Vocal and Choral

Beethoven – Fidelio
Lise Davidsen; Christian Elsner; Georg Zeppenfeld; Dresdner Philharmonie; Marek Janowski
Pentatone PTC 5186 880 (naxosdirect.com/search/ptc5186880)

Beethoven named his only opera after a young man who doesn’t actually exist, even in the opera. He’s a character that the heroic Leonore uses as a disguise to rescue her husband Florestan from prison. Leonore is a complex role, as challenging dramatically as vocally. Yet it often gets less attention than the role of Florestan, who doesn’t even appear until well over halfway through. 

Here, a commanding performance from the young Norwegian soprano Lise Davidsen puts the spotlight unquestionably on Leonore. Davidsen’s combination of power, virtuosity and beauty, which makes her Act I aria, Absheulicher! (You monster!) so moving, is rare and wonderful.   

Davidsen is supported by a largely terrific cast. In particular, I love how Georg Zeppenfeld brings out Rocco’s humanity, compromised though he may be. Johannes Kränzle makes a satisfyingly nasty Pizarro, and Christina Landshamer is an affecting Marzelline. But Christian Elsner’s ragged, effortful Florestan is a letdown. 

The exquisite Dresden Philharmonic plays with the agility of a chamber ensemble, while the MDR Leipzig Radio Choir is inspired, soaring in the rapturous O welche Lust (Oh what joy). Conductor Marek Janowski propels things forward with buoyant vitality. 

Fortunately, the dialogue has been retained, though it has been judiciously pared down. The singers speak their own lines – no actors or narrators are brought in, as is done too often. Unsurprisingly, this makes for natural, seamless transitions between dialogue and music. Special kudos to Pentatone for including the full text and English translation in the booklet.

Liszt – Freudvoll und Leidvoll
Jonas Kaufmann
Sony Classical (jonaskaufmann.com/en)

Just looking at the photography in the booklet that comes with this wonderful new release from Sony Classical, I was immediately struck by the jolly good mood, frolichkeit and friendliness between the two artists, world-famous German heldentenor Jonas Kaufmann and his accompanist Helmut Deutsch, pianist, Liszt expert and aficionado. This good spirit translates into a happy collaboration shining throughout this record.

Liszt wrote some 90 songs that are difficult to sing, as Liszt treated the voice as he treated the piano: mercilessly extending it to two octaves, sudden fortissimo outbursts, key changes and the like. Kaufmann selected 20 for this release with a coherent title – Freudvoll und Liedvoll meaning joyful and sorrowful – referring mainly to love, because love is indeed sometimes very happy and sometimes very sad as anyone who’s ever been in love knows. And indeed, the most beautiful song, I think, is O lieb, solang du lieben kannst (Love as long as you can) with the famous melody of Liebestraum No.3. Kaufmann’s voice is amazingly flexible to cope with mood changes: from heroic fortissimo to soft and sweet intonation, like the way he caresses the words Freudvoll und Leidvoll.

The spirit of love is indeed manifest in the centrepiece of this collection, the three Petrarch Sonnets. These are written in Italian as opposed to all the other songs which are in German, with unparalleled melodic richness.

A joyful moment for me, and a nice surprise, was the sudden outburst of a glorious Hungarian melody in the song: Die drei Zigeuner, played with gusto by Helmut Deutsch. He is marvellous throughout, playing with ease Liszt’s very difficult accompaniments.

Bizet – Carmen
Anna Caterina Antonacci; Andrew Richards; Anne-Catherine Gillet; Nicolas Cavallier; Monteverdi Choir; Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique; Sir John Eliot Gardiner
Naxos 2.110685-86 (naxosdirect.com/search/2110685-86)

Although Les pêcheurs de perles launched Georges Bizet’s memorable career as an operatic composer, it was Carmen, composed in 1875, which left his indelible stamp on the world. Its premiere so shocked the conservative audience of opéra comique of the day that it almost discontinued its run. Yet the seductive magic that worked through the charm of its melodies, Spanish exoticism of its score and strength of its characters has made it one of the greatest, most enduring operas of all time. 

This DVD, (of the 2009 film) could not have come at a better time, when most of the world’s opera houses still remain closed due to an unrelenting pandemic. What makes it all the more enduring is the fact that it is a production stage-directed by Adrian Noble, with the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique and the Monteverdi Choir conducted by the great Sir John Eliot Gardiner. Of course, you couldn’t ask for a better cast than soprano Anna Caterina Antonacci as the rebellious cigarette girl, Carmen, and tenor Andrew Richards as the honourable corporal in the dragoons, Don José. Or for that matter soprano Anne-Catherine Gillet as the peasant girl Micaëla and bass-baritone Nicholas Cavallier as Escamillo. 

The rich colour of the choruses and orchestration plays a central role. But while Don José, Escamillo and Micaëla have fine arias, Antonacci’s Carmen is the diva of this opera, nowhere more brilliantly expressed than in her Act One Habanera.

Korngold – Der Tote Stadt
Jonas Kaufmann; Marlis Petersen; Bayerische Staatsoper; Kirill Petrenko
Bayerische Stattoper BSOREC1001 (naxosdirect.com/search/bsorec1001)

This release from the Bavarian State Opera launches their new label for in-house video recordings in grand style. Erich Korngold was just 23 in 1920, when he wrote Die Tote Stadt – both the music, and, with his father, music critic Julius Korngold, the libretto (under the pen name Paul Schott). It’s based on a melancholy, dream-suffused novel, Bruges-la-Morte, written almost 30 years earlier by Georges Rodenbach. But there are significant changes, especially to the ending. Now Korngold’s opulent Vienna prevails over Rodenbach’s claustrophobic Bruges. 

The inventive staging by Simon Stone takes full advantage of Ralph Myers’ magically transforming, exquisitely detailed set. Kirill Petrenko leads the splendid BSO orchestra and chorus with a probing intensity that takes us directly to the emotional pulse of Korngold’s sumptuous, turbulent opera. Nostalgic romanticism confronts expressionist modernism. 

Tenor Jonas Kaufmann inhabits the role of volatile, tormented Paul as though it had been written for him. Soprano Marlis Peterson matches Kaufmann for gorgeous singing and convincing acting as Marietta, a free-spirited dancer who reminds Paul of his dead wife. Peterson’s rapport with Kaufmann in the exquisite duet, Glück, das mir verblieb (Joy, that near to me remained) is irresistible.

Baritone Andrzej Filończyk serenades Marietta with a tender Mein Sehnen, mein Wähnen (My yearning, my dreaming) as he leads her in a waltz. The whole time, he’s pushing her around in a shopping cart. It’s one of the many treasurable moments from this brilliant production that stay with me.

Infinity
VOCES8
Decca Classics B0034074-02 (voces8.com)

Trailblazing comforting online choral video performances at the outset of the current pandemic, VOCES8 presents Infinity, a new disc with a soothing, meditative space-inspired theme. Evocatively dubbed “the Rolls-Royce of British a-cappella ensembles,” this eight-voice choir with a 15-year international career enjoys transcending genres. On this record they render the scores of composers of alternative, film, electronic and contemporary classical music. 

The 15-track program includes arranged excerpts from film scores interspersed with a medieval song and eight commissioned works. Collectively, the music admirably showcases VOCES8’s clean, well-controlled, precision English vocal ensemble sound, yet one with character, personality and not without warmth.

Jóhann Jóhannsson’s A Pile of Dust is an example of what one can expect on the album. Driven by the ensemble’s vocal pacing, its climactic middle section miraculously builds relentlessly higher and higher before just as relentlessly slowly resolving, settling down in quiet half notes. Other highlights include In the Shining Blackness (2016), London composer Benjamin Rimmer’s searching, challenging-to-sing double-SATB score. In keeping with the outer space theme, Nainita Desai’s tonal My Mind is Still, for voices, solo violin, piano and bowed vibraphone, is apparently sprinkled with fragments of recorded sound from Sputnik, humanity’s first satellite.

I found singer-songwriter and electronic producer Kelly Lee Owens and Sebastian Plano’s Find Our Way, skillfully arranged by Jim Clements, particularly moving. Exquisitely sung by VOCES8, it was so reassuring after a rough day that it required a third listen.

Duo della Luna: Mangetsu
Susan Botti; Airi Yoshioka
New Focus Recordings FCR 305 (newfocusrecordings.com)

A rare ensemble combination of voice and violin, Duo della Luna presents an album that is sonically beautiful and contextually adventurous. Mangetsu is dreamy and poetic yet cutting edge and experimental. The thread that connects a variety of compositions on this album is the unique ensemble sound throughout: deep, eloquent, potent. Susan Botti (voice/composer) and Airi Yoshioka (violin) venture into themes of life and creation, imagination, female power and love with a magical artistic rapport. 

The album opens with Botti’s dreamlike multi-movement title work. The wordless sections (“mangetsu”) are nested in between the movements with poems describing the moon and the ethereal world of childhood (Shikibu, Yeats, de Saint-Exupéry). The result is music that is willowy and sensual, a luring mystery. Botti explores the possibilities of voice and violin interactions to a great degree but always in the service of the poetry. Yoshioka’s violin playing is simply gorgeous, the colours and the precision equally alluring. 

The rest of the album consists of Botti’s innovative arrangements of selected Bartók Duos for Two Violins, followed by Kaija Saariaho’s intimate Changing Light. Linda Dusman’s Triptych of Gossips, incorporating a fancifully rhythmical poem by Serena Hilsinger, is a chamber of curiosities of extended techniques and a great sonic adventure.

There is a certain kind of magic that happens when the music is expressed in so few voices. The sound becomes unadorned and pure, and these two performers take full advantage of it.

Listen to 'Mangetsu' Now in the Listening Room

On the Wings of Song
Kira Braun; Peter Krochak
Independent (kirabraunsoprano.com)

The soprano Kira Braun has been a performing soloist since just 2014. Yet she has already released six recordings – five with pianist Peter Krochak – the latest of which is, very possibly her best. Picking up from where their last album The Echoing Air left off, On the Wings of Song – with more art songs by Poulenc, together with works by Mendelssohn and Obradors – is a ravishing duet between a singer who excels at being both a lyric and dramatic soprano and a pianist who springs and leaps with much agility and nuance.   

All the songs receive terrific performances and although the program is weighted slightly in favour of Poulenc and Obradors, Mendelssohn’s Wanderlied is particularly radiant – perhaps predictably so, given Braun’s German heritage. She strikes an ideal balance between a certain compassion and sophistication, something that makes Mendelssohn seem quite ideally suited for Braun as she delivers his songs with affectionate communication of the poetry. Her command of Poulenc is unrivalled and she proves this with her airy sculpting of Les chemins de l’amour. She also grows into the characters of Obradors’ songs with great feeling and intensity.  

Krochak’s contribution to the unique musicality of this disc cannot be overestimated. Being a singer himself seems to give him an added edge over others who might have accompanied Braun. This is what gives his playing a beguiling refinement, enabling him to traverse this repertoire with judicious melodiousness and delicacy.