Volume 26 Issue 8 - July and August 2021

VOCAL
Distance
Choeur de l’Eglise St. Andrew and St. Paul;
Jean-Sébastien Vallée
ATMA ACD2 2840 (atmaclassique.com/en)
! Recorded at the
height of Montreal’s
second wave of
the COVID-19
pandemic under
extremely specific
and restrictive
public health conditions,
Distance
could not be more
appropriately titled. Despite these challenging
times and conditions, this disc manages
to distill an extraordinary amount of strength
and beauty into its 69 minutes, a testament
to the quality of the Choir of the Church of
St. Andrew and St. Paul and its director, Jean-
Sébastien Vallée.
Spanning nearly five centuries of music
and a great range of styles, there is something
for everyone here. Beginning with a stunning
performance of Samuel Barber’s Agnus
Dei (his own arrangement of the Adagio
for Strings), Trevor Weston’s atmospheric
Magnificat and Bach’s Komm, Jesu, Komm,
the first three works are notable for the way
in which the choir is able to modify their
performance practice to meet the demands
of each era.
The remainder of Distance is equally
stimulating, with Elgar’s legendary Nimrod
appearing in a vocal arrangement by John
Cameron titled Lux aeterna, and works by
Rachmaninoff, James MacMillan, and Uģis
Prauliņš. In addition to these renowned
composers, there are also appearances by
contemporary composers Reena Esmail,
Caroline Shaw and William Kraushaar, each
born in the 1980s.
There is little more to say about the
performances on this disc, other than that
they are extraordinary. The virtuosity present
in the Barber is entirely different from that
demanded by Bach, which is itself radically
different from Prauliņš, and each is simply
stunning in its own way. This reviewer is very
rarely rendered speechless but, when something
is done as well as the interpretations
presented here, it is undoubtedly better to
talk less and listen more.
Matthew Whitfield
Schubert – Winterreise
Joyce DiDonato; Yannick Nézet-Séguin
Erato 0190295284245
(warnerclassics.com)
! There is ample
evidence, in their
individual oeuvres,
to suggest that
luminous mezzo
Joyce DiDonato and
maestro Yannick
Nézet-Séguin are
artists of the first
order; enough, it
may be said, to have earned them the right to
do whatever they may wish to. This recording
of Winterreise, Franz Schubert’s iconic and
desolate song cycle, is an altogether more
challenging assignment, but one that’s pulled
off with aplomb.
This unique duo interprets this music
from the despondent woman’s perspective
and provides Schubert’s music and Wilhelm
Müller’s verses with a new benchmark.
This is no simple replacement of the male
protagonist – the rejected lover on the verge
of madness – with a female one. The lonely
peregrinations of Schubert’s old character
through the snowbound landscape have
been given dramatically new meaning by
DiDonato. Müller’s 24 verses speak to the
mezzo in a very special way. She has, in
turn, interiorized the bleak despondency of
Die schöne Müllerin and recast the music’s
unrelenting desolation in a breathtaking new
landscape of personal pain.
Meanwhile, from his vantage point in the
shadows behind his piano, Nézet-Séguin
conducts himself with impeccable decorum,
occasionally emerging into the limelight if
only to gently emphasize or provide poignant
relief from the music’s bleak mood. His musicianship
throughout is eloquent. His astute
pianism – especially in Der Leiermann –
highlights and embellishes the emotional
veracity of Winterreise, combining with
DiDonato’s darkly lustrous performance to
take Schubert’s magnificent art song cycle to
a rarefied realm.
Raul da Gama
Donizetti – Lucrezia Borgia
Marko Mimica; Carmela Remigio; Xabier
Anduaga; Varduhi Abrahamyan; Orchestra
Giovanile Luigi Cherubini; Coro del Teatro
Municipale di Piacenza; Riccardo Frizza
Dynamic 37849
(naxosdirect.com/search/37849)
! Nestled on the
southern slopes
of the Italian Alps
is the lovely small
town Bergamo,
birthplace of
one of the great
masters of Italian
bel canto, Gaetano
Donizetti. Lucrezia
Borgia, one of his
early successes,
premiered in 1833
at La Scala shortly
after Anna Bolena, his first major breakthrough.
It is rarely performed, as it requires
soloists, especially the lead soprano, of the
highest calibre. Over the last century the
opera went through many revisions, but it
never left the stage and attracted the likes of
Caruso, Gigli, Caballé, Sills, Gruberova and
Sutherland for the principal roles.
The opera centres around one of the
most despicable characters of the Italian
Renaissance, the daughter of Pope Alexander
VI, Lucrezia Borgia who murdered three
husbands and is presently on her fourth,
Don Alfonso, ruler of Ferrara. The story that
follows is a total mayhem of horror, jealousy,
vendetta, poisoning, mass murder and
suicide, but the music remains one of the
composer’s most compelling and forwardlooking
scores. In fact, he is attempting to
break the traditional rigid rules of bel canto
by bringing the recitativo and aria closer
together towards a more fluid style and
expressive language, a step closer to Verdi.
The strongest feature of this memorable
performance is Italian soprano Carmela
Remigio in the title role. She truly carries
the show with her dramatic persona, total
emotional involvement, absorption into the
role and a mesmerizing voice powerful in
all registers. Gennaro, her illegitimate son,
cause of much of her grief and anguish, is the
sensational Spanish tenor Xabier Anduaga,
winner of Operalia Competition 2019. Young
Marko Mimica from Zagreb, Croatia, as Don
Alfonso, is a powerful bass-baritone and
the supporting cast is remarkable. Riccardo
Frizza, master of Italian opera, conducts.
Janos Gardonyi
38 | July and August 2021 thewholenote.com