Vocal and Choral

Verdi – Arias
Krassimira Stoyanova; Munchner Rundfunkorchester; Pavel Baleff
Orfeo C 885 141 A

In my journey last year through all of Verdi’s 26 operas I found one thing in common. The most interesting character, in conflict between her love and other, higher moral issues is nearly always the woman: Traviata, Aida, Luisa Miller, Amelia, Elisabetta…, the list is endless. Verdi was very partial to the lead sopranos, even his wife was one. It was true “he murdered sopranos,” he was so demanding and non-compromising: ”Pay attention to the quality of the voice” he so ordered Boito while selecting the right soprano … “to the intonation and above all to the intelligence and feeling.”

Intelligence and feeling could be the trademark of Krassimira Stoyanova, Bulgarian-born, who quickly rose to fame as leading soprano of the Vienna State Opera and is nowadays one of the most sought-after soloists worldwide. This new album is her third solo release, the previous two having won some prestigious awards.

The ambitious program takes us to the very core, the heart of Verdi, to roles of high vocal demands and intense emotional complexity. All of them are a rare treat for a Verdi-phile such as me. Stoyanova’s range is amazing: from the young and innocent Giovanna d’Arco through the tortured and victimized heroine Luisa Miller to the pinnacle of vocal grandeur of Don Carlo, in the supremely difficult and challenging aria Tu che le vanità. Certainly no stranger to these pages, I reviewed her Desdemona back in April 2007, in a DVD of Verdi’s Otello.

Gershwin – Porgy and Bess
Eric Owens; Laquita Mitchell; San Francisco Opera; John de Main
EuroArts Blu-ray 2059634 (also on DVD)

Porgy and Bess was conceived by Gershwin to be an American folk opera. After a preliminary run in Boston, Porgy and Bess premiered in New York City on October 10, 1935 at the Guild Theater, playing only 124 performances. Productions of varying versions were mounted over the years but it was not until 1976 when the acclaimed Houston Grand Opera production, featuring the complete score with an all- black cast, that Porgy and Bess was widely recognized as an opera. That production came to Toronto in 1976 and those of us who attended it well remember that special and unique evening. A driving force behind that Houston production, David Gockley is the executive producer of the very impressive 2009 live production from San Francisco seen here.

The two leads are sung by bass-baritone Eric Owens and soprano Laquita Mitchell. Owens appears at the Met and was seen and heard around the world as Alberich in the Met’s 2010-11 Ring cycle transmissions. Locally, he’s in the current COC production of Handel’s Hercules. Mitchell, whose repertoire also includes Verdi, Puccini and Mozart, is sought after by important opera houses including Los Angeles, Houston, Chicago, Washington and the Opéra Comique in Paris. Included in a perfectly cast production are Karen Slack as Serena, Chauncey Packer as Sportin’ Life and Lester Lynch as Crown.

I was initially concerned about the operatically trained voices enunciating the patois of the text while singing at a speaking tempo. Either they got better at it or I became accustomed to it. The many well-known songs (hard to think of them as arias) are framed by the action and sound spontaneous. The set, choreography and stage direction create a mise-en-scène that immediately draws us into Catfish Row.

All in all, this is a performance of genuine stature and an important release.

Greatest Hits, Vol.1
Elmer Iseler Singers; Lydia Adams
Independent EIS 2013-01 (elmeriselersingers.com)

Recorded and released to mark the 35th Anniversary season of the Elmer Iseler Singers, this disc features some of the choir’s most requested performance pieces. This may be, after all, a choir with one of the longest histories in Canadian choral music. In a previous life as the Festival Singers (founded long before in 1954) the 20-voice professional chamber choir took on the name of its founder in 1979. Directed by Lydia Adams since 1998, the choir has continued to perform and record a variety of works whilst serving as a champion of Canadian choral composers.

This latest offering was expertly recorded by Keith Horner and Robert DiVito in what Horner describes as the “spacious acoustics” of Toronto’s Grace Church on-the-Hill. Peppered amongst favourites by Eleanor Daley, Healey Willan, Allister MacGillivray, Paul Halley, Leon Dubinsky and Rita MacNeil are traditional Mi’kmaq and Inuit chants arranged by the conductor, traditional American songs and spirituals, with a little Schubert and Mendelssohn added for good measure. As always, the choir is impeccable and soloists Anne Bornath, Gisele Kulak, Andrea Ludwig, Alison Roy and Nelson Lohnes shine forth with gorgeous clarity, as do guest artists Shawn Grenke, piano and Clare Scholtz, oboe.

Derek Holman – Ash Roses
Mireille Asselin; Lawrence Wiliford; Liz Upchurch; Sanya Eng
Centrediscs CMCCD 19914

The Canadian Art Song Project was founded in 2011 by tenor Lawrence Wiliford and pianist Stephen Philcox with a mission to build on the rich legacy of Canadian song, especially art song, through performance, recording, commissions and editing. There is no finer example of Canadian art song composers to feature than the English-born and longtime Canadian resident Derek Holman. Holman has written a prolific number of choral works in addition to his opera, oratorio, keyboard, chamber and orchestral compositions. In Ash Roses, two song cycles and two collections are featured in this first all-Holman recording.

Wiliford sings with passion, power, and clear articulation in The Four Seasons, an eight-song cycle commissioned by the COC in memory of Richard Bradshaw. Set to a number of British poems, it is a moving collection rich in lyrical tonality, word painting, contrasting moods and subtle harmonic shifts. In Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal, Wiliford is joined by soprano Mireille Asselin in a virtuosic duet. Asselin shines in the song cycle title track Ash Roses. The at times witty text of Canadian poet Tricia Postle is given a more atonal setting with vocal interval leaps and shifting rhythmic piano accompaniment. Pianist Liz Upchurch is unbelievable in her accompaniments – these difficult piano parts sound effortless thanks to her awesome musicality and technique. Harpist Sanya Eng accompanies Wiliford admirably in the intricate Three Songs for High Voice and Harp.

Holman ends these compositions with simple luscious resonating cadences leaving the listener begging for more Canadian art songs.

Schubert – Winterreise
Gerald Finley; Julius Drake
Hyperion CDA68034

Schubert – Winterreise
Jonas Kaufmann; Helmut Deutsch
Sony 88883795652

Only one of these two new versions of Winterreise seems to be able to take seriously one of Schubert’s most harrowing delineations of despair.

Finley and Drake provide an object lesson in rendering these pieces as more than mere entertainment, whereas Kaufmann and Deutsch seem content with simply providing a well-sung song cycle. Both singers are consummate operatic artists and their pianists are both good but Drake is by far the better at conveying subtle nuances. Kaufmann is certainly an expressive singer but does not yet really have those skills that can project the psychological internalization of drama and tragedy. It is Finley and Drake who have all the essential extra skills in the strategies of lieder singing. These qualities are omnipresent throughout the entire cycle. In the final song, “Der Leiermann,” Kaufmann certainly gives an engaging rendition, carefully projecting to his audience a muted picture of aimlessness. But listening to Finley and Drake we learn how bereft and suicidal the subject really is, making it painfully clear that he has lost all hope and is looking for his death. Mention must be made of the appropriate salon acoustic that crowns the Finley, versus a much larger venue in which Kaufmann appears.

Winterreise is Schubert’s most trenchant metaphor of his own life and tragedy. It is a difficult piece and it is rare to hear such an unflinching probing of this sad masterpiece as Finley’s, which may indeed be the best version ever.

Wagner – Parsifal
Jonas Kaufmann; René Pape; Peter Mattei; Katarina Dalayman; Evgeny Nikitin; Metropolitain Opera; Daniele Gatti
Sony 88883725589

The Met is certainly back on the right track following their dubious and very costly Ring adventure with this stunning, awe-inspiring, memorable and by far more economical production of Parsifal, created to kick off the composer’s 200th birthday festivities. Why? Three reasons:

To begin, acclaimed film director, French-Canadian François Girard, already known in Toronto for his Siegfried for the COC, here envisages a “pervasively gloomy” apocalyptic vision with dark clouds and swirling mists (no doubt inspired by Goya’s frescos), barren grounds bisected with a river of blood and atavistic symbolism thoroughly in keeping with the harrowing story of the Knights of the Holy Grail’s inner doubt and hopelessness.

Next, the choice of Italian conductor extraordinaire Daniele Gatti, a wonderfully talented musical mind who truly presides over this incredibly complex score and conducts it entirely from memory! To my recollection only Toscanini could do that, mainly because he was vain and refused to wear glasses. My experience with Gatti so far has been his memorable Verdi performances, but here he is on an altogether different level. With broad tempi and long melodic lines he sustains a glowing intensity rarely achieved by even the very best.

Thirdly, in the title role, German heroic tenor Jonas Kaufmann is an inspired choice, with a wonderful stage presence and voice of immense sensitivity he becomes a thoroughly committed personification of Parsifal for our age. The distinguished cast is superb: René Pape is synonymous with Gurnemanz, Peter Mattei is simply heartbreaking as the suffering Amfortas and Evgeny Nikitin is terrifying as the evil bloodthirsty Klingsor. As Kundry, an almost insanely difficult female role, Katarina Dalayman is maternally seductive with spectacular vocal power.

This is an immortal production that will resound through the ages.

Franck – Stradella
Isabelle Kabatu; Marc Laho; Philippe Rouillon; Opera Royal de Wallonie; Paolo Arrivabeni             
Dynamic 37692

A child prodigy, a brilliant piano player and composer already in his teens, with a career tightly controlled by his father – until he emancipated himself. No, I am not talking about W.A. Mozart. This unusual career path was also followed by César Franck. The Belgian composer is remembered for his organ compositions that constitute a goodly part of every organist’s repertoire. However, he was just as skilled as a composer of instrumental music with sonatas, a celebrated piano quintet, the Symphony in D Minor and the Symphonic Variations for piano and orchestra plus several operas.

Rarely, if at all staged, Franck’s operas nevertheless deserve our attention. Stradella, his first, was never fully orchestrated and the current recording represents its first public performance.

Alessandro Stradella, the 17th century composer murdered in Genoa, is only nominally connected to the libretto – as this is a work of fiction. Stradella seeks to woo Leonor with his beautiful singing, but not for himself – for the Duke of Pesaro. Of course, he falls in (reciprocated) love and the lovers elope to Rome, pursued by the vengeful Duke. The Duke hires assassins and instructs them to kill Stradella. Here is where this production by Jaco Van Dormael diverges from the original story: the opera actually has a happy ending, as the Duke is so moved by Stradella’s singing, he forgives the betrayal and blesses the union of Leonor and her love. Alas, Van Dormael has decided to reference the murder of the real-life Stradella and has Leonor dying of grief. Stradella then joins her in heaven, as joyous music, hardly appropriate for this tragic ending, plays on.

The staging is beautiful, though at times puzzling – a giant wading pool is the perfect setting for Venice flooded during the Carnival, but it makes less sense as the action moves to a church in Rome. Regardless of the dramatic choices in this production, the music of Franck and beautiful singing by Marc Laho as Stradella make this disc a keeper.