Volume 25 Issue 4 - December 2019 / January 2020

VOCAL
Dowland – Whose Heavenly Touch
Mariana Flores; Hopkinson Smith
Naïve E 8941 (naxosdirect.com)
!!
Perhaps the most
renowned composer
of music for lute
and voice in the
history of the genre,
John Dowland’s
songs continue to
captivate modern
performers and
audiences with their esoteric melancholy
and expressivity. Far from being a downer,
Dowland’s seemingly depressing themes
were as much a practical choice as an artistic
one, reflecting the melancholia that was so
fashionable in music at that time. In fact,
Dowland wrote a consort piece with the
punning title Semper Dowland, semper
dolens (always Dowland, always doleful),
reflecting his tongue-in-cheek self-awareness.
Whose Heavenly Touch presents selections
from Dowland’s First and Second Book
of Songs, published in 1597 and 1600 respectively,
and begins with the striking and enduringly
popular Flow, my tears. This recording
features Argentinian soprano Mariana Flores
and American lutenist Hopkinson Smith, who
has received numerous accolades for his work
in a wide range of early music, from Dowland
to lute arrangements of Bach’s sonatas and
partitas. From the beginning of this first song
through to the disc’s end, Smith’s mastery of
the lute is apparent in his clarity and control,
arpeggiations and scalic interpolations
providing rhythmic motion through tasteful
and virtuosic interpretation.
Perhaps the most conspicuously atypical
aspect of this recording is Flores’ distinct
Spanish accent, a rather disorienting imposition
on this Tudor music which can occasionally
mask textual subtleties through
excessively rolled “R”s and unexpectedly
modified vowels and diphthongs. While
her tone and interpretations are delightful,
it occasionally takes attentive listening to
discern the words that Flores considers
worthy of such thoughtful expression.
Matthew Whitfield
Gluck – Orfeo ed Euridice
Iestyn Davies; Sophie Bevan; Rebecca
Bottone; La Nuova Musica; David Bates
Pentatone PCT 5186 805
(pentatonemusic.com)
Gluck – Orphée et Euridice
Marianne Crebassa; Hélène Guilmette; Lea
Desandre; Ensemble Pygmalion; Raphaël
Pichon
Naxos 2.110638 (naxos.com)
!!
Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice is a landmark
work in the operatic canon, as famous for its
restoration of the
ideals of Greek art
in opera seria as it
is for its musical
and dramatic
content. As well
as being aesthetically
progressive
through its deliberate
conservativism, Orfeo merges French
and Italian styles into a synthetic whole,
combining the Italianate style utilized by
Handel and Vivaldi with the influence of
Lully and Rameau. First premiered in Vienna
in 1762, Gluck later re-adapted the opera to
suit the tastes of a Parisian audience at the
Académie Royale de Musique and several
alterations were made in vocal casting and
orchestration to suit French tastes.
Between 1784 and 1859 the concert pitch in
Paris rose so significantly that the French
government passed a law which set the A
above middle C at 435 Hz. To combat the
effects of this inflation in pitch, Hector Berlioz
prepared a version of Gluck’s opera (Orphée
et Eurydice) in which he adapted the title role
for a female alto using the key scheme of the
1762 Vienna score, and incorporating much of
the additional music of the 1774 Paris edition.
Although Berlioz’s version is one of many
which combine the Italian and French scores,
it is the most influential and well regarded
and has since been revised and reissued in
numerous editions.
It is Berlioz’s
1859 version of
Gluck’s opera
which the Opéra
Comique presents
in their DVD
Orphée et Eurydice,
a wonderful
representation of
Gluck’s artistry
and reflection of
Berlioz’s craft as
adapter. The style
and performance practice are decidedly classical,
rooted in the 18th-century tradition,
and Berlioz’s personal influence is appropriately
indiscernible. There are, however, some
notable modifications to Gluck’s original
score: the overture has been replaced with
another of Gluck’s orchestral overtures; and
the harpsichord is nowhere to be found, a
decision that is open to interpreters, as the
instrument was removed from the Parisian
orchestral pit around the time of Orphée’s
premiere. This is an overall weightier
approach to Gluck, with a larger orchestra
playing with full sound and prominently
voiced soloists, suggesting a 19th-century
approach commensurate with the sound
Berlioz likely had in mind.
In contrast with the Opéra Comique’s
presentation, Pentatone has issued a new
recording of the 1762 Orfeo which includes
both harpsichord and the original overture, as
well as a countertenor Orfeo. This version is,
although very similar to the Berlioz edition,
considerably leaner in its orchestral timbre
and more fluid with its Italian text, further
emphasized through an interpretation that is
deliberately direct and essentially Baroque,
rather than bold and Romantic. In both
instances the singers, choruses and orchestras
are magnificent, presenting Gluck’s music in
equally superb and successful ways.
Matthew Whitfield
Wagner – Der Fliegende Holländer
Samuel Yuon; Lars Woldt; Ingela Brimberg;
Bernard Richter; Les Musiciens du Louvre;
Marc Minkowski
Naxos 2.110637 (naxos.com)
! ! Richard
Wagner’s opus,
Der Fliegende
Holländer was
completed in 1840,
and then revised
three times during
the next 20 years.
Arguably the opera
in which Wagner
found his voice, it
was inspired by the
story of a Dutchman
whose blasphemy led to his being condemned
to sail the seas for eternity unless he could be
redeemed by a faithful woman.
The action begins in a Norwegian fjord
where a sailor named Daland is sheltering
his vessel from a storm. A ghostly ship pulls
alongside and its captain – the Dutchman –
offers Daland vast wealth in exchange for a
single night’s hospitality. Daland’s daughter,
Senta, who is obsessed by the tales she has
heard about the Dutchman’s fate, vows to be
his salvation. Forsaking her lover, Erik, she
joins the Dutchman and proves her fidelity to
him unto the end, when she throws herself
into the sea after him. In the climax that
follows, the lovers are seen transfigured,
rising above the waves.
Der Fliegende Holländer is set in three
acts but is often performed as a continuous
two-and-a-half-hour whole. Highlights are
Die Frist ist um and Johohoe! Johohoe! Marc
Minkowski’s conducting is triumphant.
Olivier Py’s direction – amid a bleak set –
brilliantly captures Wagner’s opera with
cohesion and fluency. Samuel Youn’s fullvoiced,
bass-baritone Dutchman has anguish
and desperation, Ingela Brimberg’s Senta is
sweet and effortless and Lars Woldt’s Daland
is resonant and noble. Orchestra and chorus
are in glowing form too.
Raul da Gama
86 | December 2019 – January 2020 thewholenote.com