CD REVIEW: Johann Sebastian Bach — SONATAS FOR FLUTE & HARPSICHORD, BWV 1020 & 1030 – 1032 (Stephen Schultz, Baroque flute; Jory Vinikour, harpsichord; Music & Arts CD-1295)

JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH (1685 – 1750): Sonatas for flute and harpsichord, BWV 1020 & 1030 – 1032—Stephen Schultz, Baroque flute; Jory Vinikour, harpsichord [Recorded at Skywalker Sound, Marin County, California, USA, 10 – 13 August 2016; Music & Arts CD-1295; 1 CD, 55:18; Available from Music & Arts, Naxos Direct, Amazon (USA), and major music retailers]

In this second decade of the Twentieth Century, when his music is recorded, promoted, and shared via every conceivable outlet and his prevalence on social media equals the popularity of many living celebrities, it is remarkable to recall that, within a generation of his death in 1750, Johann Sebastian Bach was remembered beyond the minuscule ranks of connoisseurs and fellow composers almost exclusively as an organist. Even his musically-inclined sons, who expanded their familial diaspora across the European continent, were little concerned with preserving their father’s music. By 1750, the musical world as Bach knew it was changing rapidly, its revolutions erupting well in advance of the storming of the Bastille. The advent of the fortepiano was slowly dislodging the harpsichord from its secure place as the preeminent keyboard instrument, and wind instruments with valves were forcing their ‘natural’ cousins into obscurity. Bach was an artist with far-reaching foresight, though, one whose genius for prefiguring the innovations of future generations in his own musical language was rivaled only by Gustav Mahler’s similar propensity. There are many gaps in history’s record of Bach’s day-to-day life and work, but his music tells its own stories. The narrative that emerges from Bach’s music is one of astonishing genius manifested in a body of work that after more than 250 years continues to offer performers and listeners fresh perspectives on music’s ongoing evolution.

Aside from opera, Bach pioneered, propelled, or perfected almost every musical form in use during his lifetime. Though neglected from the time of his death until their rediscovery in the Nineteenth Century by Felix Mendelssohn and other enterprising musicians, Bach’s Passions, Masses, motets, and cantatas are now rightly regarded as cornerstones of Western liturgical music, just as the six concerti assembled as a diversion for the Margrave of Brandenburg are frequently cited as bellwether works in the development of modern orchestration. Bach’s achievements in these genres are indeed groundbreaking, but the quality of his surviving chamber music can be argued to exceed his finest endeavors in other forms. Paralleling his refinement of writing for the organ, Bach extracted from the trio sonatas of Dietrich Buxtehude and musical predecessors of similar abilities the raw materials with which he would assemble his own music for varied small consorts of instruments. Upon this foundation the Sonatas for flute and harpsichord were erected with near-revolutionary faculty for interweaving thematic material between the instruments.

As is true of much of Bach’s music, it is now impossible to ascertain precisely when, where, and with what intentions the Sonatas for flute and harpsichord were devised. Many mysteries complicate understanding of the circumstances that yielded these Sonatas, foremost among which is the question of whether two of them are truly works composed or substantially arranged by Bach. However elusive answers may be, these questions must be asked. Neither the asking nor the difficulty of finding verifiable responses adversely affects enjoyment of the Sonatas, however—especially when they are performed with the period-appropriate musicality and interpretive warmth heard in this expertly-engineered Music & Arts recording. The perceived value of a piece attributed to Bach is unquestionably less than that of music of confirmed authorship, but it is a perception akin to the notion that one of a pair of delectable pastries is less desirable than its partner because the kitchen that produced it cannot be definitively identified. One of the marvels of music is that nothing else seems relevant when well-prepared, well-executed performances resound in one’s ears. Both the preparation and the execution of these performances of the Sonatas for flute and harpsichord persuade the listener that, regardless of its enigmas, this music deserves the attention of the most gifted musicians.

The rewards reaped by this music from the collaboration between accomplished—but not doggedly unyielding—masters of historically-informed music making Stephen Schultz and Jory Vinikour are extraordinary. A virtuoso flautist whose extensive career both in the United States and abroad encompasses solo recitals and concerts, as well as performances with Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, Musica Angelica, Tafelmusik, and a number of the world’s most renowned period instrument ensembles. A pioneer of combining amplification with flutes of authentic Eighteenth-Century design in order to introduce the singular timbres of these instruments to new audiences, Schultz here plays a German traverse flute created in 2012 after an Italian instrument by Carlo Palanca. His partner in this recording, Vinikour, plays a robust-toned double manual harpsichord built by John Phillips in 2010 after a Gräbner instrument dating from 1722. Like Schultz, Vinikour has been acclaimed throughout the world as soloist, continuo player, chamber musician, accompanist to singers, and conductor. Bach’s music, particularly the Goldberg Variations, justifiably occupies a position of great prominence in Vinikour’s career, making him an ideal companion for Schultz’s explorations of these Sonatas.

Often using the harpsichord’s treble line in the manner of a second melody instrument, contrasted with the straightforward functionality of the bass, Bach’s writing mimics the part writing found in the trio sonatas of his contemporaries, looking to the future and Franz Joseph Haydn’s trios. Schultz and Vinikour each play as though the other’s instrument were an extension of his own, the latter’s incredible affinity for matching the nuances of his colleague’s phrasing despite the harpsichord’s singular mechanism complementing the former’s talent for legato playing that recalls not the efforts of fellow flautists but of Maria Callas. As they are performed by these musicians, Schultz’s flute singing and Vinikour’s harpsichord scintillating, the Sonatas are virtually cantatas for voice and orchestra.

Seemingly metamorphosed by Bach into the form heard in this performance circa 1736, the Sonata in B minor (BWV 1030) began its life in G minor, in which key the melodic line was likely written for violin. The gracefully appealing writing for the flute in the opening Andante movement confirms that Bach’s conversion of the music cannot have been merely a commercially opportunistic exercise. Schultz’s playing heightens the allure of Bach’s ingenious manipulations of the principal subject. The interactions between flute and harpsichord, here realized with a directness that suggests a private conversation between friends rather than a public performance, anticipate the intricacies of Brahms’s chamber music. The Largo e dolce movement that follows is a courtly dance in which shy smiles peek out from the shadows, illuminated by the unhurried lyricism of Schultz’s and Vinikour’s playing. Comparable with similar sections in Bach’s concerti and orchestral suites, this Sonata’s Presto and Gigue are especially demanding, but neither the Presto’s contrapuntal writing nor the Gigue’s passagework in quavers presents challenges that Schultz is not wholly capable of meeting. In this performance, the mathematical precision with which Bach managed thematic development is limned with Cartesian accuracy that never displaces the ebullient spirit of the playing.

Appearing in Bach’s hand only in a now-incomplete transcription of music likely originally scored for recorder, violin, and harpsichord [Alfred Dürr’s practical reconstruction of the missing music for the Neue Bach Ausgabe is utilized in this performance], the Sonata in A major (BWV 1032) exhibits virtues closely related to those of the B-minor Sonata. The acumen with which Bach restructured the instrumentation is apparent, but no seams show in the tight knit of Schultz’s and Vinikour’s performance. The opening Vivace receives from the musicians an outpouring of energy that invigorates every subtlety of the music. Like the second movement of BWV 1030, BWV 1032’s Largo e dolce is an elegant siciliana, here more stylized but no less distinguished. Schultz’s breath control might have been honed from study of this music, and he shapes the melodic line with exceptional eloquence. Spurred by Vinikour’s dexterous playing, there is an improvisatory aura in this reading of the final Allegro that focuses the listener’s attention on every detail of the music, fully displaying the comprehensiveness of Bach’s knowledge of harmony and instrumental timbres.

Recent scholarship suggests that the BWV 1020 and 1031 Sonatas may be either the work of Johann Joaquim Quantz or admiring reworkings thereof by Bach or other composers, including Bach’s sons. The kinship of the Sonata in E♭ major (BWV 1031) with Quantz’s music is obvious, but it is not out of place amidst Bach’s compositions. Still, there is an emphasis on ceremonial ornamentation in the Allegro moderato first movement that is at odds with the interpretive specificity typical of embellishment in Bach’s scores. Nevertheless, Schultz and Vinikour wholly circumvent the pitfall of sacrificing momentum to demonstrations of their own technical prowess. Rather, their dedication is to providing the listener with an unaffected traversal of the music, free from proselytizing in favor of any concept of the Sonata’s origins. The central movement is again a Siciliano, and the defining lilt of the form persists in Schultz’s and Vinikour’s performance even when the music ventures furthest from it. The resolving Allegro is delivered with effervescence, flautist and harpsichordist trading cascades of notes with the wit of actors in an Oscar Wilde play. An occasional resemblance in elements of the Sonata’s construction to operatic arias of the period lends circumstantial credence to a theory that BWV 1020 and 1031 were actually composed by Carl Heinrich Graun. In that vein, Schutlz’s and Vinikour’s playing conjures a good-natured incarnation of the thrilling competitions between singers like Farinelli and Caffarelli.

The home key of the Sonata in G minor (BWV 1020) suffuses the music with a prevailing seriousness that Schultz and Vinikour take care to maintain without exaggeration. The Sonata’s mood is not unlike the dramatic atmosphere shared by Mozart’s two symphonies in the same key, but a brightness permeates the first Allegro that disperses any clouds of gloom that threaten to gather. Approaching the music without interpretive agenda is the core principal of Schultz’s and Vinikour’s performance, and their success is nowhere more absolute than in the G-minor Sonata’s Adagio movement. The simplicity with which the flautist traces the melodic line is deeply satisfying in the fashion of Wolfgang Schneiderhan’s playing of the slow movements of Beethoven’s violin sonatas, supported by the harpsichordist’s sure-fingered navigations of the shifting currents of the ground bass. The gentlemen launch the second Allegro powerfully, tapping the flow of electricity that courses through the music. The sparks that they strike ignite the performance, but the pyrotechnics are always tastefully discharged. Whether the music is the work of Bach, Quantz, Graun, another hand, or community effort, Schultz and Vinikour play it with integrity that would make any composer proud to claim it.

Technology enables today’s listeners to experience the music of composers who only a generation ago remained forgotten. In such an environment, it no longer suffices to state that a composer was a genius and expect that statement to be accepted as fact without substantiation. This is also true of a musician’s reputation. When assessing the merit of a composer’s work or a performer’s artistry, hearing is believing. To hear this recording of four Sonatas for flute and harpsichord is to believe that Johann Sebastian Bach was a musical innovator without peer in the first half of the Eighteenth Century. Perhaps Bach would not recognize all of the music on this disc as his own, but ears as discerning as his could not fail to hear in the playing of Stephen Schultz and Jory Vinikour echoes of his own genius and virtuosity.

DVD REVIEW: Vincenzo Bellini — NORMA (M. J. Siri, S. Ganassi, R. Pelizzari, N. Ulivieri, R. Lo Greco, M. Pierattelli; Dynamic 37768)

VINCENZO BELLINI (1801 – 1835): Norma—Maria José Siri (Norma), Sonia Ganassi (Adalgisa), Rubens Pelizzari (Pollione), Nicola Ulivieri (Oroveso), Rosanna Lo Greco (Clotilde), Manuel Pierattelli (Flavio); Coro Lirico Marchigiano “Vincenzo Bellini”; Complesso di palcoscenico Banda “Salvadei”, Fondazione Orchestra Regionale delle Marche; Michele Gamba, conductor [Luigi Di Gangi and Ugo Giacomazzi, Directors; Federica Parolini, Set Designer; Daniela Cernigliaro, Costume Designer; Luigi Biondi, Light Designer; Carlo Morganti, Chorus Master; Recorded ‘live’ during performances in Arena Sferisterio, Macerata Opera Festival, Macerata, Italy, July – August 2016; Dynamic 37768; 1 DVD / Blu-ray, 144:00; Available from Dynamic (DVD / Blu-ray), Naxos Direct (DVD / Blu-ray), and major music retailers]

Amidst the rugged peaks carved in the craggy range of the Italian soprano repertoire by Rossini, Donizetti, Verdi, Puccini, Giordano, and fellow composers remembered and forgotten, there is no altitude more elevated than that reached by Vincenzo Bellini in his Norma. In Felice Romani’s adaptation of Alexandre Soumet’s drama Norma, ou L’infanticide, first performed in Paris only eight months before the operatic Norma reached the stage of Milan’s Teatro alla Scala on 26 December 1831, Bellini had at his disposal one of the finest libretti of the Nineteenth Century, one in which the poet achieved near-perfect equilibrium between action and reflection. With Romani’s words as his impetus, the sensitive Bellini created the defining masterpiece of Italian bel canto and at its center one of the most feared and career-defining rôles composed for the female voice. Since first sung in 1831 by Giuditta Pasta, Norma has revealed her secrets to each subsequent generation of listeners via the voices of members of one of opera’s most exclusive sororities. The lady who ascends unscathed to Norma’s pinnacle, from which the views of opera’s past and future extend from Monteverdi to Mascagni, earns the laurels of a high priestess of bel canto.

The history of recording Norma parallels the well-documented disintegration of bel canto technique in the latter half of the Twentieth Century. A tacit testament to the demands of the title rôle is the fact that, unlike recorded portrayals of many operatic heroines, there is not one Norma heard on a studio recording of the opera who did not sing the rôle on stage. Few sopranos can resist the understandable temptation to sing Norma’s ‘Casta diva’ in concert, but Norma is among the few pieces in the approach to which a modicum of common sense persists. Still, many voices that should not have been singing the rôle have been heard in Norma’s music in recent years. Increasingly, this must be said of all of the opera’s rôles: rare is the performance that can boast of fielding a wholly qualified voice in each part. Like all histories, opera’s continuing evolution is inherently cyclical, but it is now difficult to imagine a return to an era like that in which, in April 1970, the Metropolitan Opera presented Norma with Dame Joan Sutherland in the title rôle, Marilyn Horne as Adalgisa, Carlo Bergonzi as Pollione, and Cesare Siepi as Oroveso.

Staged in the vast space of the Arena Sferisterio in conjunction with the 2016 Macerata Opera Festival, the present Norma was filmed for DVD and Blu-ray release under the direction of Tizio Mancini as a showcase for the accomplishments of a well-integrated team of artists and craftsmen. Visually, this Norma is a fascinating, sometimes frustrating fusion of tradition and innovation. Employing primary-color sets and costumes by Federica Parolini and Daniela Cernigliaro, co-directors Luigi Di Gangi’s and Ugo Giacomazzi’s production occasionally seems to gaze southward, over the Pyrenees, from Bellini’s and Romani’s Gaul to a staging of Bizet’s Carmen. In some moments, there is a sultriness that seems wholly out of place, especially as it disappears when it might prove dramatically viable. Most regrettably, the production does not capitalize on its greatest assets. With one of today’s most experienced interpreters of Adalgisa returning to the rôle, there was no need to resort in this production to stock gestures superficially representative of the naïve priestess’s transition to betrayed, broken woman. Moreover, a youthful, attractive Norma does not need to strike poses in order to earn and engage the viewer’s attention and interest.

Luigi Biondi’s lighting designs are more difficult to assess in the context of a video recording, in which the frame of reference is established by the cinematography, than in the theatre, but they unobtrusively illuminate the tough, primeval world in which this Norma dwells. Violence lurks in every landscape and gesture: in this setting, Norma’s contemplation of slaying her own children is sickeningly credible. This vein of brutality flows in Bellini’s music and Romani’s words but is ultimately tempered by a triumph of humanity that in this productions seems implausible. Perhaps doing so brings the piece closer in mentality to modern audiences, but staging Norma as pseudo-verismo melodrama is a mistake. There is much in this Norma that is beautiful to behold, but the authentic spirit of bel canto is absent. Without it, Norma is just another opera, no matter how well it is performed.

Musically, this Norma is on stronger but far from ideal footing. Conductor Michele Gamba clearly knows and respects the score and has devoted careful study to mastering its many challenges. One of the greatest of those challenges is pacing a performance with tempi that keep the drama moving without distorting Bellini’s exquisite melodic lines or rushing the singers. This Gamba largely manages to do, navigating a course that avoids most of the pitfalls that upset conductors’ earnest efforts at successfully realizing the score’s expressive potential. Whether their efforts emanate from the pit or the stage, the musicians of Fondazione Orchestra Regionale delle Marche and Complesso di palcoscenico Banda “Salvadei” deliver their parts with enthusiasm that makes occasional untidiness of ensemble and intonational uncertainty forgivable, and chorus master Carlo Morganti’s preparation of Coro Lirico Marchigiano “Vincenzo Bellini” produces choral singing that is exciting even when it is not altogether accurate. Though their endeavors also often seem to originate in a musical age that is not Bellini’s, Gamba and his orchestral and choral colleagues restore a measure of the requisite bel canto style missing from the production.

Ably representing Rome in Gaul as Pollione’s comrade in arms Flavio, tenor Manuel Pierattelli brings more voice to his music than many portrayers of the rôle have at their command. In fact, his clear, well-supported tone and forthright diction suggest that Pierattelli might prove to be an equally capable Pollione. Similarly, Bellini’s writing for Norma’s attendant Clotilde is entrusted to soprano Rosanna Lo Greco, who makes a strong impression despite the paucity of opportunities to display her voice’s best qualities. It is too much to ask that a Clotilde sound as though she might sing Norma acceptably, though it must not be forgotten that Joan Sutherland sang Clotilde opposite Maria Callas’s Norma at Covent Garden in 1952, but Lo Greco’s vocalism reveals that hers is a name to remember. Like their colleagues in this production, Pierattelli and Lo Greco are representatives of a new breed of singing actors whose vocal acumen is matched by naturalness before both audiences and cameras.

Hailing from the Alpine town of Arco, south of Brenner Pass in Italy’s Trentino province, bass Nicola Ulivieri honors the historical legacy of his native comune by depicting Oroveso with Italianate fervor and Teutonic discipline. At his entrance in Act One, Ulivieri voices ‘Ite sul colle, o druidi’ virilely, immediately establishing his Oroveso as a younger, stronger-willed figure than the character is in many productions. This is slightly at odds with his vocalism, which is more lyrical than declamatory, particularly in Act One. In Act Two, however, Ulivieri sings with surprising power, intelligently depicting Oroveso’s transition from spiritual leader in his nobly-sung ‘Ah! del Tebro al giogo indegno’ to warmonger in the explosive ‘Guerra, guerra! Le galliche selve quante han querce producon guerrier.’ In the opera’s final scene, the bass makes Oroveso’s realization that he is the grandfather of half-Roman children a moment of true emotion, the horror of his hatred being turned against his own daughter and grandchildren clawing at the unyielding man’s heart. Ulivieri lacks the resonance of Tancredi Pasero, Ezio Pinza, and Cesare Siepi, but he is an effective, musical Oroveso.

The Pollione of tenor Rubens Pelizzari is a brash, rough-hewn soldier whose pursuit of Adalgisa seems more obsessive than affectionate. However passionate their liaison might have been, a woman of Norma’s temperament would surely feel glad to be rid of him. Nevertheless, Pelizzari has good ideas about interpreting Pollione and would likely be more sympathetic in a production that allows him to portray the character as an ordinary man rather than a chauvinistic archetype. Vocally, the tenor also displays a fine command of Pollione’s music. He omits the written top C in his otherwise solid performance of the aria ‘Meco all'altar di Venere,’ and his voicing of the cabaletta ‘Me protegge, me difende’ exudes an apt bravado. Pelizzari’s upper register lacks the squillo brought to the music by Mario del Monaco and Franco Corelli, but he duets forcefully with Adalgisa in ‘Va’, crudele,’ gaining intensity as the vocal line rises above the stave. He holds his own in the magnificent trio that ends Act One, singing first ‘Norma! de’ tuoi rimproveri segno non farmi adesso’ and then ‘Fremi pure, e angoscia eterna pur m’imprecchi il tuo furore!’ with ardor.

Confronted in their Act Two duet with the news that Norma resolved to slaughter their children in retaliation for his infidelity, this Pollione groans ‘Ah! t’appachi il mio terrore’ in appalled apprehension. Pelizzari’s demeanor becomes lachrymose in the opera’s final scene, his statement of ‘Ah! troppo tardi t’ho conosciuta’ imparting self-pity instead of awe inspired by Norma’s sacrifice. Not unlike Ulivieri’s Oroveso, Pelizzari’s Pollione is a professional, not an unforgettable reading of the part, but professionalism in this music is not to be scorned.

Mezzo-soprano Sonia Ganassi has sung Adalgisa in an array of very different productions and opposite Normas of widely varying degrees of proficiency. With acclaimed performances of numerous Rossini rôles to her credit, Ganassi has the wonderful benefit of thorough knowledge of bel canto, and, not surprisingly, she contributes the most idiomatic singing to this Norma. When she begins to sing ‘Sgombra è la sacra selva’ in her Act One scene, there is no doubt that this is a deeply sensitive Adalgisa. Ganassi genuinely performs rather than merely singing the scene, articulating ‘Deh! proteggimi, o dio: perduta io sono’ with crushing emotional weight. She immediately seizes control in the duet with Pollione, phrasing ‘E tu pure, ah! tu non sai quanto costi a me dolente!’ with unmistakable sense of purpose.

Though shamed by her illicit relationship with Pollione, this Adalgisa asserts herself without hesitation in the first of her duets with Norma. Ganassi intones both ‘Sola, furtiva, al tempio io l’aspettai sovente’ and, moving into the trio, ‘Oh! qual traspare orribile dal tuo parlar mistero!’ with complete immersion in the text. Her delivery of ‘Ah! non fia, non fia ch’io costi al tuo core sì rio dolore’ is a lesson in the art of dramatic bel canto: with words and music in perfect balance, no exaggerated characterization is required.

In order for their exchanges in Act Two to be dramatically convincing, Adalgisa and Norma must be musical equals, and Ganassi enriches this performance with involved, intuitive singing. She pronounces ‘Norma! ah! Norma, ancora amata’ with burgeoning anxiety. The traversals of ‘Mira, o Norma, a’ tuoi ginocchi questi cari pargoletti!’ and ‘Sì, fino all'ore estreme compagna tua m’avrai’ that follow are uncommonly cathartic: Adalgisa’s joy and relief at her reconciliation with Norma are touchingly enacted. Intermittent unsteadiness and effort now affect Ganassi’s singing, but she remains a powerhouse Adalgisa for whom no apologies must be made. Bellini and Romani proffered no resolution for Adalgisa, leaving audiences to wonder what becomes of her after the deaths of the man she loved and her dearest friend. Come what may, an Adalgisa such as Ganassi’s surely lands on her feet.

From the first bars of the recitative with which Norma introduces herself, ‘Sediziose voci,’ it is apparent that Uruguayan soprano Maria José Siri brings to her inaugural assumption of the title rôle an important voice in the tradition of Gilda Cruz-Romo and Ljiljana Molnar-Talajić, sopranos with extensive Verdi and Puccini credentials who adapted their spinto voices to Norma’s cantilene and coloratura. In this performance, Siri’s portrayal of Norma recalls the interpretations of several of her celebrated predecessors. The abandon with which she acts the role with the voice resembles the Norma of Gina Cigna, heard in both the earliest complete radio broadcast performance and in the first studio recording of Norma. The emphasis on proper placement of tones brings to mind Zinka Milavov’s 1944 and 1954 Metropolitan Opera Norma broadcasts. Like Radmila Bakočević, she sings Norma without reticence, fully committed to the rôle and holding nothing back.

Intriguingly, Siri’s performance is strongest where many singers’ weaknesses are most apparent, in the much-loved preghiera ‘Casta diva, che inargenti queste sacre antiche piante.’ In the aria’s opening bars, the focus of the soprano’s tone is flawless, utterly untouched by nerves. As the line ascends to the high filigree that troubles many singers of the rôle, slight insecurity intrudes, but Siri’s account of the piece is among the most distinguished on a commercial recording of the opera. She imperiously catapults the recitative ‘Fine al rito; e il sacro bosco sia disgombro dai profani’ into the arena, but the fiorature in the cabaletta ‘Ah! bello a me ritorna del fido amor primiero’ threaten to defeat her. Siri and Ganassi communicate without musical or dramatic barriers in ‘Ah! sì, fa’ core, e abbracciami,’ interweaving their timbres without forcing. In the polacca in the opening sequence of the Act One finale, ‘Oh, non tremare, o perfido,’ the pair of top Cs that punctuate the phrases are produced with ease. Norma’s ire boils in Siri’s voicing of ‘Oh! Di qual sei tu vittima crudo e funesto inganno!’ and, even more scorchingly, ‘Vanne, sì: mi lascia indegno, figli oblia, promesse, onore.’

The scene that begins Act Two is one of the formidable tests of a Norma’s histrionic suitability for the rôle, and Siri emerges victorious, phrasing ‘Dormono entrambi’ with tragic grandeur and exclaiming ‘Ah! no! son figli miei!...miei figli!’ as though she wounded herself with the blade meant for her children. Rejoined by Adalgisa, Siri answers Ganassi’s eloquent singing with a beautiful ‘Deh! con te, con te, li prendi,’ and both ladies suffuse their performances of ‘Sì, fino all'ore estreme compagna tua m’avrai’ with effervescent musicality.

As the opera progresses towards its tragic dénouement, Siri rises to Shakespearean heights of expressivity in ‘Ei tornerà... Sì, mia fidanza è posta in Adalgisa,’ undauntedly braving the punishing tessitura. The low center of vocal gravity in ‘In mia man alfin tu sei’ is more comfortable for Siri than for many Normas, and she spars with Pelizzari’s Pollione in a battle of wills in which the tenor has no hope of prevailing. She then floats ‘Son io,’ Norma’s fatal mea culpa, with particular radiance. The sublime ‘Qual cor tradisti, qual cor perdesti quest’ora orrenda ti manifesti’ and ‘Deh! non volerli vittime del mio fatale errore’ with which Norma takes her leave of the society that condemns her for the crime of following her heart here burn as brightly as the flames meant to consume her. This Norma is no spent woman going gently into that good night of inexorable consequence. Siri will likely build greater assurance in satisfying the musical demands of the rôle with additional opportunities to sing it, but her portrayal of Norma in this production is an auspicious and enjoyable start.

In a time in which singers with the comprehension of bel canto necessary to sing the music as Bellini would have expected it to be sung are in short supply, it is sometimes asked why Norma continues to be performed with regularity. Would it not be preferable, perhaps more respectful to Bellini and Romani, to shelve the score until the emergence of a legitimately important Norma warrants its revival? The dangerous problem with that question is that it ignores the fact that few of history’s significant Normas exhibited their significance in their first attempts at singing the rôle. Her initial reluctance to sing ‘Casta diva’ suggests that not even Giuditta Pasta was a Norma of instantaneous, Athena-like decisiveness. Especially for those who love the opera, a poor Norma is one of opera’s most damnable miseries. This is by no means a poor Norma, but that will not preclude doubts about its value. Its many virtues notwithstanding, this Norma is valuable as a first step along one Norma’s road to potential greatness. With this performance, Maria José Siri is not yet ordained as a high priestess of bel canto, but the altar is within sight.

CD REVIEW: Nicola Antonio Porpora — GERMANICO IN GERMANIA (M. E. Cenčić, J. Lezhneva, M.-E. Nesi, J. Sancho, D. Idrisova, H. Bennani; DECCA 483 1523)

NICOLA ANTONIO PORPORA (1686 – 1768): Germanico in Germania—Max Emanuel Cenčić (Germanico), Julia Lezhneva (Ersinda), Mary-Ellen Nesi (Arminio), Juan Sancho (Segeste), Dilyara Idrisova (Rosmonda), Hasnaa Bennani (Cecina); Capella Cracoviensis; Jan Tomasz Adamus, conductor [Recorded at Radio Kraków, Kraków, Poland, 23 July – 3 August 2016; DECCA 483 1523; 3 CDs, 217:39; Available from Amazon (USA), fnac (France), iTunes, jpc (Germany), Presto Classical (UK), and major music retailers]

Anyone who saw Gérard Corbiau’s fanciful 1994 cinematic reimagining of the life of the celebrated castrato Farinelli was introduced to a frazzled, ill-tempered Nicola Antonio Porpora who bullied his illustrious pupil into becoming one of history’s most revered singers. Corbiau’s ogre of a Porpora, impersonated with consummate gruffness by Omero Antonutti, was undeniably entertaining and effective as a component of a narrative that portrayed Farinelli as a hapless victim of fate, but this boorish incarnation of the composer little resembles the Porpora who emerges from his surviving music, too little of which has been made available via good-quality recordings to listeners willing to reassess the man and his work.

Born in Naples in 1686, Porpora was a product of the cosmopolitan musical culture of his native city, dominated during his formative years by Alessandro Scarlatti, whose compositional style strongly influenced the young Porpora’s artistic development. No less significant in the evolution of Porpora’s own style, particularly in writing for the voice, was his encounter with the poet Pietro Antonio Domenico Trapassi, then not yet known as Metastasio: the most renowned librettist of the first half of the Eighteenth Century, he would author the texts for some of Porpora’s most successful operas. Success was not something to which Porpora ever became accustomed, however. Praised and popular at times in his career, his compositions often sprang to life amidst difficult circumstances.

Though his operas gained traction with London audiences during his much-publicized rivalry with Georg Friedrich Händel in the 1730s, the company for which they were written, the Opera of the Nobility, nonetheless failed. Perhaps most cruelly, Porpora suffered the fate of outliving appreciation of his individual musical language. By the time that he returned to Naples in 1759, his artistic journey having taken him to many of Europe’s music-loving metropolises, the emerging stile galante was rapidly supplanting the florid Baroque style of which Porpora was an exponent. Prone to hardship even when he employed as a scantily-paid valet the young Joseph Haydn, who would later acknowledge the obstinate Neapolitan as a teacher of inestimable value to his musical education, Porpora was tormented during the final years of his life by debilitating poverty. At the time of his death in 1768, he lacked the money to pay for his own burial.

It is principally as a composer that Porpora is remembered in the Twenty-First Century, but his legacy as a trainer of voices, glimpsed in Corbiau’s film, endured well into the Nineteenth Century, when castrati last originated rôles in Europe’s opera houses. Like the similarly sensationalized depiction of Antonio Salieri in Peter Shaffer’s play and Miloš Forman’s film Amadeus, Corbiau’s treatment of Porpora in Farinelli is not entirely without merit: injurious as it is to historical accuracy, there is undeniable benefit in even a brief, unrealistic glance at Porpora’s impact on vocal tutelage. The glimmer of the meticulously-honed pedagogy that, enabling him to write masterfully for the voices known to him, facilitated commissions to compose operas like his 1732 Germanico in Germania increased the public’s curiosity about Porpora’s music. Now, more than three decades after the film’s theatrical release, ​with the availability of singers capable of meeting the grueling demands of Porpora’s vocal writing, reviving the composer’s operas is again feasible. These rebirths of curiosity and feasibility intersect persuasively in this recording of Germanico in Germania.

First performed in Rome’s Teatro Capranica in February 1732, Porpora’s setting of a finely-crafted libretto by Niccolò Coluzzi charges into the conflict between Germanico, the figurehead of Roman authority in the feudal domains that constitute modern Germany, and the fiercely independent Arminio, leader of a realm under Rome’s unwanted dominion. This being Baroque opera, the courses of neither love nor war proceed smoothly, here complicated by the struggles of a Germanic chieftain loyal to Rome, Segeste, whose two daughters’ fealties are divided between embracing and resisting Roman rule. To the credit of composer and librettist, as well as to the performance that transpires on this recording, what amounts to a convoluted story told in a score of long duration is surprisingly easy to follow. The extensive passages of secco recitative move swiftly but logically, aided immeasurably by the clarity and commitment with which they are sung in this performance.

Recorded in the studios of Radio Kraków, ​​this performance plays out in an acoustical space that falls marginally short of DECCA’s long-established high standards of technological excellence. The timbres of the instruments of Capella Cracoviensis are sometimes adversely affected, giving the recording an one-dimensional, studio-bound setting in which musicians, conductor, and singers must work harder to enliven the performance. By adopting generally quick tempi, Jan Tomasz Adamus strives to maintain musical propulsion throughout the performance, but there are passages in which the singers might have benefited from more sympathetic leadership and stricter, more consistent guidance of ornamentation.

Supplementing the conductor’s own efforts at the keyboard, harpsichordist Marcin Świątkiewicz​ plays nimbly—slightly too nimbly in some instances. It is unlikely that anyone listens to Baroque opera solely in order to enjoy secco recitatives, no matter how cleverly they are accompanied. In this performance, the accompaniments are indeed very clever and irreproachably musical but sometimes overwrought. Tiziana Azzone injects the theorbo into the soundscape with expert judgement, however, balancing the continuo and heightening the expressivity of several key scenes. The intrepidity of horn players Anneke Scott, Olivier Picon, and, in Cecina’s Act Two aria ‘Se dopo ria procella,’ Martin Lawrence yields exhilarating if not always attractive realizations of Porpora’s punishing writing for the valveless horns. The recording’s dry acoustic harshens the orchestral sonorities, but the sheen of the players’ collective virtuosity is undimmed. Germanico in Germania is not an opera that can triumph without support from pit and podium, and, overcoming a few problems, Capella Cracoviensis and Adamus offer the singers a setting in which triumph is within reach.

Ever a vivid presence who figuratively transports a recorded performance from studio to stage, tenor Juan Sancho contributes some of his finest singing on disc to date to this traversal of Germanico in Germania. He has in the rôle of Segeste, the Germanic chieftain who has embraced Roman citizenship, an exceptionally congenial part with vocal writing that exploits the strongest of his technical and interpretive skills. As in many of his recorded performances, Sancho sets an example for his colleagues with his alert, responsive singing of recitatives. In Act One, he sings Segeste’s aria ‘Nocchier, che mai non vide l’orror della tempesta’ with blazing tone and fiery demeanor, spotlighting the character’s temperamental kinship with Bajazet in Händel’s Tamerlano. His aria in Act Two, ‘Scoglio alpestre in mezzo all’onde,’ inhabits a vastly different emotional world, and, prefaced by particularly pointed delivery of recitative, the tenor limns the transition with resourcefulness, luring the listener into the quicksand of Segeste’s predicament.

Sancho can reach greater heights of dramatic intensity in a few bars of accompanied recitative than some singers attain in ten-minute arias, as he demonstrates in his zealous delivery of the accompagnato ‘Empi, del vostro scherno’ in Act Three of Germanico in Germania. Segeste’s final aria, ’Saggio è il cultor,’ is sung with strength and subtlety. With the exceptions of the parts in his London operas and oratorios that Händel wrote for John Beard, rôles for tenor in Baroque works rarely achieved the levels of distinction occupied by the notable castrato parts, but Sancho’s portrayal of Segeste takes full advantage of every detail of characterization devised by Porpora and Coluzzi. Vocally, he has few rivals in music of this vintage, his domination of which he increases with this performance.

Since her earliest performances, Julia Lezhneva has reliably displayed extraordinary technical prowess that thrives in the bravura excesses of Baroque music. Nevertheless, the expressive maturity of her depiction of Segeste’s younger, Rome-friendly daughter Ersinda in this performance is as impressive as her confident handling of Porpora’s music. More so than in any of her previous recordings, Lezhneva connects with the character on a profound level, conveying the psychological conflict of a young girl both devoted to her father and his ideology and sensitive to her sister’s staunch support of her husband in defiance of their father. Ersinda’s inherent naïveté does not preclude flashes of ardor, here invigorated by Lezhneva’s agile vocalism. The sole problem with the soprano’s singing of Ersinda’s first aria in Act One, ‘Al sole i lumi pria mancheranno,’ is the over-ambitious embellishment, which causes the intended coloratura feats to seem slightly beyond the singer’s capacity to execute them. This is especially unfortunate as no proof of Lezhneva’s talents other than her unflappable negotiations of the difficulties of Porpora’s vocal lines is required.

Tellingly, Lezhneva subsequently sings the aria ‘Se sposa d’un Romano’ with unerring control and stylishness, the meaning of the text palpably imparted. She further refines her depiction of Ersinda with singing in Act Two in which virtuosity and insightfulness are united in service to the drama. The savage fiorature of ‘Veder vicino il suo contento’ are tamed with astonishing ease, and her effortlessly sparkling trills recall Beverly Sills’s finest singing. The dramatic consequence of the contrast with ‘Sorge dall’onde’ is accentuated without exaggeration, Lezhneva’s clear enunciation of vowels sharpening the focus of her analysis of Ersinda’s actions and motivations. The pinnacle of Lezhneva’s performance is her account of the Act Three aria ‘Se possono i tuoi rai vedermi ognor penar.’ The best of her artistry shines in her singing of this music: the voice is magnificent, of course, but the heart is no less awe-inspiring. ​Along the course of her pursuit of technical excellence, Lezhneva has also deepened her understanding of the emotional aspects of bringing an operatic character to life, and in this performance she expresses Ersinda’s feelings as expertly as she sings her music.

Born in Morocco, soprano Hasnaa Bennani brings to her performance as the Roman captain Cecina in Germanico in Germania a wealth of experience in French Baroque repertoire that has polished her instincts for finding the expressive cores of dizzying fiorature. The results of this aptitude are evident in every moment of Bennani’s singing in this performance. A dynamic participant in recitatives, she brings similar boldness to Cecina’s aria in Act One, ‘Splende per mille amanti un bel sereno volto,’ voicing both words and music with fervor. She is wholly in her element in Cecina’s accompagnato exchange with Arminio in Act Two, unleashing volleys of adroitly-aimed vocal javelins. The brilliance of Bennani’s management of the punishing divisions in the rousing martial aria with obbligato horns ‘Se dopo ria procella’ is matched by the sincerity of her singing of ‘Serbami la tua fede,’ the voice at its most prepossessing when the character reacts to adversity. In Act Three, Bennani makes the aria ‘Serbare amore e fede’ a sonorous statement of Cecina’s principles. Porpora’s music offers the soprano few moments in which to exercise her talent for lyrical singing, but Bennani convincingly projects Cecina’s bravado without coarsening the lovely texture of her natural timbre.

The tremendous promise that soprano Dilyara Idrisova revealed in her performance as Sabina in DECCA’s studio recording of Pergolesi’s Adriano in Siria comes to fruition in the young singer’s portrayal of Arminio’s wife and Segeste’s daughter Rosmonda in Germanico in Germania. At odds with her father owing to her steadfast backing of her husband’s opposition to Rome, the determined lady’s introductory aria, ‘Rivolgi a me le ciglia,’ receives from Idrisova a captivating reading, the voice’s intrinsic delicacy bolstered by adventurous but mostly tasteful ornamentation. The sequence from the accompagnato ‘Sposa infelice, sventurata figlia’ to the cyclonic aria ‘Son qual misero naviglio’ is spanned with imagination and idiomatic musicality, the singer’s restraint in a rôle prone to flamboyance enhancing manifestation of the character’s latent decency.

Idrisova’s superb coloratura singing lends Rosmonda a more distinct profile in Act Two, not least in the aria ‘Il padre mi sgrida,’ in which the singer’s imperturbable assurance is astounding. In both the touching ‘Priva del caro sposo’ and the terzetto with Germanico and Arminio, Idrisova’s Rosmonda refuses to hide in the shadows of male egos. Her interpretation of the aria ‘Dite, che far degg’io?’ in Act Three is molded with punctilious care for maintaining the line without lessening the poignancy of the text. Wife and husband blend their voices handsomely in Rosmonda’s duetto with Arminio, Idrisova phrasing ‘Se viver non poss’io’ with guileless simplicity. The considerable challenges of Porpora’s music for Rosmonda notwithstanding, the touchstone of Idrisova’s performance is dramatic directness. The evenness of her singing is sporadically compromised by thinning of the tone above the stave, but she is a Rosmonda whose few moments of stress are unflinchingly integrated into an honest depiction of a woman whose prevailing loyalty is to love.

Created in Germanico’s Roman première by the celebrated castrato Caffarelli, Farinelli’s rival for the distinction of being remembered as Porpora’s most accomplished pupil, the proud Teutonic chieftain Arminio is inimical to the colonizing Romans despite the danger to himself and the people he loves. Casting rôles written for Caffarelli can be one of the most daunting aspects of modern productions of Eighteenth-Century operas: generally both high and florid, music tailored to the castrato’s abilities is awkward for many countertenors and mezzo-sopranos. In this performance of Germanico in Germania, mezzo-soprano Mary-Ellen Nesi sings Caffarelli’s part with swagger that suggests that the castrato’s boasts that he rather than Farinelli was Porpora’s greatest protégé were not unfounded. From Arminio’s first entrance in Act One, Nesi makes the valiant warrior a dangerous adversary for Rome and Germanico, presenting his defiance with unshakably firm vocalism. There are ungainly moments in her register shifts in the aria ‘Serba costante il core,’ but she commands the tessitura with few of the shortcomings that mar other singers’ performances of similar music.

The communicative power of Nesi’s voicing of ‘A lei, che il mondo adora’ discloses the rewards of her artistic shrewdness, but here and in the riveting accompagnato scene with Cecina in Act Two it is above all the quality of the voice that compels admiration. The fiendish divisions in ‘Empi, se mai disciolgo’ are dispatched with galvanizing precision at a brisk tempo, elevating the tension that erupts in her nuanced, radiantly beautiful account of ‘Parto, ti lascio, o cara.’ In Nesi’s performance, the character’s integrity is always apparent in the emotionally volatile terzetto with Rosmonda and Germanico. The mezzo-soprano wields such histrionic authority in her articulation of ‘Nemica del valor barbara sorte!’ that this scene in Act Three could veritably be an opera in its own right. The tenderness of this Arminio’s discourse with his wife in the duetto with Rosmonda, ‘Se viver non poss’io,’ is endearing, and, in the opera’s final scene, the accompagnato ‘Vindice Dea’ draws from Nesi declamation of poetic potency. Nesi has ever been a noteworthy interpreter of music originally composed for castrati, but her singing on these discs confirms that her work is one of the most cogent vindications of the rejuvenation of this repertoire.

Expanding his enlightening gallery of portraits of forgotten operatic heroes that already includes compelling portrayals of Händel’s Alessandro, Arminio, and Ottone and Hasse’s Siroe, countertenor Max Emanuel Cenčić here assumes command of the Roman forces in Porpora’s and Coluzzi’s Germania as Germanico, a rôle written for the castrato Domenico Annibali, who was also Händel’s first Arminio. Always possessing a timbral richness atypical of countertenors, Cenčić’s singing in Germanico in Germania exhibits an unforced grandeur that ideally suits the imperious but ultimately magnanimous leader and Porpora’s musical profile of him. [Cenčić’s exploration of Porpora’s musical portraiture continues with the release of a DECCA recital of opera arias in March 2018.] The machismo of Germanico’s Act One aria ‘Questo è il valor guerriero d’un’anima romana?’ suits the countertenor’s emphatic style of utterance, and he sustains an aura of sovereignty even when delving into the da capo’s disparate sentiments. The seething fiorature of ‘Qual turbine’ are also familiar territory for Cenčić, and he deftly steers a course through the music that maximizes excitement without devolving into vacuous grandstanding. He sometimes indulges in the invention of elaborate cadenzas that would be more at home in arias by Galuppi or Mysliveček, but his ornamentation of Germanico’s vocal lines is laudably musical.

Were it not for the hive of buzzing strings into which Porpora plunges the melodic line, Germanico’s Act Two aria ‘Nasce da valle impura vapor che in alto ascende’ might exert the allure of Händel’s most beguiling arias, especially as Cenčić sings it here, but the incessant din of the accompaniment spoils the music beyond any singer’s capacity to rescue it. Still, Cenčić’s performance of the aria is eloquent and charismatic. He joins the seditious Arminio and Rosmonda in their terzetto with an incendiary statement of ‘Temi lo sdegno mio, perfido traditore,’ but, unlike some holders of political sway, this Germanico seems to actually listen to his foes. In Act Three, Cenčić sings ‘Per un momento ancora’ ebulliently, and he accepts the resolution of his clash with opponents of his jurisdiction with affability. Like his previous portrayals for DECCA, extending back to a mellifluous Erster Knabe in Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte whilst he was a member of the Wiener Sängerknaben, Cenčić’s Germanico is a winning synthesis of scholarship and showmanship.

When Porpora is last seen in the film Farinelli, he is a disheveled, disenfranchised remnant of a fading era. Sadly, history avows that, to some extent, Corbiau got this right. Porpora’s life was undoubtedly burdened by deprivation, but Germanico in Germania is not the work of an embittered, perennially disagreeable man. His career was impaired by the eternal fickleness of fashion, but the silver lining of that capriciousness is the retribution of rediscovery. With this bar-raising recording of Germanico in Germania, Porpora claims this retribution at last.

PERSONAL PERSPECTIVES: Sandro Ivo Bartoli resurrects the forgotten piano music of Giacomo Puccini (Solaire Records SOL1007)

GIACOMO PUCCINI (1858 – 1924) and CARLO CARIGNANI (1857 – 1919): Complete Piano Works and Selected Opera Transcriptions—Sandro Ivo Bartoli, piano [Recorded in Steinway Haus Berlin, Berlin, Germany, 4 – 5 July 2017; Solaire Records SOL1007; 1 CD, ; Available from Solaire Records and major music retailers]

I do not deny that I often drown even my noblest intentions in deluges of words. The greatest danger of approaching the analysis of music with a literary mind is allowing the love of writing to overwhelm the necessity of being read. Too frequently, I cannot overcome the compulsion to write an Edward Everett oration when a Gettysburg Address with easily-extracted talking points would be preferred. It is a disease that resists therapy and is perhaps ultimately fatal to the integrity of an earnest crusade to restore to criticism its own kind of artistry.

Sandro Ivo Bartoli’s Solaire Records recital of music for solo piano by Giacomo Puccini, supplemented by Carlo Carignani’s arrangements of themes from Puccini’s operas, is a disc that inspires appreciation that must not be fed to the insatiable beast of verbosity. As in all of his recorded performances with which I am familiar, the technical skill that Bartoli brings to his playing is irreproachable: were there a need for such stunts, he could undoubtedly play the most difficult of Alexander Scriabin’s piano sonatas whilst blindfolded and subjected to all sorts of adverse conditions. Bartoli is not a well-designed automaton, however, and he does not play like one. Rather, his performances breathe. By the motions of his wrists, the music before him inhales and exhales, the notes and chords becoming atoms and molecules in the atmospheres that emanate from composers’ scores. Even if the music that he performs is sparse and atonal, his playing retains a pervasive aura of bel canto.

It became fashionable in the second half of the Twentieth Century and inexplicably remains a badge of honor in some musical circles in the Twenty-First Century to dismiss Puccini’s music as formulaic, undistinguished, and embarrassingly sentimental. Passages from virtually every score that Puccini produced can be cited in validation of these accusations, but it is not an honest operaphile who proclaims that every bar of Le nozze di Figaro, Tristan und Isolde, or Falstaff bears obvious evidence of genius.

In an effort at fairly assessing the merits of Puccini’s music, consider La bohème, a score labeled by some connoisseurs as unendurably saccharine. On stage and in studio, Mimì and Rodolfo are sometimes older than convention suggests that amorous Bohemians ought to be, sometimes fatter, sometimes older and fatter, and, among listeners who surrender their prejudices to the music, has a truly well-sung but zaftig Mimì ever prompted the notion that her death might have been affecting had binoculars been required to see her waistline from the first row of the stalls? There are combinations of emotional qualities in Puccini’s scores that refuse to be suppressed. Bad performances reveal the blemishes, to be sure, but performances like Bartoli offers on this disc celebrate the beauties of Puccini’s music with a blaze of passion that no pseudo-academic disapprobation can wholly extinguish.

Among the pieces included on this disc, only the first six are the work of Puccini in the sense that the composer himself was wholly responsible for their creation—and, in the cases of at least two of the pieces, that attribution is not universally accepted as factual. Possibly a study for the slow movement of an unfinished D-major string quartet that occupied Puccini in 1882, whilst he was studying composition under the tutelage of Antonio Bazzini, the Adagio in A major is a delightful discovery, its graceful melodic lines, eventually adapted to new surroundings in 1883 in both the Capriccio sinfonico and the opera Le Villi, bewitchingly extended by Bartoli’s phrasing. The limited but imaginative thematic development suggests that the music may well trace its genesis to the aborted string quartet, but Bartoli brings it to the piano with panache.

Composed in 1894, the Lento molto Piccolo Valzer eventually metamorphosed into Musetta’s aria ‘Quando m’en vo’ soletta per la via’ in Act Two of La bohème, its opening theme as familiar as the melodies of Verdi’s ‘La donna è mobile’ and Puccini’s later ‘Nessun dorma.’ Bartoli conveys the wistfulness of the tune more touchingly than almost any Musetta: without the subtext of the character’s toying with Alcindoro and Marcello, the melancholic core of the melody resounds. Bartoli plays without a trace of artifice, the sincerity of his performance heightening the piece’s expressivity. Similarly, Bartoli wields compelling—and fitting—energy in his playing of the Marcetta brillante Scossa Elettrica, commissioned in 1899 to celebrate the centenary of Alessandro Volta’s invention of the electric battery.

In Bartoli’s handling, both the ‘moderato’ and the ‘con affetto’ components of Puccini’s instructions for Foglio d’Album are realized with subtlety. This and the Piccolo Tango possess harmonic nuances of near-Impressionistic colorations, almost as though Puccini learned the art of composition for the piano from the young Debussy. The lack of autograph manuscripts has exposed these pieces to doubts about their origins, but Bartoli’s idiomatically persuasive performances of them silence any debat. Verification of their authorship may be difficult, but enjoying the pianist’s playing is easy. A mere sixteen bars in duration, the Calmo e molto lento Pezzo per pianoforte was written in 1916 in tribute to the appalling human toll of World War One, the effects of which reverberated through the Arts until the atrocities of the Second World War dominated cultural consciousness. Lovingly played here by Bartoli, Puccini’s piece is poignantly understated, imparting collective senses of loss and reflection. For sixteen bars, Puccini gave the piano the communicative power of Wilfred Owen’s poetry, and Bartoli’s interpretation of Pezzo per pianoforte conveys the full meaning of Owen’s declaration that, when writing of the horrors of war and human cruelty, ‘the Poetry is in the pity.’

An almost exact contemporary of Puccini, as well as a fellow native of Lucca and an accomplished musician in his own right, Carlo Carignani created arrangements for piano of excerpts from Puccini’s operas that divulge abundant musicality. Both of the pieces from Tosca included on this disc, the cantata ‘Sale, ascende l’uman cantico’ and Tosca’s aria ‘Vissi d’arte, vissi d’amore’ from Act Two, project the moods of the respective scenes in the opera. How much more effective many performances of Tosca would be were their leading ladies capable of sculpting the line as artfully as Bartoli does in his ‘singing’ of the aria! The Preludes to Act One of Le Villi and Act Three of Edgar were reimagined for the piano by Carignani and are delivered by Bartoli with complementary intelligence, the calibre of the former’s craftsmanship honored by the depth of the latter’s concentration.

The central episode in Il trittico, premièred at The Metropolitan Opera in 1918 with Geraldine Farrar as its titular postulant, Suor Angelica falls victim to particularly vehement scorn for its musical construction and its narrative of a woman who receives absolution after ending her own life upon learning of the death of the child from whom she was separated. In Bartoli’s performance of Carignani’s arrangement of the opera’s Intermezzo, one hears the devastated mother’s restlessness as she prepares the potion that will reunite her with her son, anticipating the elation of the meeting between parent and child. Music is often a realm of extremes in which middle ground can be difficult to find and even harder to occupy, and this year’s centennial of Il trittico’s world première is a suitable occasion for reminding listeners of the foolishness of slavishly replicating others’ preconceptions. Puccini unquestionably aimed for the tear ducts in Suor Angelica, but is the idea of feeling empathy for a grieving mother, albeit a fictional one, really so deserving of contempt? Transcending music, Bartoli’s performance of the opera’s Intermezzo is a timely lesson in compassion.

The principal subjects of Cio-Cio San’s aria ‘Un bel dì vedremo’ and the Coro a bocca chiusa (the Humming Chorus) from Act Two of Madama Butterfly are two of Puccini’s most widely-known melodies, and Carignani arranged them for piano with remarkable sensitivity. The ambiance of Puccini’s Nagasaki permeates Carignani’s work, and Bartoli’s finesse brings Cio-Cio San to life with moving immediacy. With his articulation of ‘Un bel dì vedremo,’ Bartoli evokes the simplicity of Margaret Sheridan, the heartbreak of Maria Callas, and the eloquence of Renata Scotto. In his playing of the Humming Chorus, Butterfly’s yearning for Pinkerton’s return surges in the music’s familiar strains. Before hearing this disc, I would never have anticipated one of the foremost interpreters of Cio-Cio San’s tragedy being a pianist.

As he was preparing to depart from New York City after attending performances of Manon Lescaut and Tosca at the Metropolitan Opera, Puccini and his wife bade farewell to their American hosts with gracious remarks that were preserved for posterity by Columbia Phonographic Company. Recorded on 21 February 1907, those few words provide today’s listeners’ sole opportunity to hear Puccini’s voice—until the release of this disc, that is. No words are spoken here, but Puccini speaks as clearly in the performances on this disc as he did in Columbia’s studio more than a century ago. With his playing, Sandro Ivo Bartoli translates Puccini’s discourse into language that all hearers can understand.

CD REVIEW: Ludwig van Beethoven, Frédéric Chopin, & Franz Liszt — PIANO WORKS (Alexei Melnikov, piano; Acousence Classics ACO-CD 13217)

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770 – 1827), FRÉDÉRIC CHOPIN (1810 – 1849), FRANZ LISZT (1811 – 1886): Piano Works—Alexei Melnikov, piano [Recorded at Campus Fichtenhain, Krefeld-Fichtenhain, Germany, 1 – 3 March 2017; Acousence Classics ACO-CD 13217; 1 CD, 62:10; Available from Naxos Direct, Amazon (USA), iTunes, jpc (Germany), Presto Classical (UK), and major music retailers]

On 15 July 1909, the Leipzig-born pianist Wilhelm Backhaus entered the fledgling HWV studio, then only seventeen months along in its life in the wake of its formation as a branch of the Gramophone Company, and recorded a six-minute abridgment of Edvard Grieg’s Opus 16 Piano Concerto in A minor. Twenty-five years old at the time, Backhaus was already well advanced in a career that would endure war, political upheaval, and unfortunate associations. Though hardly the first recording of music for piano and amounting to nothing more than a small fragment of one of the cornerstones of the piano repertory, those six minutes of Grieg were revolutionary. With that recording, an acknowledged master of the instrument recognized and validated the legitimacy of the art of recording piano music. It was an auspicious development in the relationship between music and technology, a relationship that in the subsequent century has evolved in ways that even a visionary like Backhaus could not have foreseen.

Whether the medium is acetate, vinyl, magnetic tape, plastic, or digital coding, the objective of recording music for piano has remained constant: by faithfully reproducing the combinations of sounds that a musician cajoles from the piano, a recording preserves an unique performance via which the distances that separate composer, performer, and listener are closed. In this sense of sharing the emotional proximity between music and musician with the listener, Alexei Melnikov’s Acousence Records recital of music for piano by Beethoven, Chopin, and Liszt is a noteworthy success. What makes this disc so special, however, is the opportunity that it affords the hearer to experience the artistic coming of age of a pianist with traits much like those that Backhaus brought to the HMV studio in 1909. Insightful, intelligent, adventurous, and abidingly musical, Melnikov is a young artist who life and training span two millennia but whose passion for the communicative power of music is shown by this disc to be of timeless profundity.

A prize winner in a number of prestigious international competitions, native Muscovite Melnikov was born in 1990, beginning his journey at a time of extraordinary change in his homeland. Especially in an era in which any child with a keyboard, a means of recording video, and an internet connection can aspire to being the next online sensation, he is now hardly a novice, but neither the extensiveness of a musician’s experience nor his age constitutes maturity. In this instance, it is his playing—recorded by Acousence in an appealingly intimate acoustic ambiance that places the listener at the pianist’s side, sensing the movement of his fingers and wrists and the vibrations of the strings before him—that divulges the state of Melnikov’s artistic cultivation. The hallmarks of nationalistic schools of pianism are now only memories that can be revisited in recordings from prior generations, but there are in Melnikov’s playing on this disc reminiscences of the style of his countryman Sviatoslav Richter, not least in the obvious commitment to approaching music without agenda or artifice. It is virtually impossible to wholly avoid egotism in achieving the level of technical mastery necessary to focus on interpreting complex pieces rather than getting the notes right, but Melnikov channels the drive to perform at his best into a conscious desire to be the catalyst that facilitates listeners’ reactions to composers’ musical narratives. The three pieces selected for this disc are very different in substance and structure but strikingly similar in the immediacy of their emotional storytelling, and it is as a teller of these stories that Melnikov seizes the imagination.

Composed during the first years of the Nineteenth Century, a period of great personal struggle during which the composer was compelled to confront his increasing deafness, Ludwig van Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 23 in F minor (Opus 57)—not given its traditional appellation of Appassionata until a decade after the composer’s death—continues after more than two hundred years to be regarded as one of the most difficult sonatas in the standard repertory. Like much of Beethoven’s music, the Appassionata is susceptible to being made ridiculous by pianists who overdo the histrionics in wrongheaded pursuits of metaphysical context for the Sonata. The music is brooding and bleak, but it is music, not a series of aural hieroglyphics awaiting decoding. Melnikov executes the score without affectation, focusing on what exists in the music rather than on its Existential implications.

Unsurprisingly, the writing in octaves that is a vital component of Beethoven’s presentation of thematic material in the Sonata’s opening Allegro assai movement makes no demands to which Melnikov’s technique is not equal, and the fluidity of his delivery is impressive. The music’s inherent instability, conveyed by churning arpeggios, is meaningfully imparted without being unduly emphasized. The beautifully simple principal subject of the Andante con moto movement is phrased with understated eloquence that persists in Melnikov’s handling of the variations. It is all too easy for pianists to fall into the trap of encumbering this music with saccharine emoting, but the young pianist here circumvents this obstacle by playing straightforwardly and allowing the connection between music and listener to guide his interpretation. Melnikov’s playing of the Allegro ma non troppo – Presto finale is admirably accurate, his grasps on the movement’s rhythmic transitions and the intricacies of the Sonata’s expansive coda unfaltering. Beethoven has long been cited, perhaps apocryphally, as having asserted that playing without passion is far more damaging to music than playing wrong notes. The playing of some very famous pianists has substantiated the sagacity of Beethoven’s alleged observation, but Melnikov’s performance of the Appassionata is one of the finest recorded examples of how strikingly modern the Sonata can sound when performed with both passion and precision.

It is not necessary to attempt to count its appearances on every aural medium in order to discern that Frédéric Chopin’s Nocturne in C minor (Opus 48, No. 1) has amassed a discography more extensive than that of almost any other piece in two-and-a-half centuries of piano literature. In the company of recordings by virtually every noteworthy pianist of the past hundred years, it is now tremendously difficult for any artist to bring originality to a recorded performance of the Nocturne without also approaching it with idiosyncrasy that is a disservice to both Chopin and the listener. Remarkably, Melnikov plays the Nocturne with an abiding sense of individuality that remains wholly faithful to the score. As in an aria by Bellini, whose work Chopin knew and admired, the melodic line is of paramount importance, and the pianist negotiates the interplay of the primary and secondary subjects, as well as the shift from Lento to Poco più lento, with resourcefulness that intensifies rather than diluting the composer’s distinctive expressivity.

Almost since the piece first appeared in print in 1854, Franz Liszt’s mammoth Piano Sonata in B minor (S.178) has confounded pianists, audiences, and musicologists. Essentially through-composed in the manner of an expansive, half-hour tone poem for solo piano, the Sonata’s construction has ignited debates about Liszt’s intentions, namely whether the piece was conceived as a single movement or should be viewed as a progression of interconnected movements played without pause. With his performance of the Sonata on this disc, Melnikov espouses neither theory, preferring to concentrate on surmounting the score’s many difficulties and allowing the listener to seek clues within the music.

The naturalness of the recorded sound is a great boon to Melnikov’s performance of the Liszt Sonata, enabling the listener to fully appreciate the contrasting delicacy and power of the pianist’s control of the clarion-toned Shigeru Kawai instrument at his disposal. The full emotional effect of the brief Lento assai introduction is realized in Melnikov’s performance, and the piano’s keys gallop beneath his fingers in his playing of the Sonata’s Allegro energico episode. The pomposity in this reading of the Grandioso section is Liszt’s, not Melnikov’s, and the conversational directness of the pianist’s reading of the Recitativo passages initiates a dialogue among the Sonata’s competing thematic fragments.

The pulse of bel canto beats unmistakably in this maneuvering of the Andante sostenuto heart of the Sonata, and the significance of the return to Allegro energico is spotlit by the drive with which it is accomplished. Melnikov observes Liszt’s cantando espressivo marking with sophistication matched by the zeal of his launching of the following Stretta quasi presto. The course from Presto to Prestissimo is traced with dynamism that lends the recurrence of the Andante sostenuto heightened psychological force. From this apex, the path to the Sonata’s resolution is carved through Allegro moderato and Lento assai terrain, and the descent is effectuated in this performance with athletic agility. The clarity of Melnikov’s navigation of Liszt’s contrapuntal writing reveals the composer’s prowess as a steward of long-established musical forms. It is not without justification that the Liszt Sonata is a piece that pianists add to their repertoires only after acute study. Melnikov’s study yields a rousing, revelatory account of the Sonata—rousing in its traversal of Liszt’s craggy musical topography and revelatory in its manifestation of its player’s abilities.

Comparisons of one pianist’s performances with those of other pianists are often as pointless as they are inevitable, but they are sometimes useful in providing a benchmark against which a young artist’s work can be measured. In the context of Melnikov’s playing on this disc, the most apt comparison is with Edith Farnadi, whose interpretations of music by Beethoven, Chopin, and Liszt, exemplified by her 1954 Westminster recording of the Liszt Sonata, possessed an analogous balance between mood and momentum. At least since the 1960 release of Johnny Tillotson’s version of the pop song with the title, the notion of ‘poetry in motion’ has been a cliché, but it is an apposite description of Farnadi’s work. As he plays Beethoven’s Appassionata, one of Chopin’s most affecting Nocturnes, and Liszt’s B-minor Sonata on this disc, his commercial recording début, Alexei Melnikov’s artistry also embodies kinetic lyricism. Above all, the performances on this disc beget an enticing question: what comes next for this erudite pianist?