CD REVIEW: Gustav Mahler—DAS LIED VON DER ERDE (A. Coote, B. Fritz, M. Albrecht; PentaTone PTC 5186 502)

GUSTAV MAHLER (1860 – 1911): Das Lied von der Erde—A. Coote (mezzo-soprano), B. Fritz (tenor); Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra, Amsterdam; Marc Albrecht [Recorded in Beurs van Berlage, Yakult zaal, Amsterdam, 21 – 22 June 2012; PentaTone PTC 5186 502]

When Gustav Mahler débuted at the Metropolitan Opera on 1 January 1908, as the conductor of Anton Schertel’s new production of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, a review published in New York’s The Press stated that ‘for the amalgamation and concentration of musical forces, for a reading of the score intense, poignant, thrilling, the honors went to Gustav Mahler, who appeared for the first time in New York and established himself immediately as one of the greatest conductors and most striking musical figures with whom New Yorkers have come into contact.’  It is perhaps surprising to music lovers in the 21st Century, when he is almost universally included among the ranks of the greatest composers, that Mahler’s music did not enjoy widespread acclaim during his lifetime: admired as a conductor and master of orchestral timbres, Mahler’s efforts as a composer were viewed with greater skepticism and misunderstanding.  21st-Century musicological opinion suggests that, to adopt a colloquialism, Mahler’s music was ‘ahead of its time,’ progressive beyond the capacities of contemporary audiences to appreciate it.  It is likely that it was during Mahler’s inaugural season at the Metropolitan Opera—when his conducting assignments included Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, Die Walküre, and Siegfried, Mozart’s Don Giovanni, and Beethoven’s Fidelio—that his creative spirit was engaged by Hans Bethge’s German bowdlerizations of Chinese poems by Li Bai, published in 1907 under the title Die chinesische Flöte.  Combining poems by Li Bai, Qian Qi, Mong Hao-Ran, and Wang Wei with lines of his own composition, Mahler worked at his ‘Symphony for Tenor, Contralto (or baritone—the substitution was authorized by the composer), and Large Orchestra’—which he entitled Das Lied von der Erde at least in part as a superstitious avoidance of designating the score as his Ninth Symphony owing to his perception of the ‘curse’ of symphonists dying before their ninth efforts in the genre came to fruition—in 1908 and 1909.  The first performance of the work was conducted by Bruno Walter, a noted champion of Mahler’s music.  Mahler suggested that Das Lied von der Erde was his most personal work, an assessment with which Maestro Walter was inclined to agree, but the opinion of Sir Henry Wood, expressed when Das Lied von der Erde reached London in 1913, is an astute summation of much of the musical establishment’s regard for Mahler’s work in general: ‘excessively modern but very beautiful.’  While the charge of excessive modernity is hardly relevant now, more than a century after the score’s composition, few musicians or listeners would dispute the beauty of the music.  What has been certain since its first performance is that Das Lied von der Erde is a demanding task for vocal soloists and a magnificent tour de force for orchestras and conductors.

Though Das Lied von der Erde in many ways ignores the symphonic traditions of Mahler’s musical ancestors, the score nonetheless adheres to certain conventional structures and possesses its own unique symmetry.  The soloists alternate in the six ‘Songs,’ though it is to the contralto soloist that the most substantial movement, the closing ‘Der Abschied’ is given.  The piece begins with ‘Das Trinklied vom Jammer der Erde,’ a melancholic and deeply ironic drinking song that requires of the tenor feats of Wagnerian stamina, Mahler pitting the full power of the orchestra against repeated excursions into the tenor’s upper register.  Then follows ‘Der Einsame im Herbst,’ a lament of considerably greater restraint shaped by extended strands of melody, the orchestra reduced virtually to the dimensions of chamber music.  The tenor soloist returns in ‘Von der Jugend,’ the most audibly ‘Oriental’ of the movements, ending with a concentrated reprise of the primary theme of ‘Das Trinklied vom Jammer der Erde.’  The mezzo-soprano must wait out a long orchestral prelude before returning in ‘Von der Schönheit,’ another movement of understated passions.  The tenor makes his final contribution in ‘Der Trunkene im Frühling,’ a movement that plays with many of the themes of earlier movements and challenges tenor, orchestra, and conductor with manic changes of tempo.  ‘Der Abschied,’ the closing movement, is one of the most extraordinary creations for the contralto voice.  Nearly as long even in a quick-tempo performances as the other movements combined, ‘Der Abschied’ poses problems with its emotional bleakness, and the quirky, quasi-cadenza-style of the writing causes conductors to experience nightmares.  Even in a performance of little musical or philosophical insight, the cumulative impact of Das Lied von der Erde can prove fascinating.  Entering an extensive discography including recordings by many of the world’s greatest singers, orchestras, and conductors, it is fortunate that this performance—recorded by Pentatone with balanced and detailed sonics that are nothing short of brilliant—offers insights aplenty.

Formed in 1985 when three orchestras merged, the Netherlands Philharmonic is young by the standards of European musical institutions.  Pestered by budget woes and uncertainty about its primary performance venue, the Orchestra has nonetheless achieved impressive standards of musical excellence: if not yet mentioned in the same breath as their counterparts in Berlin, Dresden, London, or Vienna, the Netherlands Philharmonic players are gaining the recognition their uncompromising musical integrity deserves.  Conducted in this performance by the Orchestra’s Chief Conductor, Marc Albrecht, the players exhibit great virtuosity, with especially beautiful playing by the horns and fine solo turns by the concertmaster and principal flautist.  Musically, each of Mahler’s Symphonies has an individual profile: in the Second Symphony, the ‘Resurrection,’ for instance, Mahler confronts his musical forbears on his own terms, refining the influences of Monteverdi, Bach, Händel, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, and Brahms into symphonic language poised to shape musical progress throughout the 20th Century.  In a sense, Das Lied von der Erde is the score in which Mahler examines and summarizes his own endeavors as a symphonist: present are the imposing grandiosity, the playfulness, the mystery, the sorrow, the impetuosity, the joy, and the fear that occur in Mahler’s previous Symphonies.  The alternating emotions of the individual movements of Das Lied von der Erde complicate the conductor’s task of maintaining a fluid but propulsive dramatic momentum, but Maestro Albrecht paces this performance with warmth and vision, allowing the idiosyncrasies of Mahler’s orchestration and thematic development to breathe freely but keeping the performance within boundaries of musical grace and good taste.  It is apparent that the Netherlands Philharmonic players respond instinctively to their Chief Conductor’s baton, as there is an audible sense of conductor and instrumentalists sharing a common concept of Das Lied von der Erde and pursuing that concept with absolute confidence in their abilities.

It is rare that a symphonic work relies as heavily upon the work of singers as does Das Lied von der Erde.  Unlike some composers who have included voices in their symphonies, Mahler does not employ the soloists in Das Lied von der Erde merely as instruments in the orchestra.  To apply a somewhat poetic conceit to the score, it might be argued that the orchestra is the Earth invoked by the title while the soloists are the voices of humanity, the sacred and the profane.  Voices of all sizes and amplitudes have succeeded in the music, especially when sensitively supported by conductors, and a glory of this performance is that the soloists respond with such dramatic commitment and vocal accomplishment to both the demands of Mahler’s score and the dictates of Maestro Albrecht’s conducting.  Burkhard Fritz might be described as a Jugendliche Heldentenor, a singer for whom a core of vocal strength does not prevent softness of approach (and volume) and tonal beauty.  In Das Lied von der Erde, Mr. Fritz’s singing combines elements of the power of Heldentenors like James King, René Kollo, and Jon Vickers with the lyricism of Ernst Haefliger, Julius Patzak, and Fritz Wunderlich.  Following Maestro Albrecht’s lead in building climaxes based both upon the music and the text, Mr. Fritz mostly avoids forcing the voice, deriving strength from the cresting lines in the orchestra.  In ‘Das Trinklied vom Jammer der Erde,’ in which the rising tessitura pushes the voice ever nearer to its limits, Mr. Fritz utilizes his excellent diction to depict moments of vocal stress as manifestations of the recklessness and absurdity of the text.  Throughout the performance, Mr. Fritz’s singing captures the abandon and the absolution inherent in Mahler’s score, and merely as vocalism his is an uncommonly assured reading of a part that in three symphonic songs is more demanding than many tenor rôles in full-length operas.

It might seem atypical for an artist so acclaimed for her singing of rôles in the operas and oratorios of Händel to take on a work like Das Lied von der Erde, but mezzo-soprano Alice Coote is anything but typical.  Though her voice is lighter of timbre than those of her illustrious predecessors, Ms. Coote is perhaps the sole claimant to the distinction of continuing the legacy of British singers like Kathleen Ferrier and Gladys Ripley.  Ms. Coote is a more accomplished singer of opera than either of her estimable countrywomen, her versatility and unflappable technique enabling her to sing rôles as vastly different as Sesto in Händel’s Giulio Cesare, Léonor in Donizetti’s La favorite, and Charlotte in Massenet’s Werther with equal effectiveness.  In this, her nearest musical relative is perhaps Dame Janet Baker, for whom Early Music, standard repertory, and contemporary works were all comfortable territory.  Some of the most famous singers of the 112 years since the première of Das Lied von der Erde have been undone by its requirements.  The tessitura is troublesome, the vocal lines residing in some passages in contralto depths but rising in others to the upper octave of the mezzo-soprano voice with requirements of power and absolute security of intonation.  Ms. Coote flinches in the faces of none of these requirements, her voice kept rounded and firm of tone in lower passages with a judicious management of chest voice.  Like Mr. Fritz, Ms. Coote enunciates the text with exceptional clarity and allows her musical performance to be guided by an expertly inward but unsentimental interpretation of the text, ideally supported by Maestro Albrecht.  As her music ascends, Ms. Coote’s voice opens alluringly, spinning beautiful head tones that compensate with intonation of instrumental accuracy and firm projection for what they lack in Hochdramatische heft.  Not even the greatest singer among her rivals has surpassed the raptly beautiful mezza voce that Ms. Coote maintains throughout ‘Das Abschied,’ the voice reduced to a whisper of transcendent acceptance of mortality.  Benjamin Britten wrote that the final chord of ‘Das Abschied’ is ‘imprinted on the atmosphere.’  This might be said of the whole of Das Lied von der Erde, whether storming in angst, tripping in inebriation, or transitioning from life to death, but few singers have made this union of music, text, and psychological depth as palpable and cathartic as Ms. Coote does in this performance.

The greatest works of art invariably inspire contemplation, self-assessment, and metaphysical considerations of who we are and how our lives fit into the gloriously unfathomable macrocosm that swirls around us.  Only an indescribably great artist could search his own soul and find within it a work like Das Lied von der Erde.  Such a work deserves nothing less than the very best efforts of the artists who perform it, but it is also the sort of work that can make magic even in deeply-flawed performances.  Perfection being foreign to the human condition, as Mahler understood so profoundly, this cannot be said to be a Das Lied von der Erde wholly without flaws.  It is, however, a Das Lied von der Erde that achieves grandeur without grandstanding and, with performances that rise far above that sadly rare commodity of mere competence, takes the listener on a genuinely enlightening journey.

CD REVIEW: Ricky Ian Gordon—RAPPAHANNOCK COUNTY (A. M. Moore, F. Sherman, M. Tuell, K. Moreno, M. Walters; NAXOS 8.669028-29)

RICKY IAN GORDON (born 1956): Rappahannock County and Late Afternoon (Song Cycle)—A. M. Moore, F. Sherman, M. Tuell, K. Moreno, M. Walters; Virginia Arts Festival Orchestra; Rob Fisher; M. Lattimore, mezzo-soprano (Late Afternoon); R. I. Gordon, piano (Late Afternoon) [Recorded ‘live’ during the World Première production at Harrison Opera House (Virginia Opera), Norfolk, Virginia, 12, 16, and 17 April 2011 (Rappahannock County) and at Scott Lehrer Sound Design Ltd., New York City, 25 January 2011 (Late Afternoon); NAXOS 8.669028-29]

Vats of ink and countless megabytes have been expended in the arguments about the need for ‘relevance’ in opera and Classical Music in general and which qualities make a score ‘relevant’ to 21st-Century audiences and listeners, regardless of the time and place of that score’s creation.  To paraphrase Emily Dickinson, these are ‘wars laid away in books’ that are waged by well-intentioned opera lovers, but such wars are not without dire perils: ardent traditionalists risk losing the interest of younger audiences and those new to opera, while those who seek to increase a work’s relevance to modern audiences by removing it from its composer’s original context risk alienating the subscription-buying, lifelong patrons of the arts whose expectations are often based upon decades of experiences with straightforwardly come scritto productions.  Taking this into consideration, there is obvious merit in the notion of centering focus on a relevant theme and building a work of art upon this foundation.  If this suggests opportunism, it is to the credit of composer Ricky Ian Gordon and librettist Mark Campbell that their Rappahannock County succeeds so remarkably both musically and emotionally: it is not unlike Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address in that, in a relatively brief time, it gets at the heart of an aspect of the collective American experience that has shaped all that has come after and, at its core, is both unique to America and unmistakably universal.

The American Civil War is a defining event in the history of the United States, a struggle of ideals as simple as man’s right to live as best preserves the wellbeing of his family and as complex as the bondage of one race at the hands of another.  It was a war during which sons betrayed their fathers and neighbors took up arms against one another.  Both national and deeply personal, the Civil War was the tangible eruption of abstract legislative, moral, and spiritual differences that remain as troubling in America in 2013 as they were in 1861, albeit in different guises.  It was at Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor that the first shots of the Civil War were fired, but the ground most stained by the blood of combatants—Confederate and Union, all of them Americans—and most torn by the politics of succession, nation-building, and eventual Reconstruction lies within the Commonwealth of Virginia, birthplace of so many of America’s founding fathers but also host of the capital of the Confederate States of America and site of both the War’s first major battle at Manassas and Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox.  As a native Virginian whose family roots have grown in Virginia soil since Colonial times, Rappahannock County is for me an intensely meaningful exploration of an event of global proportions that is nevertheless in many ways also a family story.  Two of my ancestors, both of them Confederate soldiers, are known to have perished in the war, and a branch of my family was one of so many families who were affluent in 1860—including owning slaves—and had nothing in 1865 but their names.  It is an intensely troubling legacy to be the son of proud Southern families, to know that one’s ancestors were complicit in the act of regarding other human beings as possessions but also to celebrate the sacrifices made in defending a way of life that could not persist and in persevering in the years after the War in the transition from owning land to tilling it.  There is a certain guilt inherent in proud Southern heritage in a world that forgets all but the most unsavory aspects of Antebellum Southern culture, and it is cathartic to find in Rappahannock County a dedication to storytelling that is unapologetic but unbiased.  The horrors are there, undiluted, but also there are the political maneuvering and manipulating, the hope, the fear of freedom as potent as the hatred of slavery, and the innocence of ordinary soldiers, so poignantly expressed by both Mr. Campbell and Mr. Gordon in ‘I seen snow, Mamma.’  These are the words of a Louisiana infantryman who, far from home and surrounded by unfathomable death and destruction, finds boyish wonder in snowfall.  This is the essence of Rappahannock County, in which Mr. Campbell and Mr. Gordon have captured with rare open-mindedness the gripping ambiguity of war, the pride and shame, the loss even in victory, and the inescapable comprehension by even the least perceptive observer that, win or lose, the lives of men and of nations are irrevocably changed.

Recorded during the first performances of the piece at Harrison Opera House in Norfolk, Virginia, and released in the NAXOS American Opera Classics series, Rappahannock County is more of an extended song cycle or dramatic cantata than a true opera, at least as defined by the operatic works of Mozart, Verdi, or Puccini.  The five singers in Rappahannock County portray a vast array of rôles, spanning all niches of 1860s Wartime society.  The quality of Mr. Campbell’s lyrics is apparent in the way in which many of the individuals encountered in Rappahannock County emerge solely through the words with surprising but credible modernity: when one hears the voices of the Reverend Zachariah Springer, CSA Private Travis Bledsoe, and freed slave Lily Quinn, these archetypal figures engage one’s sensibilities with the sharpness of Matthew Brady’s celebrated Civil War-era photographs.  Musically, Mr. Gordon presented himself with a tremendous challenge, with a cast of so many characters who possess their own, meticulously-documented musical cultures combining in a single work.  It might have been easy either to present each character in a pastiche of the music that 21st-Century listeners associate with that rôle’s social circumstances or, as is done by many contemporary composers, to set all of the texts in the same musical manner, ignoring the differences of class, education, and heritage.  Mr. Gordon is too clever a composer to have pursued the facile solutions of these paths, however, and the facility with which he weds his musical inspirations to his librettist’s words is evident throughout Rappahannock County.  The orchestrations by Mr. Gordon and Bruce Coughlin reflect careful attention to the sounds of 19th-Century America without ever evoking moods of musical parody.  Sometimes with broad symphonic sounds and sometimes with intimate suggestions of the parlor songs so popular in America during the Civil War era, Mr. Gordon conjures musical vignettes that match the emotional colors of each scene.  Mr. Gordon’s music unfailingly allows Mr. Campbell’s words to be heard clearly, shaping the drama without imposing cheap effects or making obvious, hackneyed choices of tonal painting.  Both librettist and composer offer memorable creations, which combine in a score that is as approachably beautiful as it is challengingly varied in tone, musically and dramatically.

Shaped by the assured conducting of Maestro Rob Fisher, the Virginia Arts Festival Orchestra—an ensemble of seventeen players in this performance—plays with complete dedication to the score, bringing intellectual interpretation worthy of a performance of a score by Mozart or Mahler and ‘swing’ that rivals the best playing of ragtime bands.  Throughout the performance, the instrumentalists of the Virginia Arts Festival Orchestra seize every opportunity for stylish playing, no matter the style of the music at hand.  Maestro Fisher, an acclaimed conductor of musical theatre scores, displays an authentic understanding of Mr. Campbell’s and Mr. Gordon’s work, pacing each scene with ideal attention to its nuances, revealing humor even in despondency and menace even in joy.

If the orchestral players face challenges in adapting their performances to the varying styles of Mr. Gordon’s music, it could be said that the singers who perform Rappahannock County endure tasks that might almost be described as schizophrenic, with each singer portraying multiple characters.  For instance, baritone Mark Walters portrays the Reverend Zachariah Springer, an unnamed newspaper editor, cartographer Jed Hotchkiss, ‘forgotten soldier’ John Smith (even the name suggests anonymity), deserter Elias Leggett (making use of the surname of a storied Virginia family), and a member of the family of exiled Virginian Susan Johnson.  In addition to highlighting the dramatic opportunities offered to each vocal soloist, this illustrates the ambiguities of Rappahannock County’s rôle in the Civil War.  The name of the county—and the river that forms its northern boundary—is believed to have been derived from an Algonquian word meaning ‘place where the tide ebbs and flows.’  This is also an apt description of Rappahannock County’s involvement in the Civil War.  Though the Mason-Dixon Line that symbolically separates North from South extends along the Maryland-Pennsylvania state line, well north of Rappahannock County, the presence of Washington, D.C. on the northern bank of the Potomac (but south of the Mason-Dixon Line) and the fact that Maryland remained loyal to the United States extended Federal influence into northern Virginia, pushing the practical barrier between Union and Confederate territories to the Rappahannock River.  Controlling the Rappahannock was considered crucial by both the Union and the Confederate armies, and one of the most significant engagements of the War occurred along the banks of the Rappahannock in December 1862, when Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia faced Ambrose Burnside’s Army of the Potomac southeast of Rappahannock County at Fredericksburg.  Both librettist and composer infuse Rappahannock County with an omnipresent sense of this blurring of the human and geographical distinctions between friend and foe, expressed with great poignancy by the way in which the vocal soloists portray hosts of vastly disparate characters.

One of the most enjoyable aspects of this recording of the première production of Rappahannock County is the consistent excellence of the cast of vocalists, each member of which faces difficulties of dramatic expression, textural delivery, and musical technique.  Though composed in a style that mostly avoids the histrionics of ‘traditional’ opera, Mr. Gordon’s score nonetheless presents challenges to each of the soloists, and there are few performances of new music in which the vocal demands are met with the level of achievement heard in this performance.  Baritone Mark Walters, an accomplished performer of contemporary music, excels in each of his rôles, launching the performance with a ringing account of the ‘sermon’ of Reverend Zachariah Springer.  Mr. Walters possesses the sort of burly but beautiful voice that would be heard with great pleasure in a rôle like Britten’s Billy Budd, and he sings with poise and stirring vigor throughout this performance.  He is seconded by Philadelphia-born baritone Kevin Moreno, whose singing of ‘boy slave’ Reuben Lark’s ‘Being small ain’t all that bad’ is charmingly unaffected.  Mr. Moreno is an impressive young singer who, based upon his eloquent singing in this performance, seems on his way to becoming one of America’s finest baritones.

To mezzo-soprano Faith Sherman fall several of the score’s trickiest numbers, and she shines in every scene in which she appears.  Especially piquant is her singing of ‘I Listen,’ the song of a Confederate spy who pursues enemy intelligence under the guise of a goodly old baker of pies.  [Thoughts of Mrs. Lovett in Sweeney Todd are inevitable, and Mr. Gordon is too astute an artist to fail to grant his pie-baking deviant a streak of dark humor.]  Soprano Aundi Marie Moore also displays a voice of great quality and superb dramatic sensibilities, her account of Lily Quinn’s ‘All I Ever Known,’ in which the recently-freed slave expresses her uncertainty about the promise of freedom after having lived all her life on her owners’ plantation and having felt part of her owners’ extended family, is profoundly touching.

Tenor Matthew Tuell’s assignments in Rappahannock County run the gamut from jaded embalmer Silas MacDuffie—a cousin of the similarly disenfranchised Monsieur Thénardier in Les Misérables, who in Hugo’s novel eventually becomes a slave trader in Antebellum America—to Travis Bledsoe, the homesick Louisiana private whose letter to his mother expresses his fascination with snow amid all the privations of battle.  Mr. Tuell possesses a lovely, plangent voice, which he uses with great care for placement of tone in order to preserve clarity of diction even in the upper register.  His singing is accomplished with an audibly assured technique, free from artifice, and there is an exciting edge to the timbre that allows him to mostly avoid forcing the voice even on his highest notes.  Dramatically, Mr. Tuell’s adaptability and directness complement those of his castmates, and all five soloists contribute to an unusual but very effective ensemble.  Equally effective, though she does not appear in Rappahannock County, is mezzo-soprano Margaret Lattimore, whose gorgeous performance of Mr. Gordon’s song cycle Late Afternoon, accompanied by the composer, is included by NAXOS on the recording’s second disc.

Ken Burns’s documentary The Civil War, first shown on PBS in 1990, spurred interest in the American Civil War on an unprecedented scale, and Mr. Burns’s film was memorable for its focus not merely on the well-documented atrocities of the War but also on the complex politics, crises of faith and fraternity, and family strife that both led to and resulted from the conflict: in short, the film traced the narrative of the Civil War largely untouched by history books.  Mark Campbell’s and Ricky Ian Gordon’s Rappahannock County pursues this narrative to an even greater extent: with the actual combat of the Civil War almost fading into the distance, Rappahannock County reveals the War as an inherently duplicitous failure and triumph of humanity.  Beyond the casualty figures and details of battlefield strategies recounted in books, the Civil War was a cataclysm in ordinary life, a time of deprivation and depravity, of mothers burying sons, of wives longing for news of their husbands, of boys denied manhood by bullets and bayonets.  Mr. Campbell and Mr. Gordon have created a depiction of this milestone in the history of the United States that is not one of generals on horseback, deafening cannonades, and grandiose ideals of succession or Reconstruction: performed with honesty and impeccable musicality and recorded by NAXOS with presence and imagination, Rappahannock County proves a moving portrait of the wondrous pragmatism of America in some of her darkest hours and, in its unmistakable faith in the most basic will to endure, of the essence of the Old Dominion.

PERFORMANCE REVIEW: Season Finale Concert by North State Chamber Orchestra (Music by Beethoven, Rossini, and Elgar)—Burlington, NC; 9 May 2013

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770 – 1827): Symphony No. 1 in C Major, Op. 21 (circa 1795 – 1797; premièred 1800); GIOACHINO ROSSINI (1792 – 1868): ‘Una voce poco fa’ (Aria, Rosina) from Il Barbiere di Siviglia (1816); Sir EDWARD ELGAR (1857 – 1934): Salut d’Amour (1888)—Diana Yodzis, mezzo-soprano; North State Chamber Orchestra; William J. Kelley, conductor [St. Mark’s Church, Burlington, North Carolina; 9 May 2013]

Few areas of geographical and demographical dimensions similar to those of Alamance County—approximately 153,000 people inhabiting 435 square miles—enjoy a cultural treasure as precious as the North State Chamber Orchestra, the ensemble founded in 2012 which on 9 May ended its inaugural season with an exciting performance of music of Beethoven, Rossini, and Elgar.  Comprised of local teachers, advanced students, and talented community players, the Orchestra is supported solely by the generosity of audiences, and its mission of bringing great music to the Alamance County community at no charge fills a notable gap in the County, poised between the cultural hubs of the Triad to the west and the Triangle to the east.  The season-closing concert was dedicated to the memory of local journalist Mike Wilder, an uncompromising lover and supporter of the arts whose columns for Burlington’s Times News offered readers far more arts coverage than most periodicals of like size.  The concert, ending a season of new horizons for the fledgling ensemble, was a performance of which Mr. Wilder would have been proud and which he would have extolled as one of the finest artistic events in Alamance County in 2013.

The North State Chamber Orchestra was conducted by its founder, William J. Kelley, a twenty-one-year-old pianist, composer, and conductor who, in addition to his studies with Dr. John Salmon at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, has amassed an impressive array of accomplishments despite his youth.  As a conductor, Mr. Kelley shows great promise, conducting this performance with rhythmic surety and a subtle but firm baton technique.  Though the primary focus of his university studies is piano performance, his gifts for conducting are obvious, and the ease with which he manages sectional cues and blending of tones brings to mind memories of exceptional pianists cum conductors such as Daniel Barenboim.  Mr. Kelley remains a very young artist with a lifetime of growth ahead of him, but his conducting of this performance suggested that his artistic maturity will be something truly remarkable.

Another young artist, also a product of the exceptional Music Program at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, launched the concert with a performance of Rosina’s aria from Rossini’s Il Barbiere di Siviglia, ‘Una voce poco fa.’  Mezzo-soprano Diana Yodzis displayed an ample voice with good command of the bravura technique required by Rossini’s complex fiorature, which Ms. Yodzis supplemented with some charming embellishments of her own invention.  The long-trilled ‘r’ on the last syllable of ‘guidar’ and the pin-prick ‘ma’—as effective in Ms. Yodzis’s performance as in the classic recording by Maria Callas—delighted the audience.  The orchestra occasionally covered Ms. Yodzis’s descents into her lowest register, the effects of which could have been minimized by slightly more sensitive playing by the ensemble, but her top notes rang out with body and freedom, reminding the audience—as did Teresa Berganza a generation ago—that a soprano’s top B and C are not unreachable territory for all mezzo-sopranos.  In fact, Ms. Yodzis’s timbre suggests that the voice may eventually—and, hopefully, very cautiously—develop into an instrument capable of selectively taking on soprano rôles.  ‘Una voce poco fa’ is hardly Mount Everest among the peaks of Rossini’s contralto arias, but it is a difficult piece for a young singer to fully inhabit.  Ms. Yodzis gave a charming, vocally astute performance that marked her as a singer to watch.

It was fantastic to have an opportunity to hear a performance of Sir Edward Elgar’s neglected (in the United States, at least) Salut d’Amour, composed in 1888—originally for violin and piano—as a gift for the future Lady Elgar.  Elgar’s intended title for the piece was Liebesgruss, a nod to his fiancée’s fluency in German, but the work’s first public performance in 1889 employed the arrangement for small orchestra played by the North State Chamber Orchestra and the French title, devised by Elgar’s publisher as a marketing ploy for French-speaking Europe.  Though decidedly lesser Elgar, the piece is as lovely as its title suggests, the main theme as elegantly wistful as any of its composer’s inventions.  Harmonically, Salut d’Amour is simple, but the modulations are achieved with Elgar’s accustomed skill.  The Orchestra played the piece handsomely, with a fine solo from concertmistress Molly Hines.

The most substantial work on the program was Beethoven’s First Symphony, his Opus 21 that is thought to have been composed over an extended period beginning as early as 1795 and first performed in Vienna in 1800.  The First Symphony introduced the young Beethoven to the Viennese musical establishment, and—significantly—the score was dedicated to Baron van Swieten, the Prefect of Austria’s Imperial Library and a noted—and notably old-fashioned—patron of music who supported Mozart and, treasuring the out-dated examples of Händel, commissioned Haydn to compose his oratorios Die Schöpfung and Die Jahreszeiten.  In his First Symphony, Beethoven asserted his unique voice, speaking with an individual accent in the language of his illustrious symphonic predecessors.  The influences of Haydn and Mozart are pronounced, but Salieri’s concerti are also lurking in the corners of Beethoven’s Symphony.  Even an early Beethoven Symphony is a daunting assignment for an orchestra of amateur players, but the North State Chamber Orchestra rose to the challenge engagingly.  Ironically, NSCO consists of a number of instrumentalists that is likely similar to that of the orchestra by which the First Symphony was premièred, so the sounds produced by NSCO may more closely resemble those that Beethoven expected to hear than those of a larger modern ensemble like the Wiener Philharmoniker.  It was in the Beethoven Symphony that Mr. Kelley conducted most compellingly, and the Orchestra responded with playing of vigor and power.  Violin tone was occasionally undernourished and slightly thin, but balances are difficult in an orchestra in which four first violins, three second violins, and three violas battle five ‘celli and a bass.  Arranging the orchestra in accordance with 19th-Century models, with the ‘celli at the center and the first and second violins in opposite positions relative to the conductor, would perhaps help the Orchestra to produce a more blended sound.  Nonetheless, all of the orchestral players gave of their best, not least in an enthralling account of Beethoven’s Third Movement, marked ‘Menuetto’ but a legitimate, rollicking Scherzo in all but name.  Mimicking Haydn, the Fourth Movement begins with a suspended dominant seventh chord, reminiscent of the ‘Recitative’ that launches choral finale of the Ninth Symphony.  After that auspicious beginning, the final movement unfolds as a pseudo-Rondo in full sonata form, developing thematic material borrowed from Haydn’s Symphony No. 88.  This music finds Beethoven both paying homage to his forbears and stretching the boundaries of Viennese Classicism, and the final movement drew from the NSCO players a pulse-quickening performance.

Music lovers and patrons of the arts are fortunate to enjoy in ensembles like the New York Philharmonic, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Staatskapelle Dresden, and the Wiener Philharmoniker orchestras of exceptional abilities for memorable music-making.  Equally memorable, however, are the efforts of an ensemble like the North State Chamber Orchestra.  In many ways, it is a grass-roots ensemble like NSCO that most meaningfully breathes new life into the music of long-dead composers, expanding the reach of Classical Music by winning new audiences in small communities like Alamance County, North Carolina, far from the storied concert halls of London, New York, and Vienna.  The ambitious Season Finale concert of the North State Chamber Orchestra proved that small ensembles need not think small, so to speak.  Offering fine performances of music by Rossini, Elgar, and Beethoven, the NSCO brought its first season to a spirited close, honoring the memory of a friend of the Orchestra and revealing anew that great music shines brilliantly in a world dark with struggle, whether played by the hands of a respected professional in one of the world’s great orchestras or by a beloved teacher in an ensemble of her peers.

 

Learn more about the North State Chamber Orchestra by visiting their Facebook page or following their Twitter feed (@NorthStateCO).

CD REVIEW: George Benjamin—WRITTEN ON SKIN (C. Purves, B. Hannigan, B. Mehta, R. J. Loeb, A. Clayton; Nimbus NI 5885/6)

GEORGE BENJAMIN (born 1960): Written on Skin and Duet for Piano and Orchestra—C. Purves (Protector), B. Hannigan (Agnès), B. IMehta (Angel 1, the Boy), R. J. Loeb (Angel 2, Marie), A. Clayton (Angel 3, John); Pierre-Laurent Aimard, piano (in Duet for Piano and Orchestra; Mahler Chamber Orchestra; George Benjamin [Recorded ‘live’ during the world première production at the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, July 2012; Nimbus Records NI 5885/6]

For virtually every opera lover, there is at least one opera at the première of which he or she longs to have been present, whether it is in order to have enjoyed an opportunity to hear a favorite part sung by its original interpreter or simply to witness the birth of a great work of operatic art.  In some instances, there would also have been the unique opportunity of hearing a score conducted by its creator.  Musicology and a perusal of the operatic discography reveal that composers have not always proved effective conductors on their own works, as was arguably the case with an artist as insightful and dynamic as Igor Stravinsky.  For English-speaking opera lovers, the gold standard of composers conducting their own operas was established by Benjamin Britten, whose unique interpretations of his operas were recorded by DECCA, with the notable exception of Death in Venice, which was premièred and recorded after the composer was too ill to personally preside.  The most known successor to Britten as composer and conductor is Thomas Adès, but the enterprising people at Nimbus have granted 21st-Century opera lovers an extraordinary opportunity to become acquainted with one of the finest operas of the new millennium, recorded during its première production at the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence and conducted—masterfully—by its composer, George Benjamin.

Since the launch of the Nimbus label, the Nimbus name and logo have been synonymous with exceptional quality of both recording and presentation.  An early pioneer in the delicate art of restoring, remastering, and reissuing classic vocal recordings from the era of 78s, Nimbus Records also went to the head of the pack in exploring the historically-appropriate performance practice movement that benefited so greatly from British scholarship, recording early efforts by Caroline Brown’s Hanover Band.  This sense of pursuing the highest orders of musical integrity and sonic brilliance has led Nimbus into unexpected niches.  The première of an opera by George Benjamin, commissioned by a consortium including the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, De Nederlandse Opera, the Théâtre du Capitole de Toulouse, the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, and London’s Royal Opera House, was a genuine musical event and one that, considering Nimbus’s prior dedication to the music of George Benjamin, seemed destined for recording.  It cannot be forgotten that very difficult economic conditions have battered the recording industry as harshly as other segments of the global economy, however, and therefore Nimbus must be congratulated for continuing their Benjamin series with this superbly-engineered and handsomely-presented recording of Written on Skin.  Rather than offering the consumer a poor value with only the ninety minutes of the opera spread across the two compact discs, Nimbus also include a first-rate performance of Mr. Benjamin’s Duet for Piano and Orchestra with Pierre-Laurent Aimard at the piano, playing with his accustomed depth of feeling and unfettered virtuosity.

Much praise has been lavished on Written on Skin in the press, particularly in Britain, and the score heard on this recording largely justifies the acclaim.  Though there are obvious influences of composers past, especially those whose careers were based in the British Isles, Mr. Benjamin’s music gives evidence of a very individual voice, neither bound by nor dismissive of conventional tonality.  Written on Skin is very much an opera of the 21st Century, but some of the most effective vocal writing in the opera—primarily, the almost indecently sensual exchanges between Agnès and the Boy—conjures a sound world that is very close to those of Nerone and Poppea in Monteverdi’s L’Incoronazione di Poppea or Diana and Endimione in Cavalli’s La Calisto.  Instrumental obbligati are prominent in these scenes, also harkening back to Baroque examples and aptly enhancing both dramatic tension and character development.  Mr. Benjamin forms another link with Baroque models by composing the rôle of the Boy for a countertenor voice, exploiting the sensuous timbral possibilities of uniting soprano and alto voices in duet.  Agnès is a wide-ranging soprano part, her preferences for extremities of tessitura—both high and low—in moments of greatest emotional distress recalling Berg’s Lulu.  Her husband, the Protector, both all-knowing and utterly ignorant, is a baritone rôle reminiscent of Wozzeck.  Mr. Benjamin’s score is harmonically adventurous but surprisingly accessible, the clearly-defined structures of the music never impeding the composer’s imagination or prohibiting rhapsodic flights of fancy that are in turns violently dissonant and exquisitely lyrical.  Perhaps the greatest compliment that can be paid to Mr. Benjamin’s score is the assertion that every bar of his music as heard on this recording is absolutely appropriate to the chameleonic nuances of Martin Crimp’s fascinating libretto, and the sounds that Mr. Benjamin coaxes from the Mahler Chamber Orchestra render every bar a stretch of exemplary music-making.

The opera begins with an assessment of humanity by three Angels, all of whom are sung by singers who also take other rôles: Bejun Mehta as Angel 1, Rebecca Jo Loeb as Angel 2, and Allan Clayton as Angel 3.  The skill with which Mr. Benjamin combines the Angels’ voices in ensemble recalls the subgenre of 18th-Century oratorios in which allegorical figures engaged in theological debates, the voices intertwining in celestial harmony despite the very terrestrial nature of their discourse.  Individually, each of the Angels displays an unique perspective, highlighting each respective singer’s eventual assumption of another rôle in the opera.  Mezzo-soprano Rebecca Jo Loeb sings superbly as Angel 2 and Marie, Agnès’s superfluous and emotionally petulant sister.  At first meeting, Marie seems the more headstrong and intellectually alert of the two sisters, an Alpha female who bullies her husband, but she is quickly revealed to be a vacuous figure, morally unformed and easily sidelined.  Marie’s hen-pecked husband John is sung by tenor Allan Clayton, whose also performs the rôle of Angel 3.  Mr. Clayton possesses an uncommonly attractive lyric tenor voice of the sort that one longs to hear as Albert Herring, Peter Quint, and Vaughan Williams’s Hugh the Drover.  The honeyed tone and sublime messa di voce that he brings to his singing in Written on Skin are incredibly compelling.  The only possible criticism of Mr. Clayton’s performance is that, owing to the extent of his music, it does not go on longer.  Both he and Ms. Loeb make excellent use of the prickly words they are given to sing.

Dominated by an imposing husband who satisfies her neither emotionally nor physically, Agnès is, in different ways, a sister to Maeterlinck’s and Debussy’s Mélisande, Bartók’s Judith, and Strauss’s Färberin.  The sincerity of Agnès’s obedience to her husband is quickly revealed to be a sham that masks dangerous intellectual curiosity and freedom.  The scene in which Agnès describes watching as one of her husband’s guards impales an infant in a field of flowers might be interpreted as a representation of symbolic rejection of motherhood akin to the Färberin’s similar sentiments in Die Frau ohne Schatten.  Agnès is a challengingly duplicitous character, on one hand a paradigm of implicitly destructive womanhood as described by the Angels, a progeny of Eve, and from another perspective a sort of proto-Feminist archetype.  Whether she willfully seduces the Boy within the context of his manuscripts as an act of ignominy against her husband or merely plays her part in a predestined exercise of human nature is debatable.  What is beyond doubt is that soprano Barbara Hannigan sings this difficult part with complete conviction and every appearance of comfort in its expansive tessitura.  Ms. Hannigan’s exposed top notes ring with authority and unfailing dead-center placement of pitch and are frequently followed by descents into her lowest register, highlighting the jarring contrasts so tellingly employed by Mr. Benjamin in pursuit of dramatic verisimilitude.  Ms. Hannigan seems a fearless singer, unafraid of pushing the voice to its limits, but she knows her boundaries and creates an impressively three-dimensional character within them.  To state that Ms. Hannigan’s artistry has boundaries is not to suggest any deficiencies of technique or acting ability: whereas many singers’ boundaries are significant limitations to the effectiveness of their performances, Ms. Hannigan employs her boundaries as opportunities for artistic expression and growth.  In her powerful sultriness, Agnès is an alarming, dangerous woman: such perils would be mere musical sketches and strands of words without the incendiary performance of Ms. Hannigan in this production.

Agnès’s husband, the Protector, is sung by baritone Christopher Purves, a reliably arresting artistic presence whose timbre takes extremely well to singing in English.  When moments of tension and violence demand explosions of power, Mr. Purves delivers without hesitation, but there are also passages that draw from him subtle, beautifully-shaded singing.  The Protector is a figure who, despite being central to the opera musically and dramatically, largely remains in the shadows, his motives unclear and his comprehension of his circumstances clouded by what might in a psychological sense be termed insecurity.  Aside from his rôle in what appears to be a brutally, unyieldingly patriarchal social order, neither the sources of his authority nor the nature of his enterprises are meaningfully defined.  Not unlike Agnès’s associations with previous literary and operatic heroines, the Protector breathes the same air as Maeterlinck’s and Debussy’s Golaud and Bartók’s Bluebeard.  He is a brute who threatens murder but is not without emotional depth; a depth of feeling that he seems incapable of understanding or channeling in productive ways.  The genius of Mr. Purves’s performance is that it must be virtually impossible for a listener to fail to identify with the Protector on some dark level: there is a certain dignity in Mr. Purves’s singing of the part that commands the listener to reflect as much on what the Protector endures as on what he inflicts.  Perhaps the most chilling aural image in the opera is the Protector’s description of the insect-like ‘clicking’ of the sleepless Agnès’s eyelashes against her pillow, and Mr. Purves delivers this passage with the effortless mystery and perfect timing of an accomplished actor.  Like Agnès, the Protector traverses a wide tessitura, of which Mr. Purves proves a complete master.  Compelling as Mr. Purves is in his far-reaching repertory, which on records includes a formidably well-sung recent account of the title rôle in Händel’s Saul, this performance reveals this fine artist at the zenith of his abilities.

Inheriting the tradition of Britten’s Oberon in A Midsummer Night’s Dream and the Voice of Apollo in Death in Venice, late-20th-Century and early-21st-Century British composers often include in their operas prominent rôles for the countertenor voice, which since the early Renaissance of male alto singing led in Britain by Sir Alfred Deller and in the United States by Russell Oberlin has progressed, through the work of superb singers such as James Bowman, Paul Esswood, and Michael Chance, to a new generation of gifted countertenors who are as comfortable in opera houses as in concert halls.  Composer Jonathan Dove continued this tradition by writing the rôle of the Refugee in his opera Flight for countertenor, and Thomas Adès contributed to the growing repertory of new music for countertenors with the rôle of Trinculo in The Tempest.  The Angel who metamorphoses into the enigmatic Boy in Written on Skin was also conceived for a countertenor voice, and it is difficult to imagine any singer bringing the part to life more viscerally than Bejun Mehta does in this performance.  Earlier in his career, Mr. Mehta was a boy soprano of uncommon range and technique, so the slightly androgynous quality of Mr. Benjamin’s and Mr. Crimp’s Boy is an apt reminder of Mr. Mehta’s musical origins.  There is also a disarming naïveté in the Boy’s early scenes that draws in everyone involved in both the opera and the performance—the Protector, Agnès, Marie, and the listener.  This boyish wonderment gives way—most fascinatingly in Mr. Mehta’s performance—to a palpable eroticism, sustained in the undulating music that the Boy shares with Agnès; music that recalls the Baroque depictions of sexual pursuit so familiar to Mr. Mehta.  When the Protector cautions Marie to stop her ridicule of the Boy, there is a sense of petty ownership and maddeningly stupid territorialism in his warnings but also a certain hint of simmering homoeroticism.  Mr. Mehta’s Boy intertwines both Agnès and the Protector among his artful fingers, and it is possible to wonder whether a significant impetus for the Protector’s ultimate fury at his wife is a latent jealousy of her having enjoyed what he desired but was denied.  Vocally, Mr. Mehta is on best form, maintaining firmness of tone and sureness of pitch even when descending into the lowest reaches of his range.  Mr. Benjamin’s music mostly keeps Mr. Mehta in the octave in which he is most comfortable, but notes above the staff are impressively focused, often displaying strength rivaling that of the best female mezzo-sopranos.  Mr. Mehta’s timbre is not conventionally beautiful after the manner of a Björling or Tebaldi, but there is extraordinary beauty in his singing.  The virtuosity required by Mr. Benjamin’s music is of an altogether more histrionic nature than that demanded by the Baroque music that Mr. Mehta sings, but he proves a rewardingly versatile performance, singing the Boy’s sinewy music with integrity, charm, and smoky sexiness.

Written on Skin is the sort of opera by which one can be manipulated into as many different emotional responses as the human brain can process even without fully understanding the meaning of the text.  At its heart, the opera seems to be a complicated but also very simple allegory dealing with themes of sexual archetypes, possessiveness, and struggles for intellectual supremacy.  The world created by Mr. Benjamin and Mr. Crimp in Written on Skin is both Medieval and achingly modern, and this dichotomy heightens the impact of the styles of speech with which the characters present themselves, tagging their own comments in the style of works as different—and alike—as morality plays and the dramas of Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter.  The most enduring operas all share certain self-evident truths, however, founded upon examinations of the power and perils of love, the potential of jealousy to precipitate catastrophe, and the unique and universal complexities of relationships among people.  Written on Skin approaches these conceits with as much philosophical insight as Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro, Wagner’s Die Walküre and Verdi’s Otello, and future productions will surely confirm the capacity of Written on Skin to prove a lasting masterwork of 21st-Century opera.  A more committed cast than the one assembled for the Aix-en-Provence première cannot be imagined, and the efforts of all involved combine to produce a recording of genuinely great artistic merit.

CD REVIEW: Richard Strauss—DIE SCHWEIGSAME FRAU (F. Hawlata, J. Bauer, B. Berchtold, G. Yang; cpo 777 757-2)

RICHARD STRAUSS (1864 – 1949): Die schweigsame Frau—F. Hawlata (Sir Morosus), J. Bauer (Aminta), B. Berchtold (Henry Morosus), G. Yang (Isotta), T. Penttinen (Carlotta), M. Winter (Carlo Morbio), M. Straube (Theodosia Zimmerlein), K. Räsänen (Cesare Vanuzzi), M. Gäbler (Giuseppe Farfallo); Chor der Oper Chemnitz, Robert-Schumann-Philharmonie; Frank Beermann [Recorded in conjunction with performances by Oper Chemnitz, Opernhaus (Die Theater Chemnitz), Chemnitz, Germany, 7 – 12 May 2012; cpo 777 757-2]

Like their human counterparts, many musical families have their black sheep, siblings and cousins who make cursory appearances at family reunions—or, in musical clans, festivals—but otherwise remain out of sight, safely beyond the scrutiny of unfamiliar eyes.  If there is an overlooked offspring among the operas of Richard Strauss, it is his ‘silent woman,’ Die schweigsame Frau.  With the operas of Strauss in general holding such prominent places in the repertories of the world’s opera houses, not to mention in the affections of opera lovers, questions inevitably arise about the quality of Die schweigsame Frau: why is this ‘silent woman’ a lesser sister, less worthy to trod the boards and dwell in hearts than Arabella, Ariadne, and the Marschallin; or even Elektra and Salome?  What is she that her plight so little engages those whose sensibilities embrace Der Rosenkavalier and the notoriously challenging Die Frau ohne Schatten?

If it is true that necessity is the mother of all invention, it might be said that Die schweigsame Frau has a Jewish mother: the death of Hugo von Hofmannsthal in 1929 necessitated a search for new librettists for Strauss’s future projects, and the composer’s choice for the project that would become Die schweigsame Frau—premiered at Dresden’s Semperoper in 1935, allegedly with the personal approval of Adolf Hitler—was Stefan Zweig, an Austrian-born Jewish writer who was at the time of his initial collaboration with Strauss at the height of his literary abilities and fame.  The extent of Strauss’s personal identification with the Nazi party is difficult to ascertain, but his selection as President of Joseph Goebbels’s Reichsmusikkammer reflects the high esteem in which he was held by Hitler, Goebbels, and the Nazi cultural establishment.  Strauss’s choice of Zweig as librettist for Die schweigsame Frau inevitably led to a row with Nazi authorities: though, as noted, Hitler himself authorized the premiere of the opera to go ahead as planned, Goebbels’s patronage was withdrawn, resulting in the Gestapo intervening to suppress the opera after only two or three performances [sources vary on this point, and most reliable primary-source evidence was likely lost to World War II] and in Strauss’s eventual resignation from his Reichsmusikkammer Presidency.  The first performance of the opera was conducted by Strauss’s friend and champion Karl Böhm, and the lead rôles of Sir Morosus and Aminta were sung by Friedrich Plaschke and Maria Cebotari.  Documentation of critical and audience reception of the premiere is scant, discussion of the opera in the contemporary press presumably also prevented by the Gestapo, and nearly a quarter-century would pass before productions of Die schweigsame Frau at the New York City Opera (where the performances were sung in English translation) and the Salzburger Festspiele renewed interest in the opera.  Despite the participation of many expert Straussians and excellent singers in productions of the opera, Die schweigsame Frau remains a ‘black sheep’ in the Strauss family, still never having been heard at the Metropolitan Opera.

Though its power to win audiences’ plaudits and convince impresarios of the stage-worthiness of Die schweigsame Frau may be understandably limited, the effect of this new recording from cpo in exposing listeners to the high quality of Strauss’s score should prove profound.  Whereas the discography is brimming with recordings of Elektra, Salome, and Der Rosenkavalier, only a handful of recordings of Die schweigsame Frau exist, all but two of them ‘live’ or pirated affairs in variable sound.  In their series of recordings from Opernhaus Chemnitz, cpo have shown a dedication to the music of Richard Strauss, their previous recording of Die Liebe der Danae having likewise entered a recorded field that was far from crowded.  Since inception, a notable hallmark of cpo recordings has been sonic excellence, and even when recording under circumstances of live, staged performances, cpo’s engineers reliably provide superb balances.  [The present recording was made in conjunction with staged performances but was recorded in the opera house under studio conditions.  It is also an ‘abridged’ performance in the sense that it employs the Dresden version of the score prepared—cut, that is—for the Semperoper premiere, with the choral scene—‘Ist es möglich’—restored in Act II.]  This is emphatically true of this recording of Der schweigsame Frau, a score that benefits greatly from sufficient sonic space in which both orchestra and voices can expand without threatening shrillness or overloading.  Like most of Strauss’s operas, Der schweigsame Frau provides challenges to engineers with its extremes of pitches, Sir Morosus descending to the lowest depths of the bass range and Aminta soaring into the coloratura stratosphere.  cpo’s microphones capture every tone cleanly and accurately, maintaining brightness on high and rotundity on low, as well as producing a careful but natural balance between orchestra pit and stage.  The cleverness and humor of Strauss’s orchestration is abundantly apparent, highlighted by a spirited account of the score by the Robert-Schumann-Philharmonie.  Choral contributions by the Oper Chemnitz Chorus are similarly animated and unfailingly enjoyable.  The performance is conducted with no little wit by Oper Chemnitz’s General Music Director, Frank Beermann.

The plot of Die schweigsame Frau was taken from Ben Jonson’s play Epicœne, or the Silent Woman, a comedy of errors concerning the romantic aspirations of an aging man with an aversion to noise but plenty of cash and the ambitions of a shrewish young woman—actually a young man—incapable of any volume softer than forte.  Though unsuccessful at its premiere in 1609, Jonson’s play was ripe for operatic treatment: in addition to serving as the basis for Zweig’s libretto for Die schweigsame Frau, sans the gender-bending subplot, the basic framework of the play shaped the libretti of Salieri’s Angiolina, Pavesi’s Ser Marcantonio (recorded by NAXOS at the 2011 Rossini in Wildbad Festival and scheduled for release on CD this month), and—most notably—Donizetti’s Don Pasquale.  Strauss and Zweig described Die schweigsame Frau as a ‘Komische Oper’ (more in the sense of French opéra comique with spoken dialogue than in the Italian tradition of opera buffa), but as in Don Pasquale and, in the Strauss canon, Der Rosenkavalier, there are numerous moments of serious, dangerous emotion.  In Zweig’s libretto, Aminta—the ‘silent’ woman of the title—is a not-quite-willing participant in the mock marriage plotted by her actual husband, Henry, to trick his obstinate—and, seemingly, opera-loathing—uncle, Sir Morosus.  Musically, Die schweigsame Frau does not find its composer at the absolute zenith of his abilities, but there are many pages of the score that are vintage Strauss, offering a talented cast numerous opportunities for pointed singing and characterization.

As in many of his operas, Strauss populated Die schweigsame Frau with an array of secondary characters that require first-rate voices.  When Henry, Sir Morosus’s nephew, returns to London to visit his uncle, he arrives with a troupe of Italian opera singers and even a full chorus in tow.  Isotta, the troupe’s seconda donna, is sung by soprano Guibee Yang, who sails through her high-flying music with charm and brightly forward tone, especially in her irony-laden description of the particular qualities that she might offer as Morosus’s wife, ‘Ich würde lachen.’  Carlotta, sung by mezzo-soprano Tiina Penttinen, also offers an explication of her potential marital ‘duties’ in ‘Ich würde singen,’ which Ms. Penttinen sings with saucy good humor.  Baritone Matthias Winter portrays Carlo Morbio winningly, singing strongly and audibly relishing his comedic opportunities when impersonating the Notary.  Basses Kouta Räsänen and Martin Gäbler as Cesare Vanuzzi and Giuseppe Farfallo also create delightful vignettes, rolling sonorously through their ‘disguised’ assignments as the Priest and a Sailor.  Also contributing engagingly to the fun in Act I as the chorus of Henry’s merry band of singers are tenors Gyung-Ha Choi, Mu-Gon Kim, and Harald Meyer and basses Jann Schröder, Petar Spiridonov, and Lukasz Wieloch.  No opera of substance set in 18th-Century Britain would be complete without pastiche music for harpsichord (adapted by Strauss from pieces from the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book), and the thoroughly capable maestro di cembalo in this performance is Jeffrey Goldberg.

Theodosia Zimmerlein, Sir Morosus’s ‘Haushälterin’ or housekeeper, is a strange composite of Berta in Rossini’s Il Barbiere di Siviglia and the Amme in Strauss’s Die Frau ohne Schatten.  Like Berta, Sir Morosus’s housekeeper has designs on becoming mistress of her master’s house and is not above engaging in a bit of scheming in pursuit of her goals.  Fräulein Zimmerlein’s efforts at orchestrating the goings-on in her employer’s household have more than a kernel of self-preservation at their heart, however, and in this respect she proves a distant cousin of the enigmatic Amme.  Sung in this performance by alto Monika Straube, Fräulein Haushälterin bustles through the opera with slyness and barely-contained frustration, conveyed fantastically by Ms. Straube.  Strauss makes cruel demands of the singers of his alto rôles, subjecting them to tessitura that ranges from contralto depths to dramatic soprano heights.  Few singers could be completely comfortable under such musical conditions, but Ms. Straube sings excellently, maintaining an evenness of tone even at the extremes of her range.  Taking cues from the text, which she delivers with superb diction, Ms. Straube leaves no dramatic stone unturned and is a genuine presence in every scene in which she sings.

If the Housekeeper is Strauss’s Berta, Pankrazius Schneidebart—the surname translates as Cutbeard, the name of the barber in Jonson’s play—is his Figaro.  Schneidebart’s closest musical relative is perhaps the Music Master in Ariadne auf Naxos, whose deteriorating command of his situation resembles the way in which Schneidebart’s masterminding of the plotting in Die schweigsame Frau threatens to careen out of control.  Musically, Schneidebart is a vintage Strauss baritone rôle, and the security and sheer enjoyment with which Andreas Kindschuh sings the part is heartening.  Like Figaro in Il Barbiere di Siviglia, Schneidebart is a practiced master of playing to all sides of a conundrum, in turns cajoling Sir Morosus, comforting and abetting Henry, enacting his part in the sham marriage, and all the while pursuing his own agenda.  The charming little canzona in which Schneidebart encourages Sir Morosus—a man of a certain age—to seek an ideally ‘silent’ young bride, ‘Mädchen nur, die nichts erfahren,’ receives from Mr. Kindschuh a performance of mock formality and wickedly funny irony.  Throughout the opera, Schneidebart proves a most resourceful factotum, and Mr. Kindschuh proves a thoroughly entertaining Schneidebart.

Hearing the tessitura that poor Henry faces in Die schweigsame Frau reminds the listener of the oft-repeated accusation that Strauss was an unrelenting enemy of the tenor voice.  It would be a fairer charge to state merely that Strauss preferred for his tenors—whether on the heroic form of the Kaiser in Die Frau ohne Schatten and Menelaus in Die ägyptische Helena or in the lyric vein of Narraboth in Salome and Flamand in Capriccio—to dwell in the upper octaves of their registers.  Henry is more extensive than many of Strauss’s tenor rôles, a true test of the stamina of the singer.  Tenor Bernhard Berchtold, a singer whose Chemnitz repertory includes rôles as diverse as Lord Artur in Nicolai’s Die Heimkehr des Verbannten and Vasco da Gama in the original version of Meyerbeer’s L’Africaine, copes manfully with the punishing tessitura of Henry’s music, with all but the highest notes ringing out impressively.  Slight strain and shortness of pitch at the extreme top of Mr. Berchtold’s range do not detract from his very fine performance, which is shaped by an intelligent use of the text.  The tenderness with which Mr. Berchtold sings in Henry’s private exchanges with Aminta is very touching, and he is unfailingly believable as the devoted but exasperated nephew.  Henry’s music lacks the melodic distinction of the poetic outpourings of Flamand and the aria for the Italian Tenor in Der Rosenkavalier but matches both of these rôles in the ardor of his utterances.  Mr. Berchtold perfectly captures this ardor in his heated singing, which ultimately encompasses both the passion and the pathos of Henry’s circumstances.

Aminta inhabits a musical environment strewn with rippling coloratura and frequent excursions above top C, closely resembling the musical profile of Zerbinetta in Ariadne auf Naxos.  When sung with warmth, emotional depth, and attention to the twists and turns of her involvement with Henry’s plan to regain his uncle’s favor, Aminta can unexpectedly prove to be one of Strauss’s most moving heroines.  Not unlike Norina’s immediate flood of regret when she slaps Don Pasquale in Donizetti’s opera, Strauss’s Aminta is a reluctant actress in her husband’s domestic drama from the start.  Sir Morosus’s grumpy sincerity awakens pity in Aminta even before she has begun to play her part, and when she finally erupts as the noisy harpy she has been engaged to portray, she does so only after having repeatedly complained to Henry of the injustice of their scheme and fortified her own resolve.  Of course, compassion is at the heart of all of Strauss’s most effective heroines: the Marschallin’s relinquishment of Octavian when she observes the burgeoning love between him and Sophie, the flighty Zerbinetta’s genuine pity for Ariadne’s sorrow, Arabella’s understanding of the boorish Mandryka, Maria’s unyielding love for her recalcitrant husband in Friedenstag.  Set amid such frothy surroundings, it is surprising that Aminta reaches such heights of emotional eloquence, but the performance on this recording by Julia Bauer aspires to profundity even in the broadest comedy.  Seemingly untroubled by the extensive range of her part, tossing off brilliant high notes with ease, Ms. Bauer sings with the unwavering grace of an expert Straussian.  Her joy when singing in duet with Henry is palpable, and the regret that she displays in her vituperous dealings with Sir Morosus reaches the heart.  That Ms. Bauer achieves so much dramatically is remarkable, considering that she also offers a near-flawless performance of a formidably difficult part.  Ms. Bauer also never allows the listener to forget that Aminta is an Italian opera singer, and opportunities for vocal display are seized with abandon and unfailingly exhilarating results.  Such musically and dramatically complete performances of Strauss rôles are sadly rare, so Ms. Bauer’s performance is a special gift to lovers of Strauss’s operas.

The rôle of Sir Morosus, about whom the complicated drama of Die schweigsame Frau revolves, is entrusted to the cast’s one internationally-recognized singer, bass Franz Hawlata.  A practiced Straussian, Mr. Hawlata débuted at the Metropolitan Opera in 1995 as Baron Ochs in Der Rosenkavalier, a part in which he is also featured in the DECCA CD and DVD recordings of the acclaimed Baden-Baden production conducted by Christian Thielemann and preserving Renée Fleming’s poised Marschallin.  Mr. Hawlata also sang Morosus in a celebrated 2010 production of Die schweigsame Frau at the Bayerischen Staatsoper, opposite the Aminta of Diana Damrau and Henry of Toby Spence.  Mr. Hawlata possesses a voice of near-ideal proportions for Sir Morosus’s music, and the mastery of the rôle that he displays in this recording is wonderful.  Though he is a retired admiral of the Royal Navy—conjuring stiff upper lips and the like—and a professed curmudgeon with an intolerance for noise owing to an explosion on his flagship, Sir Morosus’s musical personality does not preclude the exercising of an understated sense of humor, and Mr. Hawlata’s singing conveys an air of fun even in Sir Morosus’s most grumbling growls in his lower register.  Few basses singing today project their lowest notes with the impressive strength displayed by Mr. Hawlata, and his trueness of pitch even when singing low Cs and Ds is admirable.  Like Aminta, Sir Morosus can be an intriguingly multi-layered character when performed with sensitivity and dignity, and Mr. Hawlata’s performance explores many layers of the rôle’s contradictions: every inch the retired man of the sea, reliant upon no one for anything, he is nonetheless deeply attached to his nephew and, before her pre-marital silence comes to its inevitable end, his false bride.  Sung with unstinting wit and vocal panache, Mr. Hawlata’s Sir Morosus is a flawed but charming man one cannot help liking.

The extent to which Strauss’s music and Zweig’s libretto overcame the difficult circumstances of the genesis and first performances of Die schweigsame Frau is arguable, and the relative neglect of the opera in comparison with the worldwide success of its brethren in the Strauss canon suggests that it is a work of secondary importance at best.  Strauss himself once stated with typical irony that he understood himself to be a ‘second-rate composer’ but a decidedly first-rate one.  To a significant degree, the fairness of applying this assessment to Die schweigsame Frau depends upon the performance at hand.  Musically, the score is not the equal of its composer’s great masterpieces, but it is a Strauss score nonetheless, and Strauss at his least inspired was a superb craftsman with exceptional gifts for potent characterization and theatrical acumen.  With a team of singers with voices capable of meeting Strauss’s strenuous demands and personalities able to mine stereotypical characters for gems of emotional honesty, Die schweigsame Frau can prove an enriching experience.  Oper Chemnitz is not the Metropolitan Opera, Covent Garden, La Scala, or the Wiener Staatsoper, and that is part of the undeniable felicity of this recording: that an opera company just outside of the international circuit could draw from its roster of ‘house’ singers an ensemble of such dedication, cooperation, and accomplishment is incredibly encouraging.  The singing in this performance is not invariably first-rate, but it rivals the best that could be heard today in any of the world’s opera houses, large or small, and—most significantly—it also achieves the enviable distinction of making Die schweigsame Frau a riotously enjoyable din from first noise to last.