Specs & Pricing

Music
Classical
during the reign of that nation’s military
junta—who encouraged Karaindrou to
pursue composition.
At the heart of this sprawling elegy is
haunting music from two of Karaindrou’s
best-known works, The Weeping Meadow
(originally written for Theo Angelopoulos’
2003 film of the same name) and Trojan
Women (written for K.X. Myris’ 2002
adaptation of the classic play by Euripides),
both dealing with themes of parting and
expatriation. Karaindrou has commented
that the stories tell the same tale; they’re just
set 2500 years apart. This is interspersed
with music from film scores such as Eternity
and a Day, Ulysses’ Gaze, Landscape in the Mist,
and Happy Homecoming. Karaindrou paints
a broad canvas while working with a rich
palette of styles and instrumentation. The
opening “Prayer” is an expansive choral
benediction, softly pleading over a sustained
string section that is punctuated by quiet
spaces and the unadorned colors of a folksy
Constantinople lyra, French horn, harp,
and accordion. The sparsely arranged track
sets the tone for the melancholia of the
entire work, music that tugs on the heart
strings with an endless array of mournful
melodies.
For a live recording, Elegy of the Uprooting
has a full-bodied but uncluttered sound with
impressive separation of the 110 singers and
instruments on stage, especially Karaindrou’s
piano. Greg Cahill
Further Listening: Kim Kashkashian:
Music of Komitas and Tigran
Mansurian; Jan Garbarek: In Praise of
Dreams
Mozart: Zaide.
Soloists; Concentus
Musicus Wien, Nikolaus
Harnoncourt, conductor.
Friedemann Engelbrecht, producer;
Michael Brammann, engineer.
Deutsche Harmonia Mundi 82876
84996.
Zaide is a misbegotten venture that founders
on multiple levels. Mozart’s unfinished
singspiel is burdened by generic, uninteresting
music, making it a one-aria work though
that aria, Ruhe sanft, is irresistible. The story
doesn’t help. Spunky European girl held
captive in a harem. European slave boy
revolts. Girl meets boy. They fall in love.
Their goal is freedom. Brutal Sultan’s goal
is to behead them. End of story. Mozart
dumped the work, replacing it in 1781
with another “Turkish” opera, the comic
masterpiece Die Entführung aus dem Serail,
whose characters display the humanity
missing in Zaide.
Yet what ultimately sinks this set is the
extended narration written and performed
by Tobias Moretti. Instead of replacing the
now-lost spoken dialogue with a summary
that advances the narrative, Moretti
interprets the drama, supposedly making it
relevant to our times. Smugly pushing his
own slanted political viewpoint, he harangues
the audience rather than enlightening it,
though he does give a good Hitler imitation.
Fortunately, his rants are separately tracked.
Skip them.
If Moretti takes Mozart’s opera fragment
as a blank page for scribbling, Harnoncourt
takes it as a challenge to infuse the music
with life. His overture is an earlier Sinfonia by
Mozart, played with biting strings, buoyant
rhythm, and precise articulation, making you
want to hear more, a hope quickly dashed by
an extended narration and a banal prisoners’
chorus. The vibrant orchestral playing is
full of verve and appetizing detail, a lesson
in making something from nothing. The
singing is on a lesser level, though acceptable.
Diana Damrau is the Zaide, disappointing in
a strained Ruhe sanft but improving later.
Made at concert performances in 2006,
the recording initially places the singers
within the orchestra, lending distance and
a touch of the opaque to Damrau’s Ruhe
sanft. But balances soon improve and there’s
more presence to the sound, which captures
the space and air of Vienna’s Musikverein.
Nevertheless, Mozart would be better served
with a single disc of excerpts instead of this
mess. DD
Further Listening: Mozart: Zaide
arias (Dessay); Mozart: Die
Entführung aus dem Serail (Böhm)
144 December 2006 The Absolute Sound