11 May 2021

RECORDING REVIEW: Ludwig van Beethoven & Robert Schumann — TO MY DISTANT BELOVED (Kindra Scharich, mezzo-soprano; Jeffrey LaDeur, piano; MSR Classics MS 1762)

IN REVIEW: Ludwig van Beethoven & Robert Schumann - TO MY DISTANT BELOVED (MSR Classics MS 1762)LUGWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770 – 1826) and ROBERT SCHUMANN (1810 – 1856): To My Distant Beloved – Love and Life Cycles for Mezzo-Soprano and PianoKindra Scharich, mezzo-soprano; Jeffrey LaDeur, piano [Recorded at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church, Belvedere, Tiburon, California, USA, 18 – 20 February 2019; MSR Classics MS 1762; 1 CD, 74:10; Available from MSR Classics, Amazon (USA), and major music retailers]

For those who love song, the act of singing, whether with one’s own voice or with one’s heart, is as natural—and as necessary—as breathing. To sing well, which is to sing in a manner via which melding music with text facilitates an avenue of communication that transcends notes and words, is an achievement that can be cultivated but never manufactured. To sing Art Songs well, to elevate the relationships linking music and words to their highest potential, natural gifts must be nurtured and refined, not for a season in practice rooms and lecture halls but throughout an artist’s performing life. For a conscientious champion of singing, an Art Song recital, no matter how accomplished, is always a momentary oasis, not a destination. Whether in new repertoire or new perceptions of much-travelled songs, the journey goes on, complete satisfaction always beyond the singer’s grasp.

Presented by MSR Classics in a warm, bright acoustic in which tones bloom as in a meticulously-engineered recital hall, mezzo-soprano Kindra Scharich’s and pianist Jeffrey LaDeur’s recording of music by Ludwig van Beethoven and Robert Schumann, To My Distant Beloved, is unmistakably a beginning. This is not to suggest that this is in any way a beginners’ disc. The artistry heard in these performances exhibits individual and collaborative maturity, but there are never pretensions of interpretive finality. Scharich and LaDeur approach the works on this disc with the cooperative spirit of chamber musicians, paradigms of leading and following discarded in a common pursuit of shared psychological engagement. The extraordinary talents of both performers are evident in every note of this music, but the fusion of their skills transforms this disc from a well-sung, well-played recital into a release of enduring significance in the history of recorded Art Song. These emphatically are well-sung, well-played performances. More remarkably, these are traversals of well-known music in which notes and words sound wholly new and conspicuously personal.

Beethoven was not as prolific in the genre as some of his contemporaries and successors, most notably Franz Schubert, yet he exerted indelible influence on the evolution of German Lieder, perhaps most notably by devising the through-composed ‘Liederkreis,’ a cycle of closely-related songs focused on various incarnations of a common psychological theme. Less celebrated by the broader musical community than his symphonies, sonatas, and string quartets, Beethoven’s songs are rightly prized by singers. His trailblazing Liederkreis An die ferne Geliebte was conceived during one of the most trying periods in Beethoven’s life. Unmarried, his career as a virtuoso pianist unraveling due to growing deafness, and battling his widowed sister-in-law for guardianship of her son, the composer coped with his struggles via music, his creative output diminished but never wholly disrupted by strife. A tormented quest for lasting love occupied Beethoven throughout much of his adult life and found in An die ferne Geliebte a sublime outlet that, as performed by Scharich and LaDeur, continues to powerfully promulgate the wrenching emotions of unfulfilled longing.

Partnered by LaDeur as though they were singing a duet, Scharich phrases the opening song of An die ferne Geliebte, ‘Auf dem Hügel sitz ich spähend,’ with the sort of eloquent simplicity expected of a violinist playing the slow movement of Beethoven’s Opus 61 Violin Concerto. In all of the songs on this disc, voice and piano articulate the music with sensitivity to the ways in which patterns of notes convey subtleties of the words. This is never more apparent than in ‘Wo die Berge so blau,’ which Scharich sings with disarming simplicity. Similarly, she and LaDeur delve deeply into the nuances of ‘Leichte Segler in den Höhen’ without inflating the song’s modest means of expression. The abiding sincerity of Scharich’s connection with Beethoven’s music and Alois Jeitteles’s words is keenly felt in her account of ‘Diese Wolken in den Höhen,’ her ideally-focused intonation paralleling her concentration on lucidly enunciating and interpreting the words. Their realization of the lines ‘Wenn alles, was liebet, der Frühling vereint, / Nur unserer Liebe kein Frühling erscheint’ in ‘Es kehret der Maien, es blühet die Au’ imparts an incredibly moving but understated sense of resignation, the narrator’s feelings of loneliness and sadness heightened by an awareness of inevitability. The directness with which Scharich sings ‘Nimm sie hin denn, diese Lieder’ illustrates a vital aspect of an insightful Lieder singer’s art, her own experiences unquestionably shaping her interpretation but imposing nothing on Beethoven’s music.

Whereas Beethoven was plagued during the composition of An die ferne Geliebte by the effects of deafness and worsening physical maladies, Schumann was less troubled in 1840, whilst writing his Opus 42 Frauenliebe und Leben, by the mental illness that so direly affected the final decade of his life. Utilizing texts by Adelbert von Chamisso that would elicit responses from a number of Nineteenth-Century composers, Schumann centered his Frauenliebe und Leben upon an omnipresent inexorability that is at once reminiscent of and quite different from that at the core of Beethoven’s An die ferne Geliebte. Embroiled in 1840 in litigation intended to free his beloved Clara Wieck from the obligation of receiving paternal blessing for marriage, Schumann surely found refuge from this stress in giving musical expression to von Chamisso’s depiction of a woman’s bond with her lover from its inception at their first meeting to its culmination with his death. Rather than the continuous musical progression of An die ferne Geliebte, Schumann’s cycle is comprised of eight self-contained Lieder, each intimating a leave-taking that ushers in the subsequent period in the relationship.

As in their performances of the Beethoven songs, their realization of the opening bars of Schumann’s ‘Seit ich ihn gesehen‘ distinguish Scharich and LaDeur as august interpreters of this music. The technical acumen of the pianist’s playing of An die ferne Geliebte is equaled by the mastery with which he plays Schumann, but the synergy of his rendering of the former gives way in the latter to an aloofness that limns the significance of the piano’s rôle as the voice of the narrator’s swain. In this vein, ‘Er, der Herrlichste von allen’ is an active dialogue between the woman and her wordless lover, the piano representing not her thoughts, as in An die ferne Geliebte, but the object of them. Scharich sustains conversational lightness in ‘Ich kann’s nicht fassen, nicht glauben’ and ‘Du Ring an meinem Finger,’ the voice utterly secure and stunningly beautiful throughout the range.

In this performance, the somberness that slowly permeates the latter half of Frauenliebe und Leben darkens the colors of Scharich’s vocalism without instigating interpretive heaviness. The earnestness of her voicing of ‘Helft mir, ihr Schwestern’ is augmented by the appealing freshness of the voice. Singer and pianist suffuse their performance of ‘Süßer Freund, du blickest’ with urgency, LaDeur exhibiting the emotive efficacy of fastidiously observing Schumann’s dynamic notations. Autumnal hues emerge in ‘An meinem Herzen, an meiner Brust,’ which Scharich and LaDeur present as a touching reminiscence of fleeting joys. There must have been pangs of irony for Schumann in ‘Nun hast du mir den ersten Schmerz getan,’ the obstacles to his union with Clara having caused him such pain. Cynics might be tempted to accentuate that irony, ending the cycle with bitterness and self-pity. Scharich and LaDeur choose reflection over regret, evoking Lord Tennyson’s postulation that it is better to endure the loss of one’s love than to never love.

To My Distant Beloved closes with an aptly atmospheric epilogue in the form of an engrossingly poetic performance of Schumann’s Opus 17 Fantasie in C major. Primarily composed in 1836 in homage to Beethoven and prefaced by a quote from Friedrich Schlegel that memorializes the music’s genesis, the Fantasie epitomizes the tumultuous Romanticism found in much of Schumann’s music, not least his Lieder. Marked ‘Durchaus fantastisch und leidenschaftlich vorzutragen; Im Legenden-Ton,’ the piece’s introduction requires particular rhythmic concentration if it is to seem rhapsodic without becoming chaotic. LaDeur maintains both flexibility and control, preferring subtlety to showmanship and managing the exposition in a manner that highlights the ingenuity of Schumann’s singular musical architecture. The arching lines of the central ‘Mäßig, Durchaus energisch’ section is sculpted with the finesse of a master’s handling of marble, each striation in the music’s textures elucidated but also hypnotically integrated into the cumulative sonority of the piece. LaDeur plays the ‘Langsam getragen; Durchweg leise zu halten’ segment with undeviating fidelity to Schumann’s instructions. The pianist’s technique meets each of the Fantasie’s many challenges with absolute assurance. His performance provides the disc not with a summation but with a musical ellipsis, a kind of entr’acte for the transition into the next phase of this wondrous odyssey.

07 May 2021

RECORDING REVIEW: Georg Friedrich Händel — RODELINDA, REGINA DE’ LONGOBARDI (L. Crowe, I. Davies, J. Ellicott, B. Cedel, J. Dandy, T. Mead; Linn Records CKD 658)

IN REVIEW: Georg Friedrich Händel - RODELINDA, REGINA DE' LONGOBARDI (LINN Records CKD 658)GEORG FRIEDRICH HÄNDEL (1685 – 1759): Rodelinda, regina de’ Longobardi, HWV 19Lucy Crowe (Rodelinda), Iestyn Davies (Bertarido), Joshua Ellicott (Grimoaldo), Brandon Cedel (Garibaldo), Jess Dandy (Eduige), Tim Mead (Unulfo); The English Concert; Harry Bicket, harpsichord and conductor [Recorded in St. John’s Smith Square, London, UK, 16 – 21 September 2020; Linn Records CKD 658; 3 CDs, 200:10; Available from Linn Records, Amazon (USA), Presto Music (UK), and major music retailers]

Few periods in human history are as universally associated with the work of a single artist as the first half-century of the United Kingdom’s Hanoverian dynasty is with the music of Georg Friedrich Händel. Just as the 1714 death of Queen Anne left the British throne without a direct-line occupant, the untimely demise of Henry Purcell in 1695 deprived English music of its foremost talent, initiating a time of transition during which there was no native-born composer whose gifts earned universal acceptance as those of Purcell’s rightful successor. The 1701 Act of Settlement that denied Catholic claimants a path to Britain’s crown by recognizing scions of the German-speaking Haus Hannover as Anne’s heirs presumptive was not concerned with culture, but its implications could not have affected music in England more profoundly.

When the Hanoverian Elector Georg Ludwig was crowned as Britain’s King George I on 20 October 1714, Georg Friedrich Händel—Georg Ludwig’s Kapellmeister in Hannover since 1710—was already familiar in the refined musical circles of the English capital, where his opera Rinaldo, the earliest known opera in Italian that was composed for performance in Britain, received a rapturous welcome in 1711. This good fortune and a favorable reception from England’s nobility persuaded Händel to relocate to London, where he quickly courted aristocratic and royal patronage, the latter initiated by a generous stipend awarded by Queen Anne. Five years after his former Hannoverian employer’s ascent to the British throne, the financial backing of a consortium of titled gentlemen and the issuance of letters patent by the crown enabled Händel to establish his first Royal Academy of Music, the institution via which the composer, who became a naturalized Englishman in 1727, dominated opera in the United Kingdom for a decade.

Händel was unquestionably an opportunist who realized that the most important rôle in any opera production is that of the guardian of the purse strings. Händel’s operas often contained scenes and characterizations that Eighteenth-Century Londoners could not have failed to identify as flattery designed to appeal to influential figures’ vanity. Fêted egos reliably yielding fiscal support, the Royal Academy’s stagings were frequently populated by crowned heads, martial heroes, and long-suffering spouses whose virtues mirrored those attributed to deep-pocketed pillars of English society.

For the Royal Academy’s first new offering of 1725, Händel selected a tale of a faithful wife and mother who, erroneously believing her husband to have perished in exile, is relentlessly pursued by a libidinous usurper whose villainy encompasses leveraging a child’s life. Adapting a libretto by Antonio Salvi that was set by Giacomo Antonio Perti in 1710, Nicola Francesco Haym provided Händel with a scenario rich in possibilities for celebrating the much-prized virtues of valor and uncompromising connubial fidelity. The quality of his music for Rodelinda, regina de’ Longobardi illustrates that, its potential for increasing the Royal Academy’s stature notwithstanding, this story of misadventures and perceived betrayals appealed deeply to the famously cantankerous Händel.

First performed at London’s King’s Theatre in the Haymarket on 13 February 1725, Rodelinda reached the stage only three-and-a-half months after the première of Tamerlano and slightly less than a year after the inaugural production of Giulio Cesare in Egitto. The success of Tamerlano in October 1724 was sufficient to convince Händel of the commercial viability and artistic perspicacity of entrusting the rôles in Rodelinda to the singers who created parts in Tamerlano. The titular queen of the Lombards and her absent consort were therefore first interpreted by two of Eighteenth-Century London’s most popular singers, soprano Francesca Cuzzoni and castrato Senesino, whose portrayals of Asteria and Andronico were vital components of Tamerlano’s triumph. The parts of the scheming Grimoaldo and Garibaldo were taken by Tamerlano’s Bajazet and Leone, Francesco Borosini and Giuseppe Maria Boschi, with Anna Vicenza Dotti and Andrea Pacini, the first Irene and Tamerlano, as Eduige and Unulfo. Händel’s strategy proved to be prescient: introduced by this ideally-qualified cast, Rodelinda became one of the Royal Academy’s longest-running and most-revived works.

Regrettably, Rodelinda has not been as fortunate on recordings as it was on the London stage in the years between its 1725 première and Händel’s death in 1759. A pioneering production of the opera in 1920 occasioned German radio performances of truncated versions of the score that now offer glimpses of how Baroque opera fared prior to the renewal of interest in historically-appropriate performance practices. Handel Opera Society’s 1959 performances at Sadler’s Wells featured singers of the proper registers in all rôles, the young Joan Sutherland and Janet Baker among them, but neither this nor the first complete studio recording in Italian—a lovely performance with particularly fine singing by Maureen Forrester and Helen Watts that has never been formally available on CD—takes full advantage of advances in scholarship. Despite the participation of an ensemble of renowned singers and the use of Haym’s Italian text, Sutherland’s egregiously-cut late-career studio effort is markedly less effective than the 1959 production, and subsequent audio and video recordings of varying provenance achieved greater authenticity without producing a Rodelinda of indisputable superiority.

Under the direction of Harry Bicket, whose rendering of the continuo is reliably propulsive but gratifyingly modest in when it could be distracting, Linn Records’ Rodelinda proves to be a rare recording without weaknesses in casting, conducting, or orchestral playing. Recording a complete opera whilst adhering to pandemic-imposed distancing protocols is a fearsome prospect, but the intimacy of many of the characters’ exchanges in Rodelinda make recording this opera in studio intimidating in the best of times. Aided by assistant engineer Rodrigo Leal del Ojo and the post-production work of Julia Thomas, Linn’s producer and engineer Philip Hobbs effectuated a recorded ambience in which Händel’s music drama plays out as in a staged performance but with clarity that is rarely possible in an opera house, details of text and instrumentation always audible but never unduly accentuated.

To a markedly greater degree than in many studio recordings of Baroque operas, rhythms in this Rodelinda unerringly follow the course of the drama, stirringly taut in scenes of confrontation and defiance and affectingly expansive when sorrow and regret inundate the music. Physical distance separated the English Concert musicians during recording sessions, but the precision of their ensemble playing discloses unvarying unity of purpose. Obbligati are reliably virtuosic but also congruous with the singers’ phrasing of corresponding vocal lines. The art of fruitful collaboration is an element of professional musicians’ training, yet the continuity of this Rodelinda indicates that the spirit of community demonstrated by these musicians in the making of this recording was not merely an act of professionalism.

Responding to Bicket’s intuitive handling of the score, a noteworthy accomplishment of which is the selection of tempi that are faithful to the composer and his characterizations, the instruments and their players become participants in the drama, their sounds interacting with the voices with a rapport expected in performances of music by Wagner and Richard Strauss but heard all too rarely in Händel’s operas. Months of isolation and cancelled performances perhaps fostered inwardness that nurtured the English Concert’s connections both with one another and with the music. Amidst its devastating losses, the pandemic was the catalyst for a superb Rodelinda.

In performances that heed his instructions and utilize uncut editions of his scores, there are virtually no inconsequential or thankless rôles in Händel’s operas. There are of course numerous instances in which music was written or rewritten to suit particular singers, but even these acts of musical necessity serve legitimate dramatic purposes within their proper contexts. In the context of this recording, the performance of the rôle of Bertarido’s loyal courtier Unulfo by countertenor Tim Mead contributes invaluably to the musical integrity of the English Concert’s Rodelinda.

Setting a standard that is matched by his colleagues, Mead’s declamation of secco recitatives is appropriately conversational, unwaveringly musical, and driven by clear, unexaggerated diction. His singing of Unulfo’s aria in Act One, ‘Sono i colpi della sorte per un’alma,’ reveals great affinity for capitalizing on the emotional undercurrents that flow through Händel’s vocal writing. The voice attractive and evenly-projected throughout the range, Mead’s technical assurance facilitates performances of the arias in Acts Two and Three, ‘Frà tempeste funeste a quest’alma’ and ‘Un zeffiro spirò, che serenò quest’alma,’ that credibly depict contrasting facets of the level-headed Unulfo’s personality, lending him greater depth and involvement in the drama than he sometimes wields. Stating that a minor rôle benefits from a performance by a major singer is clichéd, but Mead’s portrayal of Unulfo legitimizes the platitude’s veracity.

The duplicitous Garibaldo, whose lust for power robs him of the most basic tenets of decency and decorum, is enlivened with adroit vocal acting and unabashedly flamboyant singing by bass-baritone Brandon Cedel. Garibaldo is a rôle in which Samuel Ramey excelled, and, though their voices are very different instruments, Cedel shares his predecessor’s dedication to heightening the character’s menace by making him luridly seductive. The flinty edge and scornful inflections of Cedel’s singing of recitatives banish any questions concerning this Garibaldo’s intentions. His account of the aria ‘Di Cupido impiego i vanni’ in Act One pulses with the sinister glee of a man who rejoices in his machinations.

Cedel also evinces the cowardice that cowers behind Garibaldo’s machismo façade, emphasizing the irony of the schemer’s bravado giving way to alarm at Rodelinda’s vow to pave her road to the throne with his severed head. In Act Two, he voices ‘Tirannia gli diede il regno’ impactfully, the voice’s steely glint reflecting the meaning of the words. Despite his depravity, Cedel’s Garibaldo is not devoid of suavity, his fiorature executed smoothly and descents below the stave focused without being forced. In Cedel’s performance, wickedness sounds irresistibly sensual.

True contraltos are no more common in opera than to-the-manner-born Brünnhildes and Isoldes. There is hardly an overabundance of rôles for contraltos in the works that populate the international repertory, but Händel’s operas and oratorios contain wonderful parts for low-voiced ladies. In this Rodelinda, the contralto rôle of Bertarido’s sister Eduige, the target of Garibaldo’s treachery, is sung by Jess Dandy, whose refined vocalism recalls that of the esteemed Alfreda Hodgson. Dandy’s singing of Eduige’s Act One aria ‘Lo farò, dirò spietato’ suggests that her bravura technique, though impressive, remains a work in progress. Dramatically, she is wholly on point, convincingly imparting concern and contempt. Her account of ‘De’ miei scherni per far le vendette’ in Act Two bristles with indignation, her vocal colorations shifting with the passions of the text. The aria in Act Three, ‘Quanto più fiera tempesta freme,’ is sung with irrepressible tenacity, this Eduige proclaiming that she is a pawn in no one’s game. The theatricality, integration of registers, and tastefulness of Dandy’s singing are delightful and promise still greater things.

Whereas almost no virtues mitigate Garibaldo’s iniquity, the actions of the crown-stealing Grimoaldo are extenuated to some extent by an earnest if somewhat masochistic infatuation with Rodelinda. Vestiges of unfeigned affection are audible in tenor Joshua Ellicott’s complex, conflicted portrayal of Grimoaldo. Without neglecting the ferocity at the core of Grimoaldo’s subterfuges, his singing conveys unexpected fragility. The first of his arias in Act One, ‘Io già t’amai, ritrosa,’ is voiced with bemused vehemence. Ellicott’s Grimoaldo is an ancestor of Richard Strauss’s Herodes and Aegisth who deploys ‘Se per te giungo a godere’ like a conniver’s credo, the tenor’s penetrating timbre sharpening the words’ subversive edge

In Act Two, Ellicott’s assertive manner of singing divisions complements the forthrightness with which he makes dramatic points, the most challenging passages of Grimoaldo’s music thereby tellingly differentiated from the part’s gentler pages. He sings first ‘Prigioniera hò l’alma in pena’ and, later in the act, ‘Tuo drudo è mio rivale, tu sposo’ with close attention to the ways in which Händel’s vocal writing advances the character’s psychological development. Vividly intelligible in every scene in which he appears, Ellicott’s diction galvanizes this Rodelinda’s dramatic electricity in Act Three, baring Grimoaldo’s competing emotions in ‘Trà sospetti, affetti, e timori.’ Moreover, the tenor’s enunciation of the accompagnato ‘Fatto inferno è il mio petto’ blends a Lieder singer’s textual acuity with a stage actor’s deft management of the interweaving of public and private sentiments. Ellicott’s contemplative voicing of Grimoaldo’s final aria, ‘Pastorello d’un povero armento pur dorme contento,’ resolves a probing musical character study of a man whose ambition is undermined by love. Ellicott affirms that, in order to be effective operatic antagonists, harsh characters need not be sung with harsh tones.

Like many of the rôles composed by Händel for Senesino, the deposed king Bertarido vents his strikingly timeless feelings of love, disappointment, and anger in music that pits outbursts of vengeful coloratura against passages of heartrending lyricism. It is with an exquisite example of the latter that Bertarido is first introduced in Act One, and in this performance countertenor Iestyn Davies seems not so much to sing the accompagnato ‘Pompe vane di morte’ as to live the king’s horror and sorrow at seeing his own funerary monument. The sustained B with which he begins ‘Dove sei, amato bene’—justifiably one of Händel’s best-known and most-loved arias, now and in the Eighteenth Century—pierces the hearts of both the character and the listener, the allure of the sound intensifying the pain and yearning that it expresses. Contemporary accounts unreservedly praised Senesino’s singing of Händel’s introspective arias, but, sung in this performance with beauty and expressivity matched on recordings only by Dame Janet Baker, ‘Dove sei, amato bene’ might have been composed for Davies. He brings equal authority to ‘Confusa si miri l’infida consorte,’ however, acting with the voice to limn the despair and desperation that seize Bertarido when he believes that Rodelinda has chosen a crown over fidelity to her husband’s memory.

As Bertarido’s fortunes unfold in the opera’s subsequent two acts, Davies continually adapts his vocal shading to fit the quicksilver progress of the drama. Both of Bertarido’s arias in the second act, ‘Con rauco mormorio piangono’ and ‘Scacciata dal suo nido sen vola,’ are splendidly sung, and Bertarido’s lines in the duetto with Rodelinda, ‘Io t’abbraccio, e più che morte aspro,’ receive from the countertenor readings of tremendous eloquence. In this performance, the Act Three scene in which Bertarido voices ‘Chi di voi fù più infedele, cieco Amor’ is gripping, and the aria ‘Se fiera belva ha cinto frà le catene’ is ardently but stylishly sung. Davies’s voice is a soft-grained instrument that woos more compellingly than it wages war, but he sings the turbulent aria ‘Vivi, tiranno’ commandingly, the roulades executed rousingly. After this display of vocal prowess, the duetto with Rodelinda ‘D’ogni crudel martir’ could seem anticlimactic, but every note that Davies sings in this performance is momentous. Davies’s preeminence as an interpreter of Händel’s music has been widely acknowledged for longer than a decade, but his portrayal of Bertarido in this Rodelinda is a marvel of Händel singing with few recorded peers.

With the rôles that he composed for Francesca Cuzzoni [in addition to Rodelinda, Teofane in Ottone, re di Germania, Emilia in Flavio, re de’ Longobardi, Cleopatra in Giulio Cesare in Egitto, Asteria in Tamerlano, Berenice in Scipione, Lisaura in Alessandro, Antigona in Admeto, Costanza in Riccardo primo, re d’Inghilterra, Laodice in Siroe, re di Persia, and Seleuce in Tolomeo, re d’Egitto, as well as Polissena in the 1728 revision of Radamisto], Händel inaugurated a tradition later expanded by bel canto composers’ parts for Giulia Grisi, Maria Malibran, and Giuditta Pasta and by Verdi’s, Puccini’s, and Richard Strauss’s writing for the soprano voice. Unlike their later counterparts, Händel’s Cuzzoni heroines have only recently enjoyed the attention of specialist interpreters, but performances by singers of the caliber of Lucy Crowe are rapidly making amends.

Like Bertarido, Rodelinda is first heard in Act One in a moment of introspection, and Crowe immediately manifests the character’s pervasive melancholy in her poignant singing of ‘Hò perduto il caro sposo.’ Her innate poise tested, this Rodelinda hurls out ‘L’empio rigor del fato vile non potrà’ on a stream of blazing sound. The trills in ‘Ombre, piante, urne funeste’ are tentative, but neither that aria’s dejection nor the determined ire of ‘Morrai, sì, l’empie tua testa’ is uncertain, the musical lines unfurled with the grace and agility of a musical gymnast. In a handful of instances, Crowe ornaments arias with interpolated notes above the stave that are marginally beyond the voice’s realm of comfort, but these brief pangs of astringency potently punctuate Rodelinda’s emotive utterances.

Singing the pair of arias in Act Two, ‘Spietati, io vi giurai’ and ‘Ritorna, o caro e dolce mio tesoro,’ with a wealth of feeling that illuminates the humanity of Händel’s musical portraiture, Crowe emphasizes the unflappable self-reliance in Rodelinda’s constitution. She partners Davies mellifluously in the duetto with Bertarido, summoning a new resolve that surges into Act Three via her traversal of the aria ‘Se ’l mio duol non è sì forte.’ Crowe’s singing is of an uncommonly exalted quality throughout the performance, but, the perils that have oppressed the character from the opera’s start lifting, she voices ‘Mio caro, caro bene! non ho più affanni a pene’ with radiance that also resounds in her singing of the duetto ‘D’ogni crudel martir.’ The success of a performance of Rodelinda relies upon the presence of a capable singer in the title rôle, but Crowe’s performance demonstrates that, when assigned to a singing actress with total fluency in Händel’s musical language, Rodelinda is a worthy sister of Norma, Élizabeth de Valois, Sieglinde, and the Marschallin.

Händel would perhaps be surprised to learn that, nearly three centuries after its first performance in London, Rodelinda is scheduled to return to the stage of New York’s Metropolitan Opera in March 2022, with Harry Bicket leading a top-rank cast that includes Iestyn Davies’s Bertarido. Ever cognizant of changing fashions, few composers in the Eighteenth Century wrote with broad aspirations or expectations of their music continuing to be performed after their careers ended. Why, then, are Händel’s operas still performed in the Twenty-First Century, when their stories of dynastic clashes and squabbles among mythological figures are so peripheral to collective cultural awareness? The characters whose tribulations are the foundations of Händel’s operas are archetypes without relevance in modern society, but their emotions remain relevant and surprisingly modern. Who in 2021 knows a queen whose consort has been forced into exile by a murderous rival, but who does not know people whose relationships have fallen victim to others’ meddling? Musically, the English Concert’s Rodelinda is a near-flawless performance of one of Händel’s most inspired scores. It is also a vindication of the enduring pertinence of Händel’s genius.

02 May 2021

RECORDING REVIEW: Jeffrey Holmes — RIDER OF DARKNESS, PATH OF LIGHT (K. A. Wiest, N. Isherwood, J. Hardink, M. Robson, Talea Ensemble; MicroFest Records M•F 15)

IN REVIEW: Jeffrey Holmes - RIDER OF DARKNESS, PATH OF LIGHT (MicroFest Records M•F 15)JEFFREY HOLMES (born 1971): Rider of Darkness, Path of LightKirsten Ashley Wiest, soprano; Nicholas Isherwood, bass-baritone; Jason Hardink and Mark Robson, piano; Talea Ensemble; David Fulmer and Jeffrey Holmes, conductors [MicroFest Records M•F 15; 1 CD, 69:29; Available from MicroFest Records, Amazon (USA), and major music retailers]

Nearly seventy years after the death of trailblazing American composer Charles Ives, fear and suspicion of microtonality in Classical Music persist, particularly among artists and institutions of his native country. The earnest efforts of musicians active in many genres to promote appreciation of the uses of microintervals and alternate tonalities in diverse cultures have increased awareness but fostered sadly little progress towards widespread acceptance of modes of sonic expression that deviate from Western praxes. There is no shame in loving a Schubert melody or a Puccini phrase above all else, but innumerable beauties exist outside of the boundaries of traditional harmonies, yearning for discovery. There is also no shame in acknowledging the limits of one’s knowledge and experience by seeking new opportunities for musical exploration. Admittedly, venturing into the uncharted territory of new music can be daunting. As when visiting an unknown place for the first time, informed guidance immeasurably enriches the initial exposure.

New music offers few guided excursions into intriguing sonic environments as viscerally exciting and thought-provoking as Rider of Darkness, Path of Light, MicroFest Records’ artfully-engineered recording of works by American composer Jeffrey Holmes. The compositional voice that emerges in the pieces on this disc is one of astonishing originality. Eschewing the neo-Romantic and post-Modernist trends in Twenty-First-Century music, Holmes crafts aural tableaux in which juxtapositions of rhythmic and tonal intervals replace conventional interplay of melody and harmony. Holmes’s work is intrinsically interactive, spurring the listener to seek distinctive melodies in the undulating progressions of sound rather than presenting finite, unchanging tunes that require no engagement.

Holmes shares with Monteverdi, Händel, and Brahms an acute faculty for capitalizing on suspensions of time in his music. Wells of emotion fill as tones clash and cajole until they overflow, the deluges of feeling appearing like rays of sunlight penetrating oppressive skies, eternal but often gone in an instant. In all of the performances on this disc, Holmes’s music challenges artists and listeners alike, demanding not just to be performed and heard but to be felt. These works reveal that it is not solely in the biological sense that Holmes is a living composer. His artistry exhibits uncommon cognizance of the fact that, when performed and heard anew, all music, whether centuries or seconds old, is a living, evolving organism.

The instrumental pieces on Rider of Darkness, Path of Light disclose a Ravelian affinity for casting instruments’ timbres as characters in musical dramas, the interactions of each instrument with its brethren and its own varied tones shaping convoluted, sometimes almost contrapuntal dialogues. Conducted by David Fulmer with discernible comprehension of the music’s complementary complexities and simplicities, the musicians of Talea EnsembleBarry Crawford (flute and piccolo), Stuart Breczinski (oboe and English horn), Marianne Gythfeldt (contrabass and piccolo clarinets), John Gattis (horn), Matthew Gold (percussion), Alex Lipowski (percussion), Lauren Cauley (violin), Elizabeth Weisser (viola), Chris Gross (’cello), and Greg Chudzik (double bass)—achieve a performance of Hagall [HaglazHail] that seems to reduce its twenty minutes to mere moments.

Nature’s irrepressible fury rattles and rages in the music, but it is here the bringer of vital rejuvenation, not of indiscriminate destruction. Holmes’s writing for percussion is aptly raucous, but the skill with which he interweaves instrumental textures, especially those of the woodwinds, is captivating; even delicate. The Western canon includes many musical depictions of natural phenomena, but, performed on this disc with bracing immediacy, Hagall is an expressive phenomenon in its own right rather than an Impressionistic representation of external forces.

With Thund [Thundering Waters], Holmes proves that, like Liszt and Brahms, his imagination is as stimulated by the capabilities of the piano as by those of an instrumental ensemble. Pianist Jason Hardink offers a forceful rendering of the piece, his technique equal to the music’s formidable requirements. The virtuosity of his playing dazzles, but the sensitivity of his performance manifests the work’s prevailing ethos, limning the intangible sensations of chaos. The defining characteristic of Holmes’s compositional idiom in Thund is a perceptive use of jagged intervals that spur and then defy the listener’s expectations. Hardink’s shrewd phrasing energizes the music’s air of spontaneity, reflecting the reliable unpredictability of nature that is so integral an inspiration of the composer’s cunning.

As paired on this disc, the striking contrasts between a bass-baritone’s sepulchral tones in Urðarmána and a soprano’s brilliant upper register in Myrkriða, Ljósleiðà conjure images of the eerily symbiotic fire and frost of Icelandic landscapes. Utilizing evocative texts in Old Norse, largely of his own composition, Holmes forges—and the use of present tense is in this instance not a matter of semantics, as these are pieces that regenerate their sonic atmospheres anew and differently in each hearing—linguistic and metaphysical contexts that, befitting consequential works of art, are simultaneously unique and universal. The composer’s writing for voices is undeniably punishing for the singers, not least in its unrelenting traversals of their full ranges, yet this is never music that exploits vocal prowess for garish effects. The music’s poignant potency arises from Holmes’s unmistakably personal response to the narrative trajectories of the words.

Fittingly, the cornerstone of bass-baritone Nicholas Isherwood’s performance of Urðarmána [Moon of Fate] is incendiary singing that draws its heat from the text. As psychologically exacting as Philippe’s ‘Elle ne m’aime pas’ in Verdi’s Don Carlos and Wotans Abschied in Act Three of Wagner’s Die Walküre, Holmes’s music takes the voice to the brink of duress, but Isherwood sounds most confident when the writing is least comfortable. Collaborative pianist Mark Robson’s intrepid playing supplies the fuel with which Isherwood ignites his interpretation. The partnership of singer and pianist conveys admirable sophistication, the brashness of their exchanges developing in certain passages into a shared quest for equilibrium similar in ethos to the scene in Ravel’s L’enfant et les sortilèges in which, moved to pity, the wronged forest creatures aid the injured child who has tormented them. In the most tumultuous moments of this performance, Isherwood and Robson accentuate the compassion at the heart of Urðarmána.

As the intensity of its emotional journey suggests, Urðarmána is not a piece that can be politely or casually sung. The primordial vigor of Isherwood’s singing belies its innate elegance, but the cogency of his interpretation of Holmes’s music relies upon technical refinement. Cognizance and respect of the voice’s limitations permit Isherwood to take artistic risks. Similar boldness, facilitated by assured mastery of the music, permeates Robson’s pianism, the unflappable musicality of his playing ideally partnering with Isherwood’s singing. Neither the intricacies nor the extravagances of Urðarmána disrupt the poetic urgency of this performance, in which singer and pianist immerse themselves—and, via the sounds they engender, the listener—in the mesmerizing modulations of Holmes’s music.

Structured in fifteen brief episodes, Myrkriða, Ljósleiðá [Rider of Darkness, Path of Light] unites elements of the Lieder cycles of Schubert and Schumann with Twenty-First Century cinema’s non-linear storytelling. Framed by series of metamorphosing reprises of the ‘Myrkriða’(‘Rider of Darkness’) and ‘Ljósleiðá’ (‘Path of Light’) segments, the piece shares with Arnold Schönberg’s Erwartung an abiding aura of spiritual analysis. Here, Holmes’s music becomes the setting for an enthralling sonic peregrination through expressive expanses that at once seem unknown and familiar. From the first pulses of ‘Nátta’ (‘Night Falling’), the performances of Tara Schwab (flute and alto flute), Yuri Inoo (percussion), Michael Kudirka (guitar and additional percussion, and the composer, who conducts and contributes percussion, enkindle an ethereal tonal world in which rhythms echo the changing moods of the words.

The kinetic energy of ‘Dagan’ (‘Daybreak’) crackles through the instruments, and the vastly different sonorities of ‘Myðr Nótt’ (‘Middle of the Night’) and the entrancing ‘Haugaeldr’ (‘Grave Fire’) are projected with wrenching conviction. Dissipating the tension that builds in ‘Ótta’ (‘Last Part of the Night’) and ‘Myrkr’ (‘Darkness’), the progression of ‘Sjóborg’ (‘Sunset’), ‘Hljoðr’ (‘Silence’), and ‘Lykð/Upphaf’ (‘End/Beginning’) proposes an uncertain resolution that, like every aspect of this music’s exegesis, perpetuates the ambiguous synergy of sound and silence.

Throughout the mercurial transitions of Myrkriða, Ljósleiðá, soprano Kisten Ashley Wiest unflinchingly overcomes the hazards of Holmes’s vocal lines whilst also demonstrating her abilities as a percussionist. As a test of the security and stamina of a soprano’s voice, Myrkriða, Ljósleiðá has few rivals in music of any era, its tessitura recalling the treacherous compasses of the Controller in Jonathan Dove’s Flight and Ariel in Thomas Adès’s The Tempest. Holmes’s writing for the voice routinely incorporates craigy ascents above the stave that necessitate extraordinary control. Wiest sagaciously safeguards her vocal resources, unleashing columns of focused sound at climaxes but reserving her most pointed tones for gentler passages.

Myrkriða, Ljósleiðá is a work that cannot be approached without thorough preparation, but Wiest’s performance exhibits understanding that reaches far beyond knowledge of notes and words. There are moments in which harshness and stridency are audible in the soprano’s vocalism, but these invariably originate with the words: when the voice is pushed, it is in pursuit of fleeting expressive details of the text that are too important to be sung sweetly. Singing this piece proficiently is a notable feat. Insightfully and movingly evincing the profundity of its drama, as Wiest does in this performance, is a hallmark of preeminent artistry.

Too often, the barriers that prevent listeners from connecting with new music are their own prejudices. Kirsten Flagstad night have sung the Königin der Nacht’s arias more easily than a contemporary composer can vanquish a reluctant listener’s preconceptions, but the highest aim of Art is to elucidate humanity’s failings in ways that elicit contemplation. In music, this is achieved, in part, by successive generations of artists devising new methods of expression, not because existing traditions are inadequate but because perspectives and relationships alter with the passage of time. As represented by the pieces on this disc, all performed with passion and precision, imparting the inescapable transience of existence is a fundamental component of Jeffrey Holmes’s music. Biases condemn humanity to riding in darkness, but, this disc intimates, embracing Art that seeks new means of deciphering the universe’s enigmas offers a path to light.