CD REVIEW: G. A. Homilius—MARKUSPASSION (H. J. Mammel, T. Laske, M. Mauch, R. Sandhoff; Carus 83.260)

GOTTFRIED AUGUST HOMILIUS (1714 – 1785): Markuspassion, HoWV I.10—H. J. Mammel (Evangelist, tenor), T. Laske (Christ, bass), M. Mauch (soprano), R. Sandhoff (alto); Basler Madrigalisten, L’arpa festante; Fritz Näf [Recorded in the Reformete Kirche Arlesheim, Germany, 26 – 29 March 2012; Carus 83.260, world premiere recording]

Virtually every music lover has experienced a few moments of indecision when, hearing a piece of music, there are feelings of both familiarity and ignorance; that sense of musical déjà vu inspired by an instinct for recognizing a specific piece or its style and an inability to precisely identify the score or its composer.  The music of Gottfried August Homilius, a crossroads at which styles past and future intersect, might well account for some of these moments of musical confusion.  Indeed, there are moments in his Markuspassion when Homilius—an almost exact contemporary of Gluck—has one foot firmly in the Baroque traditions of Bach and Händel and the other stretching into the mature Classicism of Haydn and Mozart.  Markuspassion is far more than a curiosity or stylistic hybrid, however: in a score of roughly the same duration as Bach’s Johannes-Passion, Homilius makes his own unique compositional voice apparent.

A native Saxon like both Bach and Händel, Homilius may have been a pupil of the former at Leipzig: it is known that the younger composer moved in circles populated by Bach’s students, but evidence supporting the suggestion that Homilius personally studied with Bach is largely anecdotal, based upon the recollections of the composer Johann Adam Hiller, who became Cantor of Thomaskirche in 1789, nearly forty years after Bach’s death.  Active for virtually his entire professional life as first an organist and later Cantor in Dresden, Homilius enjoyed access to a rich Lutheran liturgical tradition that drew upon the work of Buxtehude, Pachelbel, Telemann, and Bach, as well as proximity to one of the most musically progressive Courts in 18th-Century Europe.  In fact, the Markuspassion was dedicated by Homilius to Princess Anna Amalia, the influential sister of the music-loving Frederick the Great, perhaps in recognition of her patronage of an early performance of the work.  Historical details of personal, professional, and educational associations notwithstanding, Homilius’s skill and integrity as a composer are obvious in Markuspassion.

The Stuttgart-based Carus label has devoted a number of releases in its ‘Music from Dresden’ line to music by Homilius, and this confidence in the quality of the music of a composer little known to many listeners is opulently rewarded in this recording of Markuspassion.  Twenty voices strong for this performance, the choristers—and occasional soloists—of Basler Madrigalisten impress in every choral episode.  Blending beautifully in the chorales, they also prove thrilling in their full-throated singing of the turba-like choruses that are so reminiscent of the Passions of Bach.  The opening chorale, ‘So gehst du nun, mein Jesu,’ is cut from the same fabric as the opening movements of both Bach’s Johannes-Passion and his Matthäus-Passion, and the choristers sing it with appropriate anguish but beautiful tone.  Equally impressive are instances in which tenors from the choir combine in a smaller ensemble to portray Christ’s Apostles, a lovely effect.  The choristers and soloists receive expert support from the twenty-seven players of L’arpa festante.  As in Bach’s Passions, Homilius’s music requires several of the instrumentalists to contribute solo obbligati, all of which are played with finesse and attention to detail derived from the relevant texts.  Fritz Näf, founder of Basler Madrigalisten, conducts sensitively, taking cues on tempi from the dramatic situations.  Perhaps most importantly, Maestro Näf gives the performance space in which to develop naturally, allowing Homilius’s music to work its magic without conductorial interference or forced climaxes.

Soprano Monika Mauch brings a bright, slightly metallic voice to Homilius’s strenuous music for the soprano soloist.  The soprano’s first aria, ‘Mensch, empfinde doch Erbarmen,’ belongs to the world of Bach’s Passions, its hint of the future coming with an unexpected cadenza, an opportunity to display her upper register of which Ms. Mauch takes full advantage.  One of the most compelling sequences in Markuspassion is the series of alternating Accompagnati and arias for the soprano in the Second Part, a reaction to the actual Crucifixion that takes on the intense character of the title character’s famous mad scene in Händel’s Orlando.  Ms. Mauch brings both precision and power to this sequence, ideally conveying the heartbreak of the text through her pointed singing.  Ms. Mauch sings her final aria, ‘Ihr Tränen fließt,’ a paean to Christ’s death and expected salvation in the vein of Händel’s ‘I know that my Redeemer liveth,’ with appealingly pure tone, the words carried convincingly on the breath.

The first aria for the alto soloist, ‘Wenn euch eure Sünden drücken,’ with its lilting horns, would not seem out of place in a score by Haydn, Salieri, or the young Mozart, and alto Ruth Sandhoff sings it with assured technique that makes easy going of the divisions.  The alto’s second aria, ‘Verkennt ihn nicht, den Gott der Götter,’ conjures memories of Händel’s Rodelinda with its musical depictions of exasperation and righteous definace, and Ms. Sandhoff meets the demands of the music excitingly.  Throughout her performance, Ms. Sandhoff deploys her compact voice with strength and intelligence.

Tenor Hans Jörg Mammel sings the Evangelist and the tenor arias, placing the voice ideally for the varying requirements of his music.  Singing the text of the Gospel, Mr. Mammel communicates with the listener through deeply expressive singing, shaping lines with liquid phrasing and a wide palette of vocal colors.  Mr. Mammel sounds untroubled by the punishing tessitura of the Evangelist’s music, projecting ably at both extremities of his range.  An accomplished veteran of historically-informed performances, Mr. Mammel is gifted with a seemingly unerring instinct for pacing his singing according to the demands of both music and text.  In the two arias for the tenor soloist, Mr. Mammel sings with imperturbable technique and refinement.

As in Bach’s Passions, the casting of the role of Christ is crucial to the success of Homilius’s Markuspassion.  Baritone Thomas Laske proves a worthy interpreter and a very talented singer, singing straightforwardly but with great dedication.  Homilius’s score includes a very eloquent setting of Christ’s inaugural celebration of the Eucharist, expressed through poignant arioso: Mr. Laske, firm of voice in every bar he sings, delivers this scene with quiet dignity.  Mr. Laske never artificially darkens or inflates his tone, with the result that his Christ is audibly a young man fulfilling fateful prophecies in the prime of his life.  As soloist, Mr. Laske movingly sings two of the most beautiful arias in the score.

It cannot be argued that Homilius’s Markuspassion is as significant a work as Bach’s Johannes-Passion or Matthäus-Passion, but it is a work of fervor, emotional honesty, and legitimate originality that deserves to be studied, performed, and enjoyed.  Despite possessing impeccable musical credentials, Gottfried August Homilius has the misfortune of being a member of the largely forgotten generation of composers whose careers coincided with the transition from the Late Baroque of Bach, Händel, and Vivaldi to the Viennese Classicism of Haydn and Mozart.  Homilius’s Markuspassion is an important work of that transitional period, its structure honoring Baroque traditions and its music often anticipating later works.  Having engaged a first-rate cast of soloists, choristers, and instrumentalists under the direction of a conductor whose affection for the music extends to trusting its impact, Carus have produced an account of Homilius’s Markuspassion that resoundingly validates the esteem in which the score and its composer were held in 18th-Century Dresden.

CD REVIEW: C. Franck & R. Strauss—VIOLIN SONATAS (A. Dumay, L. Lortie; Onyx Classics ONYX 4096)

CÉSAR FRANCK (1822 – 1980): Violin Sonata in A Major; Mélancolie; Prélude, fugue et variation in B minor, Op. 18 (arranged by A. Dumay and L. Lortie, after Paul Lemaitre) and RICHARD STRAUSS (1864 – 1949): Violin Sonata in E-flat Major, Op. 18; ‘Auf stillem Waldespfad’ (arranged by Jascha Heifetz)—A. Dumay, violin; L. Lortie, piano [Recorded in Saint-Denis-le-Ferment, Normandy, France, 24 – 26 September 2012; Onyx Classics ONYX 4096]

The names Eugène Ysaÿe and Arthur Grumiaux are as storied in the annals of violin-playing as Kirsten Flagstad and Lauritz Melchior are in those of Wagner singing.  Pillars of the Franco-Belgian school, these artists elevated the standards of playing attributed to French-speaking violinists to equal and even surpass those of Italian, Slavic, and Teutonic violinists.  Since the early death of Grumiaux in 1986, perceptible elements of the Franco-Belgian school of playing have eroded along with those of other ‘national’ schools.  While it can be argued that overall standards of playing have gradually increased since the turn of the 20th Century, with young players generally displaying more consistently accomplished techniques than all but their most gifted forbears, it cannot be denied that the unique qualities that audibly identified violinists of different nationalistic and ethnic origins have all but disappeared.  A sameness of approach similar to that of which opera lovers complain also affects instrumentalists, so the rare instance in which an artist’s playing exhibits the hallmarks of any of the lamented ‘national’ styles of performance is noteworthy and, especially to younger listeners, often revelatory.  The playing of Augustin Dumay on this recording is extraordinary not merely for its homage to the ancestry of Ysaÿe and Grumiaux but also, most importantly, for its eloquence, beauty, and formidably sure intonation.

Interestingly, the recording of chamber music seems to pose challenges to engineers and producers nearly as great as those of recording larger-scaled works.  Placing a large orchestra or gaggle of voices within a viable soundscape is an obviously daunting task, but the evidence of more than a century of recordings of chamber music suggests that balancing the sounds made by a small group of musicians is equally demanding.  César Franck, Richard Strauss, Augustin Dumay, and Louis Lortie are all done a great service by the work of the team assembled by Onyx Classics for this recording.  The sonic results achieved by Executive Producer Matthew Cosgrove, Producer and Balance Engineer Chris Alder, and Editing and Mastering Technician Michel Pierre are superb.  Perhaps there are those audiophiles who might object to the closely-detailed sound on this disc, which places both violinist and pianist in a warm, reverberant acoustic that allows uncommon fidelity to pitch and rhythm without sounding coldly analytical.  The atmosphere of the recording studio can rob a performance of vitality, and one of the most delightful aspects of the sonic quality of this disc is the audible sense of an actual performance by genuine musical artists taking place before the microphones.  Hearing the breathing of the performers heightens this sense of occasion without in any way distracting from the music-making and even highlights the breadth of both musicians’ phrasing.

The vigor and expansiveness of César Franck’s Violin Sonata, composed in 1886 as a wedding gift for Eugène Ysaÿe, belie it being the work of a composer in his sixties and well into the last decade of his life.  Combining the formality typical of Franck’s mature work with unusual passion and staggering demands for virtuosity from both violinist and pianist, the Violin Sonata is among Franck’s most memorable works and one of the finest sonatas for violin and piano in the repertory.  Very accomplished musicians sometimes fall victim to the difficulties of Franck’s writing, but no niceties of technique elude Mr. Dumay or Mr. Lortie.  Mr. Lortie faces a far more demanding task in Franck’s Sonata than in many similar works, and the aplomb with which he plays all four movements is a testament to his artistry.  The artistic integrity of both players is beyond reproach, in fact: Mr. Dumay’s tone has much of the singing quality remembered from the playing of Grumiaux, and Mr. Lortie’s playing has the intensely communicative sensibility of a great Lieder accompanist.  It is refreshing to hear a performance of chamber music as symphonically-conceived as Franck’s Violin Sonata played with such unwavering attention to its inherent tunefulness: the art of song pervades this performance as compellingly as the technical prowess of the players.  Particularly in the Allegretto ben moderato opening movement, Mr. Dumay and Mr. Lortie engage in a wonderfully elegant ‘conversation,’ which is convincingly extended throughout the Sonata.  Whereas many players are content merely to survive a performance of the Franck Sonata, Mr. Dumay and Mr. Lortie approach the music with both appropriate hubris and humor, informed but not inhibited by tradition.

The B-minor Prelude, Fugue and Variations—originally written for organ, on which instrument the composer was a noted virtuoso, and performed here in an arrangement by Mr. Dumay and Mr. Lortie—is a work that nods to Franck’s academic predilections with its reflections of Bach.  Mélancolie, another work composed late in Franck’s life, is a beautiful miniature, its emotional provenance more one of weariness than genuine sadness.  Both pieces receive from Mr. Dumay and Mr. Lortie performances of dash and distinction.  On a similar path, in name and in practice, is the Strauss miniature ‘Auf stillem Waldespfad,’ played in an arrangement by the legendary Jascha Heifetz.

Heifetz was an early champion of the Opus 18 Violin Sonata in E-flat of Richard Strauss, composed in 1887 when Strauss was in his early twenties.  Written by a composer at the opposite end of his career, Strauss’s Violin Sonata is ironically almost exactly contemporaneous with Franck’s Sonata: both are emphatically works of the 19th Century, Franck’s a summation of the Sonata form as developed and enriched by his contemporaries and Strauss’s a transition from the tonal world of Beethoven and Brahms to that of the 20th Century.  Though Strauss largely abandoned chamber music after youthful efforts, it is significant that several of his operas—most notably Ariadne auf Naxos, Capriccio, and Intermezzo—employ chamber-music-like passages in moments of greatest emotional depth.  Despite being an early work, the Violin Sonata inhabits the extroverted but quietly wistful tonal world of mature Strauss, the writing for both instruments displaying versatility and reminding that listener that the young Strauss was accomplished as both a violinist and a pianist.  Though recorded by many fine musicians, Strauss’s Violin Sonata is not as well known as it deserves to be, and the performance by Mr. Dumay and Mr. Lortie on this disc proves that the piece merits inclusion in the repertoire of every sonata duo capable of playing it.  Though Strauss’s music is unmistakably Teutonic in mood, the Francophone light and shade of Mr. Dumay’s and Mr. Lortie’s playing reveals unexpected moments of levity even in the most athletic passages.  This performance embraces the sentimentality that permeates the Sonata, expressing without exaggeration the myriad emotions inherent in the score.  As in their playing of the Franck Sonata, Mr. Dumay and Mr. Lortie successfully meet every technical demand of Strauss’s music, ripping through the opening movement with panache and tackling the complex second movement unflinchingly.  Playing with power that would be welcome in Elektra and grace reminiscent of Arabella, Mr. Dumay and Mr. Lortie prove tremendously adept Straussians.

With their vastly disparate styles, it might be assumed that the Violin Sonatas of César Franck and Richard Strauss would prove ill-matched companions.  A common aphorism suggests that music is an universal language, however, and the playing of Augustin Dumay and Louis Lortie on this disc exemplifies the power of exceptional performers to apply individual styles to plumb the complementary qualities of great pieces of music.  Both of the Sonatas on this disc receive performances of power and nuance, violinist and pianist introducing 21st-Century listeners to the best elements of the Franco-Belgian school of playing that in recent years have been dormant and feared extinct.  Resurrecting exalted traditions is an achievement of only the finest musicians.  Augustin Dumay and Louis Lortie accomplish this and go even further with this fantastic recording: they launch their own unique tradition of uncompromising excellence.

IN MEMORIAM: British conductor Sir Colin Davis, 1927 – 2013

Sir Colin Davis

25 September 1927 – 14 April 2013

Acclaimed British conductor Sir Colin Davis has died at the age of eighty-five.  A commanding presence on the British music scene throughout a long career, Maestro Davis was legendary for his leadership of the London Symphony Orchestra, with much of his repertory with the Orchestra documented on award-winning recordings.  This legacy was further enriched by the founding of the LSO Live record label, under whose auspices a recording of Maestro Davis’s April 2012 Barbican concert performances of Weber’s Der Freischütz with Christine Brewer, Sally Matthews, and Simon O’Neill is due for release later this month.

Born in Surrey, the young Davis was educated at Christ’s Hospital and the Royal College of Music, where he initially studied clarinet.  As musical influences on his youthful endeavors, Davis cited Sir Malcolm Sargent, Sir Thomas Beecham, and Bruno Walter.  Among his earliest engagements as a conductor of opera was a production of Don Giovanni for the newly-formed Chelsea Opera Group.  It was a performance of L’Enfance du Christ at the Bryanston Summer School that awakened Davis’s lifelong affection for the music of Hector Berlioz.

Don Giovanni again proved the vessel on which Maestro Davis’s career advanced when he substituted for the famous Mozartean Otto Klemperer at a 1959 performance at Royal Festival Hall.  This paved the way for an invitation from Sir Thomas Beecham to participate in a Glyndebourne production of Die Zauberflöte.  The music of Mozart would continue to be central to Maestro Davis’s career, in the world’s opera houses, concert halls, and recording studios.  Maestro Davis’s recordings of Mozart’s operas proved some of the most successful installments in the Philips Complete Mozart Edition, with some of the recordings offering unexpected delights of casting: Monsterrat Caballé and Dame Janet Baker as the scheming sisters in Così fan tutte, Martina Arroyo as a steely but exquisitely feminine Donna Anna in Don Giovanni, the deliciously full-throated but lyrical Contessa of Jessye Norman in Le Nozze di Figaro, the scorching Elettra of Roberta Alexander in Idomeneo.  Maestro Davis’s earlier, 1968 studio recording of Idomeneo remains an important pioneering effort at restoring the opera to the scale envisioned by its 25-year-old composer and an uncommonly rewarding musical performance, its cast—the young George Shirley in the name part, the woefully neglected Margherita Rinaldi as Ilia, and the barnstorming Pauline Tinsley as Elettra—setting standards of both musical excellence and dramatic verisimilitude, inspired to their achievements by Maestro Davis’s winning leadership.  Mozart’s Symphonies likewise enjoyed the precision and buoyancy of Maestro Davis’s baton, along with the instrumental and choral music of Franz Joseph Haydn, and those who love Händel’s most popular oratorio cherish Davis’s Philips recording of Messiah with the never-surpassed quartet of Heather Harper, Helen Watts, John Wakefield, and John Shirley-Quirk, a ‘traditional’ reading of the score that nonetheless hints at the historically-informed performance practice movement that was simmering in British musical institutions.

Music by composers of his native Britain also loomed large in Maestro Davis’s career.  His inspired conducting was crucial to the success of Covent Garden’s 1968 revival of Sir Michael Tippett’s The Midsummer Marriage, an opera viewed since its premiere in 1955 as a complicated, difficult piece: so compelling was the revival that a studio recording was undertaken, also conducted by Maestro Davis, and this proved to be one of the classics of British opera on records.  This was followed in 1970 by Maestro Davis presiding over the premiere of Tippett’s The Knot Garden, a rewarding if controversial experience for both composer and conductor that contributed to Tippett’s decision to dedicate his fourth opera, The Ice Break, to Davis.  Success in standard Italian and German repertories—the ‘meat and potatoes’ fare of Verdi, Puccini, Wagner, and Strauss in the opera house and Beethoven and Brahms in the concert hall—largely eluded Maestro Davis, whose abundant musical good sense led him, after notable early failures, to cede these sectors of the repertoire to other conductors.  Free to concentrate on the music of composers like Sir Edward Elgar, Sir William Walton, and especially Jean Sibelius, Maestro Davis likewise expanded the musical horizons of the British public by championing the operas of Igor Stravinsky, Alban Berg, and Alexander Zemlinsky, as well as conducting the British premieres of Kurt Weill’s Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny and Ildebrando Pizzetti’s Assassinio nella Cattedrale.  The operas of Benjamin Britten also inspired Maestro Davis, with performances and recordings that complemented and in some cases challenged the famed productions and records conducted and supervised by the composer.  It was with Britten’s Peter Grimes that Maestro Davis made his Metropolitan Opera début in 1967, pacing a production by Tyrone Guthrie that featured Jon Vickers as a polarizing Grimes, Lucine Amara as Ellen Orford, Sir Geraint Evans as Balstrode, Jean Madeira as Mrs. Sedley, and Lili Chookasian as Auntie.  Critics were divided on the overall musical integrity of the production, but opinion was virtually unanimous that Maestro Davis had, as Irving Kolodin put it in Saturday Review, ‘a superb success.’

It would be folly to suggest that any one work or group of works encapsulates the legacy of a conductor as versatile as Sir Colin Davis, but it cannot be denied that one of his most lasting contributions to music both in Britain and internationally is his espousal of the music of Hector Berlioz.  Transformed from a reputation for ungainliness to global palatability by Maestro Davis’s dedication to presenting performances and recordings memorable for their meticulous preparation, consistent musical integrity, and employment of the finest artists available, Berlioz as a composer with a goal of having his music remembered, enjoyed, and analyzed by subsequent generations of music lovers owes more to Maestro Davis than to any other musician.  Though Les Troyens was first performed at Covent Garden in 1957 under Rafael Kubelík’s baton, it was not until Maestro Davis conducted the Bärenreiter critical edition of the score at the Royal Opera House—and in the recording studio for Philips—in 1969 that the opera started to gain a foothold in the international repertory.  Maestro Davis’s sensitivity to Berlioz’s unique vocal demands, orchestrations, and dramatic situations revealed that Les Troyens is indeed a musical behemoth but a tremendously rewarding one, one that requires commitments of stamina and devotion from both performers and audiences and repays these commitments richly.  The prickly, often peculiar sonorities of Berlioz’s music conjure a world in which Maestro Davis was entirely at home, and his command of the individual idioms of Berlioz—perplexing to those conductors who excel in the ‘meat and potatoes’ repertory—was complete throughout his career.  Perhaps only in the case of Sir Charles Mackerras and the music of Janáček has the name of a single conductor been so inextricably joined with the music of a particular composer as is true of Sir Colin Davis and Berlioz.  It is interesting to note that, beyond their respective specialties, both Mackerras and Davis were likewise masters of Mozart repertory.  Perhaps the clear-headedness demanded of an important Mozart conductor opened Maestro Davis’s mind to the magnificent muddles of Berlioz.

Sir Colin Davis was for more than fifty years a galvanizing presence in music, especially in Britain.  He was an old-fashioned Kapellmeister in the best sense of that term, a champion of ‘new’ and modern repertory whose conducting technique was founded on deep understanding and appreciation of Viennese Classicism, from which even the spikiest 20th Century music evolved.  A pioneer who was nonetheless outspoken in his preference for operatic productions that displayed absolute respect for the librettists’ intentions, even his contradictions were supremely musical.  Maestro Davis was at his core a ‘star’ conductor whose genius shone not from the podium but from the whole orchestra pit, from the depths of the stage, and from the grooves of records that convey but do not contain his infectious love of music.

CD REVIEW: J.S. Bach—JOHANNES-PASSION (Mulroy, Brook, Lunn, Wilkinson; Dunedin Consort; Linn CKD 419]

JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH (1685 – 1750): Johannes-Passion, BWV 245—N. Mulroy (Evangelist, tenor arias), M. Brook (Christ, bass arias), J. Lunn (Ancilla, soprano arias), C. Wilkinson (alto), R. Davies (Petrus, Pilatus), S. Chambers (Servus); University of Glasgow Chapel Choir, Dunedin Consort; John Butt [Recorded in Greyfriar’s Kirk, Edinburgh, Scotland, 10 – 12 September and 2 November 2012; Linn CKD 419]

Central to the deliberations of any organization that resolves to perform Bach’s Johannes-Passion—after making the critical determination of by whom the bills will be paid—is choosing which edition of the monumental work to employ.  Like Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffmann, Bach’s Johannes-Passion exists in multiple versions, with differences both large and small among the respective editions.  Beginning with the first performance of the work in Leipzig in 1724, Johannes-Passion—the earliest of his extant Passions, though there is evidence suggesting that earlier scores have been lost—is a work to which Bach turned his editorial pen on numerous occasions, making changes throughout the 1730s and 1740s to all aspects of the work.  It is likely that Bach, as practical a composer for the church as Händel was for the theatre, adapted his Passions to the strengths of individual performers in successive performances.  This creates challenges for modern interpreters, as they are charged with matching the editions they choose for performance to the abilities of their soloists and instrumentalists.  In terms of the edition of Bach’s score used, this recording by the Dunedin Consort brings something completely unique to the Johannes-Passion discography: taking as its starting point a manuscript score for a 1739 performance that seemingly never took place, this performance incorporates additional music and material to reconstruct the full Passion Liturgy as it would have been performed at Leipzig during Bach’s tenure there.  Musically and dramatically, this performance offers a compelling Johannes-Passion set within a context that presents new insights into the historical provenance of the score and its composer’s efforts at revising it in order to create the most moving account of Christ’s suffering and salvation.

As in their previous recordings of Baroque repertory, the players of the Dunedin Consort prove themselves to be instrumentalists of extraordinary ability.  Their skill for playing the music of Bach will come as a surprise to no one who has heard their recording of the Matthäus-Passion, but their achievements on this recording are perhaps even more eloquent.  Those players who contribute solos to arias combine with the respective vocal soloists with ideal phrasing and attention to the nuances of the texts.  In addition to Dunedin Consort’s choral concertists and ripienists, the University of Glasgow Chapel Choir (directed by James Grossmith) and a congregational choir comprised of amateur singers combine to convincingly vary the sizes and textures of the choral movements.  It is known that congregations would have participated in the Passion chorales during Bach’s lifetime, and no other recording of the Johannes-Passion makes the sense of full congregational participation more palpable.  Listeners who know the Johannes-Passion intimately undoubtedly feel inspired to sing along with Bach’s beautifully simple but moving chorales: this performance not only renews this inspiration but issues an open invitation to the armchair chorister.

John Butt both directs this performance and plays the harpsichord and organ preludes that frame the Passion Liturgy.  A Bach interpreter whose credentials need no endorsement, Maestro Butt nonetheless brings to this performance of the Johannes-Passion a drive and commitment that confirm his status as one of today’s most dynamic conductors of Bach’s music.  Most refreshingly, Maestro Butt allows the integrity of his music-making to prove his points rather than attempting to justify his scholarship in tomes of editorial notes.  The liner notes that accompany this recording are informative, but Maestro Butt allows the questions posed by the uncertainty about the provenance of Bach’s first performances of Johannes-Passion and nearly three centuries of traditions developed and discarded to be answered by the performance.  Musicological achievements aside, Maestro Butt impresses anew solely as a musician.

Superb playing, choral singing, recording quality, and musical scholarship are for naught if a recording of Johannes-Passion lacks vocal soloists who rise to the occasion.  A particular hallmark of Dunedin Consort’s previous recordings of choral repertory has been the consistency of vocal excellence among the soloists, and this recording of Johannes-Passion proves worthy of its brethren in the Dunedin discography in this regard.  Even smaller, ancillary roles are assigned to singers of distinction, giving the performance increased musical and dramatic continuity.  Especially impressive is baritone Robert Davies, whose ringing voice and crisp diction lend his convincingly differentiated portrayals of the apostle Peter and Pontius Pilate depth and authority.

Joanne Lunn’s bright but not insubstantial soprano voice shines through Bach’s music like early-morning sunlight.  The technical aplomb with which Ms. Lunn sails through the considerable difficulties of the soprano arias in Johannes-Passion is remarkable, but it is the sincerity of her singing that is its greatest quality.  It is sometimes suggested that the music of Bach is more academically than emotionally effective, especially when compared with the often more extroverted music of Händel, but Ms. Lunn’s singing reveals that, when the vein is tapped by an insightful interpreter, Bach’s music bleeds with extraordinary emotional impact.  Ms. Lunn conveys the anguish inherent in much of her music with eloquence but without drooping, tonally or dramatically: she gets at the heart of each aria, bringing its sentiment to the surface without ever sacrificing musical poise or the purity of her vocal line.  Her performance of the tricky ‘Ich folge dir gleichfalls’ is superb, the daring chromatic writing rightly employed to heighten the soulful impact of the aria.  Among many fine recorded performances of the soprano arias, Ms. Lunn’s singing on this recording is unique in its youthful vibrancy and tasteful delivery of Bach’s deceptively difficult music.

Mezzo-soprano Claire Wilkinson is among the ranks of Bach singers whose voices are lighter in timbre than those of the contraltos of generations past, when singers like Gladys Ripley, Kathleen Ferrier, and Helen Watts frequented performances of Bach’s Passions in the British Isles.  The compensatory flexibility of Ms. Wilkinson’s voice is exceptional, however, and the assurance with which she sings her arias is wonderful.  Some of the most gorgeously plaintive moments in Johannes-Passion fall to the alto soloist, and Ms. Wilkinson never disappoints with her understated but intensely musical performance.  The loveliness of Ms. Wilkinson’s tone is complemented by the accuracy of her execution of Bach’s divisions, and the elegance of her phrasing suggests a memorable Lieder singer in the making.  Perhaps because German vowels are somewhat more congenial for English-speaking singers than those of Romance languages, Ms. Wilkinson’s diction is beautifully-inflected, following the cadences of speech effectively.  Ms. Wilkinson manages to combine heart and voice unusually movingly in Bach’s alto arias, not least in the extraordinary ‘Von den Stricken meiner Sünden.’

Matthew Brook sings both Jesus and the bass arias, a formidable challenge musically and dramatically.  Fortunately, Mr. Brook is up to the task.  Judging from the arias for bass in his Passions and the B-minor Mass, it is apparent that Bach enjoyed collaborations with bass soloists of exceptional abilities during his career, and Mr. Brook’s singing of the bass arias in this performance fulfils Bach’s expectations as set down in the score of Johannes-Passion.  Mr. Brook’s bass possesses gratifying weight of tone without heaviness, his technique permitting him to sing even Bach’s most demanding passages with no suggestions of lugubriousness.  As Christ, Mr. Brook proves tremendously effective, singing commandingly but also creating an aura of delightful affability: it is implying no sacrilege to suggest that Mr. Brook’s Christ sounds like the sort of fellow with whom one might enjoyably share a pint at the corner pub.  In many ways, Johannes-Passion is a deeply personal work, one in which Christ’s crucifixion is depicted not so much as a symbolically significant event but as one to which observers react individually.  Charisma is an important quality for the singer who portrays Christ, and Mr. Brook succeeds as few Christs on records have in depicting a figure who might legitimately inspire the affection and devotion expressed in Bach’s music.

Singing both the Evangelist and the tenor arias is Nicholas Mulroy, who also sang the tenor arias in the recent Hyperion recording of Johannes-Passion conducted by Stephen Layton.  Taking on both the Evangelist’s music and the tenor arias is a taxing assignment, and Mr. Mulroy confirms his importance as a Bach singer by performing so winningly on this recording.  Mr. Mulroy improves upon his fluent singing of the tenor arias on the Hyperion recording, inspired in the present performance to seemingly effortless feats of virtuosity.  The tenor’s aria ‘Ach, mein Sinn’ is as passionate an air for the tenor voice as was composed during the 18th Century, and Mr. Mulroy sings it with complete technical fluency and a firm, beautiful voice brimming with emotion.  To the Evangelist’s music Mr. Mulroy brings a darker, more substantial tone than many Evangelists of past generations possessed, which permits him to credibly engage the listener as a warm-blooded participant in the Passion rather than a chilly observer or celebrant.  The Apostles by whom the Passion is recounted in the Gospels were friends and followers who dearly loved Christ, after all, and a man and artist as sincere in his faith as history and his music suggest that Bach was can hardly have failed to view the Passions recorded by Christ’s Apostles as very personal histories rather than mere dogmatic propaganda.  Mr. Mulroy takes the treacherous tessitura of the Evangelist’s music in stride, applying a beautiful head resonance in the highest passages that avoids the falsetto employed by many singers of the part.  Mr. Mulroy’s performance fully justifies the decision to assign both the Evangelist’s music and the tenor arias to a single singer, a decision that in many instances would undermine the effectiveness of both parts.

There is a popular hymn in the American South that extols ‘what a friend we have in Jesus.’  One of Bach’s greatest achievements in Johannes-Passion is that one need not believe either the facts or the implications of the Passion story in order to be genuinely moved by the manner in which it is told.  The histrionic power of Bach’s music is such that even a tepid performance can be effective.  The present performance benefits not only from the legitimate scholarship and sophisticated advocacy of John Butt and the Dunedin Consort but also from an especially fine cast of soloists and gifted choristers giving of their considerable bests.  Johannes-Passion is an acknowledged masterpiece, but even the greatest works of art can grow greater still when re-evaluated with care.  A definitive performing version of Johannes-Passion will likely remain elusive, but in a performance such as this one, in which Bach’s music is sung by an Evangelist and a Christ of uncommon communicative gifts, everything simply sounds and feels right.

IN MEMORIAM: American mezzo-soprano Risë Stevens, 1913 - 2013

Risë Stevens

11 June 1913 – 20 March 2013

‘She is vocally and dramatically one of the best—perhaps the best—“Octavian” seen here in many years, possessed of a fine vocal equipment intelligently used and of a stage presence and acting ability far above the usual “operatic” standards.’  This was the assessment of Edwin H. Schloss in the Philadelphia Enquirer of a MET performance of Richard Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier in the City of Brotherly Love on 22 November 1938.  The Marschallin was sung on that occasion by the celebrated Lotte Lehmann, and—as Mr. Schloss wrote—the ‘debutante whom last night’s audience took especially to its heart was a young American mezzo, Risë Stevens.’

Three weeks later, Ms. Stevens, who passed away on 20 March just weeks short of her hundredth birthday, brought her gifts to the Old MET in New York, where she sang Thomas’s Mignon for her house debut on 17 December 1938.  ‘Add Risë Stevens to the ever-lengthening roll of first-rate American opera singers,’ wrote Oscar Thompson in The Sun.  ‘In her debut as Mignon at the Metropolitan on Saturday was much to indicate that, with normal experience and artistic growth, she will have a real contribution to make to the lyric theater of these times.’  This is a prophecy that Ms. Stevens’s brilliant career gloriously fulfilled.

Ms. Stevens sang an impressively varied repertory during her tenure at the MET, extending from lyric mezzo roles like Octavian and Mignon to the operas of Richard Wagner, in which she sang Erda in Das Rheingold and Siegfried and Fricka in Die Walküre.  Four roles perhaps revealed Ms. Stevens’s talents at their most compelling, however: Cherubino in Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro, Orlovsky in Johann Strauss’s Die Fledermaus, Bizet’s Carmen, and Saint-Saëns’s Dalila.

On 31 January 1952, Ms. Stevens headlined the opening night of a new MET production of Carmen by Tyrone Guthrie, a production that would prove a watershed in the history of the Metropolitan Opera.  Critical to the success of the production was the performance of Ms. Stevens, a Carmen of complementary grace and toughness and a virtually unique vocal command of the role.  Having already sung Carmen at the MET since 1945 and having recorded the role in a compelling studio performance conducted by Fritz Reiner, Ms. Stevens established herself as the definitive Carmen for a generation of opera lovers.  In addition to the Reiner studio recording, Sony and the Metropolitan Opera have released a recording of the 16 February 1952 broadcast performance in which Ms. Stevens’s Carmen is memorably partnered with the Don José of Richard Tucker.  Ms. Stevens’s is a Carmen who confronts fate with passion that never undermines a sense of integrity.  The same could be said of her Dalila, who seduces without descending to baseness; her Orlovsky, who charms without hamming; and her Cherubino, who melts with young love without seeming a spineless sap.

In addition to her brilliant career in opera, Ms. Stevens was also a star of cinema and the Broadway stage.  Her turn in the film of Oscar Straus’s Chocolate Soldier opposite Nelson Eddy endeared her to Hollywood and to lovers of movie musicals, and her recording of Kurt Weill’s Lady in the Dark is one of the greatest musical theatre recordings of the 20th Century.  More importantly, Ms. Stevens excelled in the roles of wife and mother.  She and her husband Walter Surovy were married from 1939 until his death in 2001.  Mr. Surovy was a promising actor in his native Austria before World War II, but he eventually devoted himself to carefully managing his wife’s career.  Ms. Stevens’s son Nicholas followed in his parent’s footsteps by becoming an actor.

As important as her contributions to opera were Ms. Stevens’s contributions to humanity.  She was one of the last of a rarefied breed of singers equally devoted to their craft and to fulfilling the expectations of those who appreciated their work.  Even at the height of her fame, Ms. Stevens was at heart a singer, dedicated to capably and, whenever possible, memorably performing the music of great composers and to approaching both her career and her life with honesty, humility, and humor.  Perhaps it seems a matter of semantics to state that Ms. Stevens was a singer.  Too many of today’s opera singers are not content to be singers: they are—or pretend to be—artists, creatures who separate themselves from ordinary folk and interact with their perceived inferiors only with the greatest reluctance.  Society and technology in 2013 are vastly different even from 1961, when Ms. Stevens last sang at the Metropolitan Opera, but the hearts of music lovers are largely the same.  A true operatic artist is a singer who not only has the appropriate insouciance for Carmen’s habanera but also has smiles and kind words for the throngs of admirers that await her at the stage door.  In the sense that she sang with a voice of beauty and presence, acted with charisma worthy of a Hollywood starlet, and welcomed the affection of even the least exalted fan of her work, Risë Stevens was one of America’s few true artists.