among the cast, only the bronze baritone of Kelly Markgraf as Heathcliff stands out, though to be fair, the poorly balanced “hybrid surround-sound” reduces the clarity and presence of all the voices, the orchestra often submerging the distant-sounding singers. The accompanying libretto is therefore essential for following the action. Nevertheless, this premiere recording should help realize Floyd’s hope, expressed in his booklet notes, that it “will result in new audiences here and abroad.”

Zachary Wadsworth – The Far West
Lawrence Wiliford; Luminous Voices; Timothy Shantz
Bridge Records 9466 (bridgerecords.com)

Alessandro Scarlatti – La Gloria di Primavera
Moore; Ograjenšek; van der Linde; Phan; Williams; Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra & Chorale; Nicholas McGegan
Philharmonia PDP-09

Alessandro Scarlatti was a major composer of the early 18th century, particularly known as a composer of opera. Since then his work has virtually disappeared. La gloria di primavera is not an opera but a serenata composed to mark the birth of the Archduke Leonard, the son of the emperor Charles VI, in 1716. Structurally the work is like an opera seria, with its alternation of recitatives and arias (mostly da capo), only one duet and few ensembles. The characters are allegories of the four seasons: Spring (the mezzo Diana Moore), Summer (the soprano Suzana Ograjenšek), Autumn (the countertenor Clint van der Linde) and Winter (the tenor Nicholas Phan). The four cannot agree on who can take the credit for the birth of the baby and they agree to ask Jove (the bass-baritone Douglas Williams) to adjudicate.

The singing and the orchestral playing on this CD are splendid but overall my sense is that the work does not represent Scarlatti at his best. The section near the end contrasting the devastation caused by the War of the Spanish Succession with the peace established in 1713 (the Peace of Utrecht) is splendid, but the basic plot strikes me as pretty flimsy.

La Pentecôte: Bach – Cantates 68, 173, 174, 184
Mauch; Bertin; Daniels; Sarragosse; Montréal Baroque; Eric Milnes
ATMA ACD2 2405

Ferdinando Bertoni – Orfeo
Genaux; Lombardi-Mazzulli; Petryka; Accademia di Santo Spirito de Ferrara; Ensemble Lorenzo da Ponte; Roberto Zarpellon
Fra Bernardo FB 1601729 (frabernardo.com)

Ferdinando Bertoni’s Orfeo ed Euridice was first performed in 1776, 14 years after Gluck’s opera on the same subject. The two operas use the same libretto (by Calzabigi) and, in both cases, the role of Orfeo was first sung by the castrato Gaetano Guadagno. Bertoni was clearly aware of the Gluck opera and the two works have a great deal in common: no more da capo arias and an increased role for the orchestra and for the chorus. No one is likely to prefer Bertoni’s work to that of Gluck: it lacks the aggressiveness of the Furies or the celestial calm of the Elysian Fields or the pathos of Orfeo’s lament when he loses Eurydice for the second time. The English 18th-century musicologist Charles Burney once wrote that Bertoni’s operas “would please and soothe by their grace and facility, but not disturb an audience by enthusiastic turbulence.” The comment is a little snarky and certainly very English but not altogether unfair.

Casting a singer for a role created by a castrato always involves problems. John Eliot Gardiner has both performed and recorded Gluck’s opera and has always used a countertenor in the main part. He argues that casting a female mezzo or alto constitutes a “deplorable” distortion. But we don’t really know what an 18th-century castrato sounded like and we have no guarantee that a modern countertenor comes closer than a female singer. In this recording the part of Orfeo is taken by the mezzo Vivica Genaux and she is splendid.

It is probably true that Bertoni “never had sufficient genius and fire to attain the sublime” (Burney again) and that he was not a major composer like Gluck. Still, there is plenty to enjoy in this recording. Recommended.