Favorites of 2019: Recordings
The following recordings, all first heard in the past twelve months, got stuck on repeat in my player for weeks at a time. In chronological order by musical era:
CHORAL MUSIC
Manuel Cardoso: Requiem, Lamentations, Magnificat and Motets. Cupertinos, directed by Luís Toscano. Hyperion, recorded 2016.
One of the great benefits of the early music revival has been the rediscovery and performance of unjustly neglected works. Manuel Cardoso was a Portuguese composer of sacred polyphony in the early 17th century who was previously unknown to me. This disc, a Gramophone Award winner this year in the Early Music category, offers a selection of his works: Lamentations for Maundy Thursday, a requiem mass, a Magnificat, and several motets. Cardoso's music occasionally features almost Gesualdo-like dissonance, especially appropriate, perhaps, in music that invites us to contemplate suffering and death. The Portuguese group Cupertinos, also new to me, have a distinctive sound, both ethereal and mournful.
SOLO RECITAL
Alessandro Scarlatti & Giovanni Bononcini: Cantate da camera; Il lamento d'Olimpia. Gloria Banditelli, alto, with Ensemble Aurora conducted by Enrico Gatti. Tactus, recorded 1988.
Venez chère ombre. Eva Zaïcik, mezzo-soprano, with Le Consort directed by Justin Taylor. Alpha, recorded 2018.
Eva Zaïcik is a graduate of Le Jardin des Voix, the young artist program of Les Arts Florissants—always a strong recommendation. She has a rich mezzo-soprano with, to my ears, an especially attractive lower register; her wide range is shown to great advantage on this recording. She and her collaborators Le Consort, led by Justin Taylor, have made a selection of French Baroque cantates and cantatilles, which Taylor in his booklet-note calls "chamber tragedies." The pieces date from the early 18th century and generally feature mythological heroines; the composers include Lefebvre, de Montéclair, Courbois and Clérambault. Over half of the pieces are claimed to be world premiere recordings, and all of these performances are revelatory. Lefebvre's "Venez chère ombre" (O come, beloved spirit):
Handel's Last Prima Donna: Giulia Frasi in London. Ruby Hughes, soprano, with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment conducted by Laurence Cummings. Chandos Chaconne, recorded 2017.
An Italian opera singer who came to London in the early 1740s, Giulia Frasi sang in works by a variety of composers. She is best known, though, for her performances in Handel's oratorios, originating the roles of Solomon's Queen, the Queen of Sheba, and First Harlot in Solomon (1749), the title roles in Susanna (1749) and Theodora (1750), and Iphis in Jephtha (1752). She was part of the company that performed Messiah annually at Foundling Hospital under Handel's direction (or, later, in his presence). Charles Burney wrote of Frasi that she "had a clear and sweet voice, free from defects, and a smooth and chaste style of singing; which though cold and unimpassioned, pleased natural ears. . ." [1] Ruby Hughes does not sound cold or unimpassioned, but it would not be unfair to say that she has a similarly pure delivery. Rather than over-emoting, she allows the expressiveness of the music to shine through in selections from Handel, Handel's assistant John Christopher Smith, Thomas Arne, and a name new to me, Philip Hayes. "Why is death for ever late?" from Arne's Artaxerxes (1762):
Fanny Mendelssohn: Lieder. Julianne Baird, soprano, with Keith Weber, fortepiano. Newport Classic, recorded 1998.
Anna Beer's Sounds and Sweet Airs: The Forgotten Women of Classical Music is one of my favorite books of 2019, and it was thanks to Beer's chapter on Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel that I picked up this disc when I spotted it in a record store bargain bin. There are only a handful of recordings solely devoted to Fanny Mendelssohn's songs; this one features adventurous early-music soprano Julianne Baird accompanied on period-appropriate fortepiano by Keith Weber. The notes of the fortepiano have a quicker decay than those of a modern concert piano; the sound is perhaps drier and less lush, and as a result the singer is more exposed. Baird brings purity of tone and simplicity of approach to these surpassingly lovely melodies; her art is to make them sound artless.
Honorable mention
All of the following recordings just missed being included in my favorites; in another year (or on another day) they might have made it. In chronological order by musical era:
Charpentier: Histoires sacrées. Ensemble Correspondances directed by Sébastien Daucé, Harmonia Mundi. A very welcome contribution to the ongoing rediscovery of the music of Marc-Antoine Charpentier, this double-CD (plus DVD) set features oratorio-like sacred dialogues.
Anima sacra. Jakub Józef Orliński, countertenor, with Il pomo d'oro directed by Maxim Emelyanychev, Erato. Although Orliński lacks Philippe Jaroussky's sheer beauty of tone and extraordinary musicality, he gets major points for seeking out for his debut recording excellent sacred music by little-known Baroque composers such as Nicola Fago, Domenec Terradellas, Domenico Sarro and Gaetano Maria Schiassi.
Vivaldi: Musica sacra per alto. Delphine Galou, contralto, with Accademia Bizantina directed by Ottavio Dantone, Naïve. For me, the definitive performances of this repertory are by the Italian alto Sara Mingardo, but Galou makes her own distinctive contribution in this wonderful music.
Handel: Italian cantatas. Sabine Devieilhe, soprano, and Léa Desandre, mezzo-soprano, with Le Concert d'Astrée directed by Emmanuelle Haïm, Erato. Two French sopranos, rising stars of Baroque performance, join forces on an album of dramatic cantatas composed by Handel while visiting Italy in his early 20s.
Alma Mahler: Complete Songs. Lilli Paasikivi, mezzo-soprano, with the Tampere Philharmonic Orchestra, arranged and conducted by Jorma Panula, Ondine. Another exploration inspired by Anna Beer's book about women composers, this disc features Finnish mezzo-soprano Lilli Passikivi as the vocal soloist in Panula's lush Strauss-like orchestrations of Alma Mahler's sixteen surviving lieder.
OPERA
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: La Finta Giardiniera (The Pretend Garden Girl, 1775). Soloists with the Concentus Musicus Wien conducted by Nikolaus Harnoncourt. Teldec Das Alte Werk, recorded 1991.
I had the unfortunate experience of seeing a 2002 SF Opera Center production of La finta giardiniera misdirected by Jossi Wieler and Sergio Morabito, whose contempt for opera, its performers and its audiences was all too clear. For no discernable reason the directors set the opera in a hideous 1960s rec center and required the female singers to spend much of the opera wandering about the stage in their underwear while simulating sexual acts on the (fully clothed) male cast members. The plot didn't help matters: in a fit of jealous rage Count Belfiore has stabbed his fiancée the Marchesa Violante and left her for dead. Unbeknownst to him she has recovered, but fearing renewed assault the Marchesa disguises herself as a servant, "Sandrina," and goes to work as a gardener at the mansion of the town's mayor, the Podestà. A year later the Count is betrothed to the Podestà's niece Arminda and comes to the mansion to receive his blessing for the union. An abduction, a mad scene, lovers getting mixed up in the dark, and a sleep scene follow before Sandrina confesses her true identity and she and the Count are reconciled for a happy (?) ending.
What the appalling production and ludicrous libretto had concealed was that the opera is full of wonderful music. And even the libretto is not quite as absurd as it first appears. In her book Recognition in Mozart's Operas (2006), scholar Jessica Waldoff connects Sandrina's seeking refuge in fainting, madness and sleep with the 18th-century culture of sensibility. In fact, Waldoff shows that La finta giardiniera is one of several loose adaptations of Samuel Richardson's sentimental novel Pamela (1740). Having an opera buffa heroine disguised as a gardener (or another member of the servant class) became a widely adopted device after the success of Carlo Goldoni and Niccolò Piccinni's Pamela opera La buona figliuola (1760).
But most of all, there's the music, written when Mozart was only 19 but already developing the mature artistry that would reach its peak a decade later in his three collaborations with librettist Lorenzo da Ponte. While the libretto of this opera (variously ascribed to Ranieri de' Calzabigi or Giuseppe Petrosellini) is nowhere near that quality, Mozart still manages to find every opportunity for brilliant musical realization.
This live recording from 1991 is strongly cast: the women include Edita Gruberova, Charlotte Margiono, Monica Bacelli, and Dawn Upshaw. Harconcourt's conducting drives the comedy forward but gives moments of reflection and pathos their full due. I'm thankful that encountering Waldoff's book this year inspired me to give this work another chance.
Sandrina's "Geme la tortorella" (The cry of the turtledove), sung by Edita Gruberova:
Update 2021-10-25: Last week we learned the sad news that Edita Gruberova had died at age 74. After an extraordinarily long and distinguished career, she had given her final staged opera performances in March 2019 as Elisabetta in Donizetti's Roberto Devereaux at the Bayerische Staatsoper. In September 2020, with concert halls and opera houses closed due to the pandemic, Gruberova announced her retirement. Fortunately she has left an extensive recorded legacy, including roles in Mozart (the Queen of Night in The Magic Flute, Konstanze in Die Entführung aus dem Serail, Fiordiligi in Così fan tutte, Giunia in Lucio Silla, and, of course, Sandrina), Haydn (Gabriel in Die Schöpfung), Offenbach (the four love-objects in The Tales of Hoffmann), and Richard Strauss (Zerbinetta in Ariadne auf Naxos, Hermione in Die Ägyptische Helena).
Honorable mention
Antonio Salieri: La scuola de' gelosi (The school of jealousy). Soloists with L'arte del mondo conducted by Werner Ehrhardt. Deutsche Harmonia Mundi, recorded 2016.
Count Bandiera lusts after Ernestina, the wife of the merchant Blasio. The Lieutenant, Blasio's cousin and the count's friend, advises the Countess and Blasio to make their partners jealous in turn. If two couples switching partners under the manipulative guidance of a man who stands outside of their entanglements and wants to teach them a lesson seems familiar, it's the plot of the Mozart-da Ponte opera Cosi fan tutte, ossia La scuola degli amanti (That's how they all are, or The school for lovers). And if the scene of the Count propositioning his own wife in disguise seems familiar, it's also a key scene in the Mozart-da Ponte opera Le nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro). But Salieri's opera was composed in 1778, eight years before Figaro and more than a decade before Cosi. That doesn't make it the superior work of art, but it does make it very much worthy of interest. This is a well-performed live recording; most of the soloists are Italian, and conductor Ehrhardt has an excellent sense of pace and comic momentum. The only reason it did not make my list of favorites is that Salieri and his librettist Caterino Mazzolà are not quite Mozart and da Ponte. Still, I will be returning to this opera with pleasure.
Other favorites of 2019:
- Quoted in Richard Luckett, Handel's Messiah: A Celebration. Harcourt Brace, 1992, pp. 159-160.
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