CD REVIEW: Giuseppe Verdi – MESSA DA REQUIEM (K. Stoyanova, M. Prudenskaya, S. Pirgu, O. Anastassov; Chor und Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks; M. Jansons; BR-Klassik 900126)

GIUSEPPE VERDI (1813 – 1901): Messa da Requiem—Krassimira Stoyanova (soprano), Marina Prudenskaya (mezzo-soprano), Saimir Pirgu (tenor), Orlin Anastassov (bass); Chor und Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks; Mariss Jansons, conductor [Recorded in performance in the Philharmonie im Gasteig, Munich, Germany, 7 – 11 October 2013; BR-Klassik 900126; 2 CD, 86:23; Available from Amazon, BR-Klassik, ClassicsOnline, iTunes, jpc, Presto Classical, and major music retailers]

In recent years, Giuseppe Verdi’s Messa da Requiem has been in danger of over-exposure—or, rather, of falling victim to insurmountably-flawed performances that leave audiences hearing the score for the first time wondering why the work, a product of Verdi’s most inspired creative maturity, is so frequently performed by forces ranging from university music departments to the most renowned soloists, choruses, and orchestras. One of the most gnawing questions for those who love any musical masterpiece is whether the longing to hear the work performed outweighs the disappointment of hearing it performed poorly, and avowed Twenty-First-Century Verdians have been compelled, not least during the global commemoration of the 200th anniversary of the composer’s birth that dominated performance diaries throughout the world in 2013, to shake their heads at traversals of the Messa da Requiem that left the impression that Verdi surely lacked true understanding of composing effectively for voices. This is absurd, of course, but the novice introduced to the Messa da Requiem in such a context must be forgiven for the mistaken assumption. Recorded in performance at Munich’s Philharmonie im Gasteig during the Verdi Bicentennial year, BR-Klassik’s superbly-engineered, sonically atmospheric recording preserves an account of the Requiem that, while falling short of ideal, reminds the listener of the extraordinary emotive potential of the music. Most significantly, this performance reaffirms that, even in heaven-storming music like that in Verdi’s Messa da Requiem, beauty and delicacy can be as awe-inspiring as coldly forceful walls of sound.

Conducted by Mariss Jansons with measured intensity that allows appreciation of the subtleties of Verdi’s music, the performances of the Chor und Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks combine Teutonic discipline with Italianate brio in a way that fosters an uncommon degree of accuracy whilst avoiding rigidity. The contrasts between the hushed opening of the ‘Kyrie’ and the explosive fervor of the ‘Dies irae’ managed by the choristers are arresting, but the prevailing atmosphere of reverence is never abandoned in favor of overtly operatic extravagance. In the tricky double chorus in the ‘Sanctus,’ the choristers devote special energy to maintaining laudable precision, and the focus dedicated to contrapuntal passages in all parts of the Requiem is commendable. The exemplary singing of the chorus is wonderfully supported by the unerring virtuosity of the orchestral playing, which reaches formidable peaks of emotional engagement under Maestro Jansons’s leadership. Verdi makes arduous demands on the musicians’ abilities, requiring a dynamic spectrum akin to that asked of the choristers. Perhaps the most rewarding aspect of Maestro Jansons’s approach to the score is the manner in which he conducts with an emphasis on the architecture of the score as a whole without overlooking details of phrasing and orchestration. Thematic development, handled as deftly by Verdi in the Requiem as by Beethoven in his Missa solemnis, is given space in which to expand organically but is not permitted to drag. In some of its harmonic progressions and bold rhythms, the Requiem is Verdi’s most ‘modern’ work, more progressive than even Otello and Falstaff, and Maestro Jansons paces an account of the score that succeeds both as a sentimentally-charged performance and an academic treatise on the work’s significance in Verdi’s output and the broader advancement of choral music in the last quarter of the Nineteenth Century.

Bulgarian bass Orlin Anastassov anchors the solo quartet capably, fielding a well-projected, secure voice that moves through the music easily. His singing in both ‘Mors stupebit’ and ‘Rex tremendae’ finds his range slightly short at the bottom of the staff, his lowest notes sounding considerably weaker than the voice’s upper octave. Mr. Anastassov’s rounded tones are heard to advantage in the incendiary phrases of the ‘Confutatis,’ however, and the singer’s careful phrasing in the ‘Lux aeterna’ complements his colleagues’ insightful treatment of the text. Though greater tonal bulk at the bottom of the range would make a stronger effect in Verdi’s vocal lines, Mr. Anastassov sings steadily and often beautifully. It is frequently the bass soloist who compromises the effectiveness of the solo quartet in this music, and that Mr. Anastassov certainly does not do in this performance.

The Messa da Requiem figured prominently in Saimir Pirgu’s celebrations of the Verdi Bicentennial, and one of the finest attributes of BR-Klassik’s recording of the work is its documentation of the young Albanian’s instinctive way with this score. The voice is of virtually ideal proportions for the music: with a sensitive conductor at his side, he need neither hold back in moments of introspection nor force in the muscular climaxes. In terms of technique, he lacks only the trill for the ‘Hostias,’ and the beauty of tone that he has at his command is more than ample compensation. In this performance, Mr. Pirgu makes a strong impression at his first entrance, and the elegance and vigor of his singing never founder. He has no trouble with the range of his part, his tone retaining freedom and attractiveness to top B♭. His singing of the familiar ‘Ingemisco,’ typically regarded as the greatest test of the tenor’s abilities in the Requiem, is managed with heady elegance, the singer’s mezza voce gorgeously evoking a sense of piety. In many ways, though, it is in the ‘Hostias’ that the tenor is most cruelly tried by Verdi, and it is here that Mr. Pirgu does his finest singing in this performance. There is something of the honeyed melancholy of Ferruccio Tagliavini in his voicing of the melodic line, and he is a source of solidity to his colleagues in the fugue on ‘Quam olim Abrahae.’ Like Mr. Anastassov, Mr. Pirgu sings his lines in the ‘Lux aeterna’ with deep consideration of the meaning of the words. Throughout this performance, Mr. Pirgu distinguishes himself with thoughtful, focused singing of deceptively difficult music.

Mezzo-soprano Marina Prudenskaya’s first notes establish a high level of accomplishment from which she never deviates in the course of this performance. She seizes the opportunity given to her by Verdi in the ‘Liber scriptus,’ singing with pointed but never harsh tone that takes on increased brightness as the tessitura of her music climbs. In both ‘Quid sum miser’ and ‘Recordare,’ she blends her voice with that of her soprano colleague with close attention to the resulting mixes of timbres and vibrati. Ms. Prudenskaya’s singing gleams in the ‘Agnus dei’ with the soprano and chorus, and she takes the high lines in the ‘Lux aeterna’ with unhesitating brilliance, joining Mr. Pirgu and Mr. Anastassov in a moving delivery of the text. The evenness of Ms. Prudenskaya’s voice throughout her range is appreciable, and her judicious use of chest voice suggests a rare understanding of how raw ability and technique must be employed in tandem both to meet the needs of a specific piece of music and to ensure vocal longevity. Ms. Prudenskaya is one of the few mezzo-sopranos recorded in Verdi’s Requiem since the start of the new millennium who sounds genuinely comfortable in the music.

Krassimira Stoyanova is one of the world’s most adaptable singers. An intrepid Mozartean, she has also conquered the impassioned bel canto of Donizetti’s Anna Bolena, the smoldering femininity of Dvořák’s Rusalka, and the melancholic grandeur of Richard Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos. Solely within the Verdi repertory, her versatility has proved remarkable, her gallery of memorable Verdi characterizations spanning the composer’s career. From a purely vocal perspective, the writing for the soprano soloist in the Requiem is the pinnacle of Verdi’s genius for creating exquisite music for soprano heroines. The successful soprano soloist in the Requiem must have the animation of Giovanna d’Arco, the chameleonic stylistic variety of Violetta, Aida’s ability to hold her own in ensembles, and Desdemona’s gift for soaring aloft. Despite occasional wiriness at the top of the voice and a few instances of forcing, inevitable in live performance for all but the most ironclad voices, Ms. Stoyanova comes nearer to exhibiting all of these qualities than almost any other soprano singing today. She reaches top C without prompting worries about vocal meltdown, and she displays a winsome confidence on her music’s climactic top B♭s. Ms. Stoyanova responds to Ms. Prudenskaya’s incisive singing in the ‘Quid sum miser’ and ‘Recordare’ with singing of equal power. She makes of the ‘Domine Jesu Christe’ a deeply personal statement, and the poise of her vocalism in the exposed lines of the ‘Libera me’ is stirring. Ms. Stoyanova’s is not a plush voice, but she is skilled at conjuring impressions of tonal amplitude with assiduous projection. This is less apparent on a recording than in an opera house, but the voice is very flatteringly recorded here. It is hardly possible to claim to be an important Verdi soprano without mastering the complexities of the Requiem. The legitimacy of Ms. Stoyanova’s claim is considerably enhanced by this generously expressive, appealingly-sung performance.

Virtually every listener who loves Verdi’s Messa da Requiem has at least one recording that, for reasons musical or sentimental, could almost never be surpassed. Indeed, there are performances in the Requiem’s discography that define the histrionic possibilities of Verdi’s music: Ezio Pinza’s singing of the bass solos in Sabajno’s 1929 recording and the wonderful Serafin recording made a decade later; Cesare Siepi’s refined singing for Toscanini and de Sabata; the glowing timbre of the young Renata Tebaldi, also with de Sabata; the spectacular vocalism of Leontyne Price and Jussi Björling under Reiner’s baton; the full-throated glory—and real trills—of Richard Tucker with Ormandy; the unmatchable tones of Lili Chookasian and Carlo Bergonzi with Leinsdorf; the combination of Elisabeth Schwarzkopf and Christa Ludwig with the aristocratic Giulini; the eloquence of Robert Shaw and idiomatic zeal of Riccardo Muti. No individual element of BR-Klassik’s recording is likely to supplant cherished performances in listeners’ affections, but this recording succeeds in ways in which many recordings fail. It preserves a performance featuring well-matched soloists, choristers and orchestra players capable of scaling Verdi’s musical mountains without faltering, and a conductor with respect for the score and the musicians following his beat. All of the artists, musical and technical, involved with this recording also respect the listener by providing a performance of the Messa da Requiem that is both an enjoyable experience and a worthy homage to the of prodigy of Le Roncole.

ARTS IN ACTION: Five Titans of the Stage honored in the tenth annual Opera News Awards

In circulation since 1936, Opera News has been the leading advocate for opera in print in the United States for nearly eight decades. Under the auspices of the Metropolitan Opera Guild, the pages of Opera News have offered readers portraits of important artists, reviews of new recordings and performances in New York and throughout the world, and glimpses of the inner workings of one of the world’s great opera houses.

Starting in the 2005 – 2006 Season, the editors of Opera News have selected five important artists each year to be honored with Opera News Awards. Joining such prestigious honorees from previous seasons as Martina Arroyo, Marilyn Horne, Christa Ludwig, Leontyne Price, Renata Scotto, Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, and Shirley Verrett, the recipients of 2015’s Tenth Annual Opera News Awards are an illustrious quintet whose accomplishments at the Metropolitan Opera span five decades.

Polish tenor Piotr Beczała as Lenski in Tchaikovsky’s Yevgeny Onegin in 2009 (left – Photo by Beatriz Schiller) and Italian bass Ferruccio Furlanetto as Cardinal de Brogni in Halévy’s La Juive in 2003 (right – Photo by Ken Howard) [Photos © by The Metropolitan Opera]

Since his 2006 MET début as the Duca di Mantova in Rigoletto, Polish tenor Piotr Beczała has thrilled New York audiences with his performances of rôles as diverse as Edgardo in Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor, Gounod’s Faust and Roméo, Chevalier des Grieux in Massenet’s Manon, Rodolfo in Puccini’s La bohème, and the Prince in Dvořák’s Rusalka. Possessing a natural lyric instrument of superb quality, Mr. Beczała has in recent seasons expanded his repertory to include darker, heavier rôles that suit his passionate dramatic temperament. A Belmonte in Die Entführung aus dem Serail recorded early in his career confirms the legitimacy of Mr. Beczała’s credentials as a Mozartean in the class of Haefliger and Wunderlich, a facet of his artistry not yet explored in New York. MET audiences have also thus far been denied the opportunity to hear his bold, impetuous, but lovingly-phrased Alfredo in Verdi’s La traviata, acclaimed in London, Munich, and Vienna. Mr. Beczała’s greatest triumph at the MET to date was his charismatically caddish Duca di Mantova in Michael Mayer’s much-discussed 2013 production of Rigoletto. Transported to the decadent atmosphere of Las Vegas in 1960, rather than presiding over a hoard of courtiers this Duca is the headlining act in a glitzy, slightly seedy lounge on the Strip. A tenor without imagination might have made of his part in this production a schmaltzy Dean Martin caricature, but Mr. Beczała brought to his performances the swagger of a genuine member of the Rat Pack, not a conventionally operatic imitation. With Count Vaudémont in Tchaikovsky’s Iolanta and Riccardo in Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera on his MET schedule and Massenet’s Werther at the 2015 Salzburger Festspiele in his diary, Mr. Beczała continues to follow his artistic curiosity along new paths. With careful management of his prodigious vocal resources and technical acumen, he has at his disposal every gift needed to take audiences on fascinating musical journeys for years to come.

The 1980 MET début of Italian bass Ferruccio Furlanetto as the Grand Inquisitor in Verdi's Don Carlo introduced to the company’s roster one of the hardest-working singers in the industry—and, more importantly, one of the finest voices in the world. Despite an illustrious career in many of the most daunting rôles in the bass repertory, it is only during the past decade that Mr. Furlanetto has received the worldwide recognition his talents merit. In addition to joining Éva Marton and Plácido Domingo as Alvise in a revival of Ponchielli’s La Gioconda that retains a special place in MET lore, Mr. Furlanetto’s velvety bass has been heard at Lincoln Center as Mozart’s Don Giovanni and Leporello, sometimes partnering Samuel Ramey; Rossini’s Don Basilio in Il barbiere di Siviglia and Mustafà in L’italiana in Algeri; Méphistophélès in Gounod's Faust; Cardinal de Brogni in Halévy’s La Juive; and Colline in Puccini’s La bohème. It was with music by Verdi that his tenure at the MET began, however, and it is as Giovanni da Procida in I vespri siciliani, Sparafucile in Rigoletto, Fiesco in Simon Boccanegra, and Don Ruy Gomez de Silva in Ernani that Mr. Furlanetto has carved for himself a prominent place in MET history. In 2007, Fred Cohn wrote in the pages of Opera News of Mr. Furlanetto’s Fiesco in Simon Boccanegra that ‘his great oaken bass in itself would have guaranteed him a success. But this was only a starting point for a portrayal of extraordinary fervor.’ Indeed, few singers in the world today can combine vocal solidity with poetic vivacity as meaningfully as Mr. Furlanetto. The term ‘veteran’ is often used with a pejorative slant, but Mr. Furlanetto is a MET veteran in the best sense of the word: his artistry tested by a career stretching back thirty-five years, he has emerged as one of the finest practitioners of bass singing in the storied MET annals.

American soprano Sondra Radvanovsky as Leonora in Verdi’s Il trovatore in 2009 (left) and American bass Samuel Ramey as Giovanni da Procida in Verdi’s I vespri siciliani in 2004 (right) [Photos by Ken Howard, © by The Metropolitan Opera]

During a recent long drive, I listened to a 2013 MET broadcast of my favorite opera, Bellini’s Norma, featuring American soprano Sondra Radvanovsky. One never listens to a performance of Norma dating from a time after the retirement of Dame Joan Sutherland without a measure of trepidation, but Ms. Radvanovsky’s singing transformed fears into cheers. Hers is not yet a Norma for the ages, but her respect for Bellini and the gargantuan difficulties of his music is audible in every note of her performance. In many ways, Ms. Radvanovsky’s career at the MET harkens back to those of some of the great singers of the past. Like Lucine Amara before her, the soprano’s earliest seasons with the company enabled her to cut her histrionic teeth in supporting rôles before proving her exceptional value to the company in performances as Antonia and Stella in Offenbach’s Les contes d’Hoffmann in February 1998. A year later, her first Leonoras in Il trovatore began an association with Verdi repertory that has extended to indelible depictions of Violetta in La traviata, Luisa Miller, Elena in I vespri siciliani, Elisabetta in Don Carlo, Elvira in Ernani, Lina in Stiffelio, Aida, and Amelia in Un ballo in maschera. The breadth of Ms. Radvanovsky’s MET repertory, which also includes much-lauded outings as Donna Anna in Mozart’s Don Giovanni, Rosalinde in Strauß’s Die Fledermaus, Puccini’s Musetta in La bohème and Tosca, and Roxane in Alfano’s Cyrano de Bergerac, brings to mind recollections of the MET career of Gilda Cruz-Romo: it is to be hoped that, in time, Ms. Radvanovsky will follow her Mexican forebear’s lead in singing Leonora in La forza del destino, Cio-Cio San, and Suor Angelica at the MET, as well. Building upon the foundation of her Norma, an enlargement of her bel canto cache in New York seems particularly justified. Recent performances of Anna Bolena in Chicago have been some of the most exalted triumphs of her career—and, judging from her singing in the 7 December broadcast performance, rightly so. Even with so many successes to her credit, Ms. Radvanovsky is a singer who promises still greater things and the rare Verdi soprano whose singing is truly worthy of the MET.

The 1984 MET début of Kansas-born bass Samuel Ramey as Argante in the company première of Georg Friedrich Händel’s Rinaldo was an unlikely but unforgettable start to a brilliant singer’s relationship with the house that would become a home base in his career. Though he had been heard on the MET stage in a National Council Auditions Finals concert in 1972 and a Gala of Stars telecast in 1980, these performances can hardly have suggested the typhoon that would engulf the house when Mr. Ramey’s volleys of coloratura and rafter-shaking volume were unleashed in Argante’s music. From such a beginning, he built a career focused on bringing to a large repertory the basic tenets of bel canto that served him so well in Händel. His Rossini parts—Assur in Semiramide, Don Basilio in Il barbiere di Siviglia, and Mustafà in L’italiana in Algeri—benefited from his astonishing bravura technique, and he infused his singing of Méphistophélès in Gounod’s Faust with a welcome dose of true basso cantante elegance. His was a Don Giovanni for whom lechery was a bewitchingly dangerous weapon, however: the sardonic edge of his wooing left no confusion about why the French refer to the sensual climax as ‘la petite mort.’ His slyly charming impersonation of Bartók’s Bluebeard was chillingly memorable even alongside a wife as commanding as Jessye Norman. Like Mr. Furlanetto and Ms. Radvanovsky, however, it is in Verdi repertory that Mr. Ramey has proved invaluable to the MET. His handsomely cavernous voice was both haunted and haunting as Banco in Macbeth, and his Filippo in Don Carlo writhed with the pain of a man who, despite having the world at his feet, was desperate to be loved. When Mr. Ramey was the Grand Inquisitor to Mr. Furlanetto’s Filippo in 2002, there was in the ferocious old man’s encounters with the tormented monarch an element of shared understanding that enhanced the psychological intensity of the characters’ interplay, and their rapport also shone in their sparring as Don Giovanni and Leporello. His Zaccaria in Nabucco, Pagano in I Lombardi alla prima crociata, Giovanna da Procida in I vespri siciliani, and Padre Guardiano in La forza del destino, and Leone in Attila all possessed the complete acquaintance with Verdian style missing from so many performances in recent years. Complementing his mastery of the Verdi canon, Mr. Ramey splendidly impersonated characters in operas either less familiar at the MET or receiving their company premières: Field Marshal Kutuzov in Prokofiev’s War and Peace, Nick Shadow in Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress, and the delightfully reptilian Reverend Olin Blitch in Floyd’s Susannah. His performances of the title rôles in Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov and Boito’s Mefistofele crackled with regal authority and sadistic glee. With so many phenomenal performances to his credit, it seems greedy to regret omissions, but it is particularly lamentable that Mr. Ramey’s standard-setting traversal of the titular Hun in Verdi’s Attila was never allowed to lay siege to the MET stage. Reviewing a 1991 performance of Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro in which Mr. Ramey reprised his Figaro, wonderfully recorded with Sir Georg Solti for DECCA, John Rockwell wrote in the New York Times that the singer was ‘a willing actor with a gorgeously-produced high bass.’ Even we critics sometimes hit the proverbial nail on the head, though this critic would argue that, at his best, Mr. Ramey was far more than merely a ‘willing’ actor. His singing has been a tremendous asset to the MET for three decades and an inestimably important example to young American singers contemplating careers in opera.

Canadian soprano Teresa Stratas as Nedda in Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci in 1963 [Photo by Louis Mélançon, © by The Metropolitan Opera]

Without question, Canadian soprano Teresa Stratas is one of the greatest artists ever to have graced the operatic stage. It seems impossible that fifty-five years have passed since Ms. Stratas’s singular voice was first heard at the Metropolitan Opera in the Regional Auditions National Finals concert on 20 March 1959, singing the title character's 'Sola, perduta, abbandonata' from Puccini's Manon Lescaut. Her formal début occurred six months later, when she sang Poussette in Massenet's setting of Abbé Prévost's tragic saga of Manon. She sang an array of secondary rôles with the company until the performance of Bizet's Carmen on 15 November 1960, in which the legendary Jane Rhodes joined the MET roster as the gypsy heroine and Ms. Stratas advanced to the part of Micaëla. Paul Henry Lang wrote in the Herald Tribune of her performance that 'she deported herself like a veteran though she is at the very beginning of a very promising career.' During the early years of that promising career, she witnessed many of the most celebrated operatic creations of the Twentieth Century: Farrell's Alceste, Vinay's Parsifal, Nilsson's Turandot, the pairing of the débuting Leontyne Price and Franco Corelli in Il trovatore, Robert Merrill's Rigoletto, Borkh's Elektra, and Siepi's Don Giovanni. She was only twenty-three when, in 1962, she took her first leading rôle at the MET, Mimì in Puccini's La bohemè. Over the next three decades, she portrayed characters as dramatically and musically diverse as the Komponist in Richard Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos, Sardula in Gian Carlo Menotti's The Last Savage, Mozart's Cherubino in Le nozze di Figaro, Zerlina in Don Giovanni, and Despina in Così fan tutte, Lisa in Tchaikovsky's Pikovaya dama, Offenbach's Périchole, Marguerite in Gounod's Faust, Humperdinck's Gretel, Desdemona in Verdi's Otello, Debussy's Mélisande, Mařenka in Smetana's Prodaná nevĕsta, and Nedda in Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci, as well as Puccini's Mimì, Cio-Cio San, Liù, and the three heroines in Il trittico. Every new portrait that she created on the MET stage was memorable, but among scores of exciting performances Ms. Stratas offered audiences characterizations of a quartet of troubled heroines that validated her reputation as one of the most accomplished singing actresses of her generation: Jenny in Kurt Weill's Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, Berg's Lulu, Marie Antoinette in John Corigliano's The Ghosts of Versailles, and Madame Lidoine in Poulenc's Dialogues des Carmélites. To these ladies—and, indeed, all of the parts that she sang—she brought unstinting dramatic commitment and a voice with which she seemed able to do anything that she wanted. Not every risk was well-advised, and not every gamble paid off, but Ms. Stratas is an artist whose performances gave opera stirring injections of grit and glamor.

The recipients of the Tenth Annual Opera News Awards will be honored at a gala at New York’s Plaza Hotel on 19 April 2015, during which they will be serenaded by renowned mezzo-soprano and MET star Stephanie Blythe. For ticket information, please visit the Opera News website or phone 212.769.7009.

Sincerest congratulations to each of these terrific artists and to Opera News for seventy-eight years of articles and features that go far beyond merely reporting the news about opera.

ARTS NEWS: Nominations for the 2015 GRAMMY® Awards include recordings featured on VOIX DES ARTS

The panels charged with nominating artistic endeavors for recognition by mainstream awards organizations often inspire confusion and consternation with their selections, but GRAMMY® voters distinguished themselves by choosing competitive, artistically significant candidates for the 2015 Classical GRAMMY® Awards, a number of which have been featured on Voix des Arts.

Among the recordings vying to be honored as Best Classical Instrumental Solo is Jory Vinikour’s superb disc of modern American music for the instrument of which he is the consummate master, the harpsichord. Featuring music by Samuel Adler, Thomas Benjamin, Stephen Blumberg, Henry Cowell, Harold Meltzer, Patricia Morehead, Robert Moevs, Robert Muczynski, Mel Powell, and Ned Rorem, all thrillingly performed by Mr. Vinikour, Toccatas is a compelling reminder that neither the composition of music for the harpsichord nor extraordinary virtuosity among the instrument’s practitioners became extinct when Baroque idioms fell from favor [Sono Luminus DSL-92174; reviewed here].

In an especially tight field, consideration for Best Classical Solo Vocal Album pits Argentine countertenor Franco Fagioli’s disc of arias by Nicola Porpora [Il maestro – Porpora Arias—Naïve V 5369; reviewed here] against mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato’s Stella di Napoli, a fiery recital of bel canto stunners by Bellini, Carafa, Donizetti, Mercadante, Pacini, Rossini, and Valentini [ERATO 08256 463656 2 3; reviewed here]. Mr. Fagioli brings to a fascinating array of music by one of the Eighteenth Century’s leading composers singing of histrionic flair and unstinting musicality. One of the handful of great bel canto singers of recent years, Ms. DiDonato exhibits her trademark vocal brilliance in her performances on Stella di Napoli. Both discs provide feasts of richly satisfying singing.

Best Choral Performance nominees include René Jacobs’s revelatory recording of Johann Sebastian Bach’s iconic Matthäus-Passion [harmonia mundi HMC 802156.58; reviewed here] and Dunedin Consort’s moving account of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Requiem [Linn Records CKD 449; reviewed here]. Preserving unforgettable performances by Werner Güra as the Evangelist and Johannes Weiser as Christ, Maestro Jacobs’s Matthäus-Passion challenges traditions by looking deeply into the score for Bach’s true intentions. Dunedin Consort and Maestro John Butt do much the same with Mozart’s Requiem, taking as their inspiration the aim of reconstructing the work as it was first performed with the completion by Franz Xaver Süßmayr. Neither of these works is unfamiliar, but these performances reveal unseen facets of these cornerstones of the Western choral repertory.

Christian Thielemann’s recording of Richard Strauss’s Elektra, released in celebration of the 150^th anniversary of the composer’s birth, united a cast of acclaimed Strauss singers—Evelyn Herlitzius, Anne Schwanewilms, Waltraud Meier, and René Pape—in a performance of considerable dramatic power [Deutsche Grammophone 479 3387; reviewed here]. DGG’s forceful Elektra must contend in campaigning for the designation of Best Opera Recording with one of the most intriguing operatic releases of the Twenty-First Century, Darius Milhaud’s L’Orestie d’Eschyle [NAXOS 8.660349-51; reviewed here]. The virtues of DGG’s Elektra cast are complemented by those of NAXOS’s lineup for L’Orestie d’Eschyle: Lori Phillips, Dan Kempson, Brenda Rae, Sidney Outlaw, Tamara Mumford, Jennifer Lane, Julianna Di Giacomo, and Kristin Eder uphold the storied legacy of American singing established by artists such as Lawrence Tibbett, Leonard Warren, Richard Tucker, Lili Chookasian, Irene Dalis, Mignon Dunn, and Beverly Sills. Maestro Thielemann reminds listeners of why Strauss’s opera remains a stalwart in the international repertory almost a century after its première, and Maestro Kenneth Kiesler makes a strong argument on behalf of the merits of Milhaud’s elephantine homage to Aeschylus.

Congratulations to all of the nominees for the 2015 Classical GRAMMY® Awards!

CD REVIEW: George Butterworth, Gerald Finzi, Ivor Gurney, & Ralph Vaughan Williams – FLOWERS OF THE FIELD (R. Williams, J. Irons; City of London Choir; London Mozart Players; NAXOS 8.573426)

GEORGE BUTTERWORTH (1885 – 1916): A Shropshire Lad – Rhapsody for Orchestra; GERALD FINZI (1901 – 1956): Requiem da Camera; IVOR GURNEY (1890 – 1937): The Trumpet; RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS (1872 – 1958): An Oxford Elegy—Roderick Williams (baritone – Requiem da Camera), Natasha Harbinson (soprano – Requiem da Camera), Emily Tidbury (soprano – Requiem da Camera), David Bagnall (tenor – Requiem da Camera); Jeremy Irons (speaker – An Oxford Elegy); City of London Choir; London Mozart Players; Hilary Davan Wetton, conductor [Recorded in Henry Wood Hall, London, UK, on 11 and 12 July 2014; NAXOS 8.573426; 1 CD, 60:41; Available from ClassicsOnline, Amazon, jpc, Presto Classical, and major music retailers]

A century ago, as the desolation of ‘total war’ swept across Europe, destruction of life and land on an unprecedented, unimagined scale brought a continent and, in time, every nation in the world to the edge of a precipice from which retreat was impossible. From the brink of cataclysm, the view into the abyss of modern warfare shocked a world still coming to terms with industrialization and urbanization of contemporary society. One of the greatest tragedies of the Great War, which left swaths of the European population dead or destitute, is that the lessons of the ferocity and merciless carnage have seemingly been forgotten—or else were never truly learned at all. Now, when city streets are informal war zones and governments stand ready to initiate nuclear annihilation, the trenches of WWI are distant memories, and, with the veterans of those trenches departed, there are no voices to revitalize and honor those memories. Music is the immortal phoenix, however, and it can preserve for countless generations that which fades and falls from the minds of men. This new disc from NAXOS, Flowers of the Field, recorded in beautifully natural, spacious sound, takes the listener back to the trenches, to No Man’s Land, to the drawing rooms and kitchen tables of England, where families awaited news of their own soldiers and sailors. Art is in many ways the antithesis of war, but reactions to the complex, ambiguous sentiments of war-torn social orders have engendered some of the most extraordinary works of art in all genres. To the individual responses to WWI by four of England’s finest composers is owed the existence of the music on Flowers of the Field. Their perspectives were different, and it ironically was the oldest of the four composers represented on this disc who lived longest after the cessation of hostilities in 1918, but all of the music on Flowers of the Field provides intensely personal views of the horrors of what sadly did not prove to be the war to end all wars.

Under the insightfully-wielded baton of Hilary Davan Wetton, the London Mozart Players give a subtle, sonorous account of George Butterworth’s A Shropshire Lad – Rhapsody for Orchestra. The climax to which the music builds is achieved by Maestro Wetton with perfect control of thematic development. The Rhapsody’s principal melodic material, taken from Butterworth’s lyrical settings of poems from Housman’s A Shropshire Lad, provides a vein of solemn melancholy that courses through the music without concealing suggestions of optimism and memories of past happiness. The incandescent performance by the London Mozart Players and Maestro Wetton is a fitting tribute to the composer, who lost his life in the Battle of the Somme in 1916, less than a month after his thirty-first birthday.

Edited and completed by Christian Alexander, the score of Gerald Finzi’s Requiem da Camera is a sublime creation that delves deeply into the composer’s youthful idiom at its expressive best. The work’s Prelude receives from the London Mozart Players and Maestro Wetton a warmly affectionate reading, and the tranquility of their approach persists in each of the subsequent movements. Soprano Natasha Harbinson and tenor David Bagnall unite with the City of London Choir in a radiant account of Finzi’s setting of John Masefield’s ‘How still this quiet cornfield is to-night,’ their simple but serene singing exposing the raw emotions of the text. Thomas Hardy’s ‘Only a man harrowing clods’ received from Finzi a musical treatment of particular grace, and it is impossible to imagine the vocal lines served better than by baritone Roderick Williams in this performance. Whether premièring modern compositions or portraying familiar operatic characters like Marcello in Puccini’s La bohème, Mr. Williams is one of Britain’s finest singers, one whose many recordings are too few. He possesses a rare gift for looking at a piece of music and discerning its heart without over-analyzing, thus preserving the spontaneity of his interpretations whether he is singing a piece for the first or the hundredth time. That he also brings to his work a voice of extraordinary beauty and security only enlarges the effectiveness of his artistry. His singing of ‘Only a man harrowing clods’ is powerfully moving, both in its sheer tonal appeal and in the simplicity of utterance. ‘We who are left’ from Wilfrid Wilson Gibson’s ‘A Lament,’ published in 1918, is mesmerizingly performed by soprano Emily Tidbury soprano and the choir. The death of his mentor Ernest Farrar on the Western Front in 1918 deprived the seventeen-year-old Finzi, who had already lost his father and brothers, of one of the greatest influences on his development as a composer, and his sense of loss throbs in every bar of his Requiem da Camera and every moment of this performance.

Ivor Gurney survived WWI physically, but the lasting mental and emotion turmoil of his service undermined his psychological stability. One of England’s most gifted musicians thus spent the last fifteen years of his life in the confinement of an asylum, where he struggled to reclaim through Art what the terrors of war took from him. In The Trumpet, Gurney set an inspirational text by Edward Thomas, sung stirringly by the City of London Choir in this performance. Edited and orchestrated by Philip Lancaster, Gurney’s handling of ‘Rise up, rise up’ is realized with compelling magnitude by the London musicians and singers. The competing resignation and resilience of their collective phrasing of the lines ‘Open your eyes to the air / That has washed the eyes of the stars / Through all the dewy night: / Up with the light, / To the old wars; / Arise, arise!’ are unaffectedly profound.

Employing a text by Matthew Arnold, Ralph Vaughan Williams’s An Oxford Elegy is a work of the sort of contrasting public homage and private anguish at which the composer excelled. As in the other pieces on Flowers of the Field, the choristers, orchestra, and Maestro Wetton perform the music incisively, creating the impression that they are directly experiencing the incomprehensible losses of WWI rather than singing about them a century later. Though Vaughan Williams was in his forties when the war began, he enlisted, and his experiences on the Continent, combined with the later traumas of WWII, impacted his work for the rest of his life. The spoken portions of the Elegy are read by acclaimed thespian Jeremy Irons, whose mellifluous, immediately-identifiable voice lends Arnold’s verses a measure of glamor. There are drawbacks to Mr. Irons’s contributions, however, apparent from the start of his voicing of ‘Go, for they call you, Shepherd, from the hill.’ There and in ‘Here will I sit and wait,’ repeated by chorus, his phrasing and articulation can seem artificial, and his tone in ‘Come, let me read the oft-read tale again’ causes the text to seem just that—an oft-read tale that has been repeated to the verge of insignificance. His intoning of ‘Too quick despairer, wherefore wilt thou go?’ restores the expected integrity of his performance, however, and his delivery of the lines ‘There thou art gone, and me thou leavest here / Sole in these fields; yet will I not despair’—complemented by the chorus’s singing of ‘Yes, thou art gone! and round me too the night / In ever-nearing circle weaves her shade’ and the closing ‘Why faintest thou? I wander'd till I died’—carries vast dramatic weight. Vaughan Williams’s music gives Arnold’s text a canvas on which to paint the unfettered emotions of war in bold, ever-changing hues, and Mr. Irons, Maestro Wetton, and the singers and musicians collaborate in a presentation of An Oxford Elegy that both mourns the terrible costs of war and acknowledges the hope of the inevitable carrying on.

The body of George Butterworth was never identified or returned to England for burial among his ancestors, and that is a sorrowful reminder of the ways in which war disrupts families and societies for generations. When he fell in France in 1916, he perhaps could not have envisioned that, a century later, images of conflict would continue to haunt the citizens of the world nearly every single day. Vaughan Williams, who emerged from the deplorable savagery of WWI only to witness the atrocities of WWII, perhaps believed that the sacrifices of fathers and grandfathers would spare sons and grandsons the unspeakable pains of war. Ivor Gurney’s spirit was broken and Gerald Finzi’s childhood uprooted by the impersonal clashes of governments, but what these composers said in music is the legacy of World War One that must persevere: that every life mattered, every death left an empty seat at a dinner table, and every blood-soaked trench scarred the earth in ways that can never be healed. This disc and the sincere, heartfelt performances that it preserves rekindle the hope that every tear shed for the victims of WWI indeed gave life to flowers of the field.

CD REVIEW: Michael Nyman – SYMPHONY NO. 11: HILLSBOROUGH MEMORIAL (K. Rudge; Liverpool Philharmonic Youth Choir; Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra; MN Records MNRCD136)

MICHAEL NYMAN (born 1944): Symphony No. 11: Hillsborough Memorial—Kathryn Rudge, mezzo-soprano; Liverpool Philharmonic Youth Choir; Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra; Josep Vicent, conductor [Recorded at the Friary, Liverpool, England, on 10 and 11 May 2014 (Ms. Rudge and the Orchestra) and in the Lady Chapel of Liverpool Cathedral on 5 July 2014 (Choir); MN Records MNRCD136; 1 CD, 40:09; Available from MN Records, Amazon, jpc, Presto Classical, and major music retailers]

When the sun rose over Sheffield on Saturday, 15 April 1989, no one expected that by day’s end one of the most horrific disasters in the history of competitive sports would leave more than seven hundred English football fans injured and ninety-six fans of the Liverpool and Nottingham Forest Football Clubs dead. Seventy-eight of the dead had not yet reached the age of thirty. Likewise, few people might have imagined that the formal inquests into the catastrophe at Hillsborough Stadium would be obstructed by the ineptitude, corruption, and blatant dishonesty of the Thatcher government. Like the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States and the July 2005 London bombings, the Hillsborough disaster and its aftermath forever altered perceptions of public safety and the responsibilities of individuals and institutions in preserving it. After twenty-three years, the devastation of the tragedy at Hillsborough Stadium was intensified by an independent investigatory panel’s statement in September 2012 that the lives of as many as forty-one of those who died in 1989 might have been saved had medical attention been managed properly. On 5 July 2014, Michael Nyman’s Symphony No. 11: Hillsborough Memorial was premièred at Liverpool Cathedral in commemoration of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Hillsborough Stadium calamity. With any work composed for or ultimately identified with the celebration or memorialization of a specific event, there is the danger that its topicality will limit the endurance of its appeal. Though Mr. Nyman’s Symphony No. 11 owes it genesis to a singular cataclysmic day in the history of sport, the significance of the score that the composer’s recollections of that atrocity produced is not dependent upon the listener’s knowledge of the horrors of 15 April 1989. Mr. Nyman has crafted a work of imposing musical grandeur that is a monument to public and private grief: like Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem, Hillsborough Memorial transcends the circumstances of its creation. It is not surprising that Mr. Nyman composed meaningful, memorable music, but the phenomenal quality of this recording of his Symphony No. 11 is extraordinary in any context.

It is interesting to note that the first movement—the portion of the work that might be thought to most significantly impact its endurance beyond commemoration of the Hillsborough disaster—is one of the strongest components of the Symphony’s success. ‘The Singing of the Names’ is precisely what it purports to be, a musical setting of the full names of the ninety-six people who lost their lives at Hillsborough Stadium on 15 April 1989. Sung by Liverpudlian mezzo-soprano Kathryn Rudge, Mr. Nyman’s music generates tremendous emotional impact, the simplicity of the gesture of incorporating the names of the fallen into the musical landscape proving extraordinarily poignant. Mr. Nyman’s familiar compositional idiom is evident, but the subtly shifting harmonies of his unabashed tonalism obliterate any suggestions of monotony. Ms. Rudge’s golden tones contribute memorably to the rapt sincerity of ‘The Singing of the Names,’ and she easily covers the full range of the vocal lines whilst phrasing with distinction.

The impressions made by the singing of the Liverpool Philharmonic Youth Choir and the playing of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra in the Symphony’s subsequent three movements—‘Family Reflections,’ ‘The 96,’ and ‘Memorial’—are deeply stimulating. Maestro Josep Vicent conducts the performance with compelling sense of occasion allied with meticulous control made all the more impressive by the chorus having been recorded separately. The angry climax to which the Symphony builds is stirringly realized by the musical personnel, but the contours of the music are not distorted in the interest of emphasizing the composer’s justifiably exasperated reaction to the gross mishandling of response to the Hillsborough tragedy by the Thatcher government. The Choir’s singing in ‘Family Reflections’ is wonderfully expressive even when the vocal lines tax the young choristers, and the Orchestra’s sonorous playing highlights the shimmering colors of Mr. Nyman’s melodic strands. The emotion conveyed by the choir’s singing is nothing short of remarkable, and the youngsters sing with a purity that in some ways seems to intensify the sting of the text. It is perhaps the juxtaposition of innocence with the terrible experience of tragedy that is the catalyst for this profundity, but Mr. Nyman’s music provides the elemental forces that interact with unstinting power. Though their styles are very different, there are echoes of Elgar, Finzi, Vaughan Williams, and Britten in Mr. Nyman’s way of constructing musical peaks that explore unexpected nuances of text—even when the text is a simple list of names. Mr. Nyman’s path is entirely his own, but by synthesizing the traditions of the most gifted of his countrymen into an individual voice in ‘Family Reflections’ and ‘The 96’ he weaves his very personal response to the events at Hillsborough Stadium into the bloodstained tapestry depicting England’s darkest hours.

‘Memorial’ is one of Mr. Nyman’s most beautiful inventions, and it finds an ideal new purpose as the closing movement of Symphony No. 11. This is not music of mourning but of laughing at embarrassing childhood photographs and remembering pints shared at neighborhood pubs in carefree hours after football matches won and lost. ‘Memorial’ draws from all of the musicians a performance of immense zeal that fully unfurls the threads of sorrow, strength, and transcendence that bind the ambivalent sentiments of Mr. Nyman’s musical ingenuity into an affectingly congruous entity.

Sir Winston Churchill wrote that ‘we shall draw from the heart of suffering itself the means of inspiration and survival.’ It is this philosophy of refining from the tumult of loss, controversy, and unanswered questions the spirits of recovery and rededication that reverberates in every bar of Michael Nyman’s Symphony No. 11. This superb recording preserves a heartfelt performance of a fitting and provocative commemoration of a tragedy that, both in honor of those who died and in recognition of the appalling lessons of that day in 1989, must not be forgotten.