Volume 27 Issue 4 - February 2022

VOCAL
Mirrors
Jeanine De Bique; Concerto Koln; Luca
Quintavalle
Berlin Classics (berlin-classics-music.com)
! Mirrors is
Trinidadian
soprano Jeanine
De Bique’s
debut album.
Accompanied by the
renowned Baroque
orchestra Concerto
Köln, with musical
direction by Luca Quintavalle, the album
focuses on Baroque arias and includes three
world premiere recordings.
De Bique’s album reflects her unique style
and personality in a well-crafted concept. Her
flawless technique is impressive and includes
carefully sculpted notes and stunning articulation
amid invigorating Baroque rhythms
and flying high notes. De Bique, a seasoned
Handel performer, was also given the freedom
to play with and create new ornamentation
for each aria.
Developed in collaboration with musicologist
Yannis François, the concept of the
album is that of looking through a broken
mirror; different settings of the same libretti
are placed side by side on an album for the
first time. Mirrors juxtaposes Handel’s operatic
heroines Alcina, Cleopatra, Deidami, and
Rodelinda with the same characters’ arias
from the works of Riccardo Broschi (brother
of famed castrato Farinelli), Carl Heinrich
Graun, Gennaro Manna and Georg Philipp
Telemann, each prominent opera composers
of their time. The arias of Mirrors are meant
to relate key moments in the psychological
development of each heroine, thereby also
opening a window into the varied female
experience. In the liner notes De Bique writes
that this project allowed her to sing from a
place of vulnerability and that she was “given
the opportunity to be a voice for women
across the ages who are still trying to find
spaces to free their voices, and for those ready
to reclaim their autonomy.”
Sophie Bisson
Verdi – Macbeth
Soloists; Filarmonica Arturo Toscanini;
Coro del Teatro Regio Parma; Roberto
Abbado
Dynamic DYN-CDS7915.02
(naxosdirect.com/search/dyn-cds7915.02)
! My love for
Verdi’s Macbeth
began here in
Toronto many years
ago when I saw
Hungarian soprano
sensation Georgina
Lukács in the
famous Mad Scene, the late Richard Bradshaw
conducting with such a rapport between
them that it seemed like he was conducting
just for her. Today my love has been rekindled
with this new CD from Parma. Parma is
now what Salzburg is to Mozart or Bayreuth
to Wagner, a Verdi Mecca.
Success for Macbeth was a long time
coming. In 1847, it was the first time Verdi
tried to tackle Shakespeare, his idol since
childhood, but the atmosphere of foggy, rainy
Scotland plus the witches didn’t please the
Italian public. However in 1865, a golden
opportunity came from Paris and big money
too. He revised the opera by translating it into
French, adding new music and a mandatory
ballet to suit the taste of Paris. This version
fared better and it is presented here.
This is an open air concert performance no
doubt necessitated by COVID, using Parma’s
resplendent Opera House as a backdrop and
with the best singers available. Perhaps the
greatest Verdi baritone alive, Ludovic Tézier
from Marseille, with his velvety, many shaded
but strong voice, simply lives the title role.
His bloodthirsty wife and helpmate, Lady
Macbeth, is sung by Sylvia Dalla Benetta who
is rapidly becoming Italy’s leading dramatic
soprano. She is sensational with a tremendously
wide vocal range and power. Her
high notes could shatter glass and her low
notes are bloodcurdling. Her first scene and
the cabaletta Viens! Viens! Sois homme! Il
faut régner is explosive. Riccardo Zanellato’s
smooth basso is heartrending as Banquo.
Scholarly conductor and Verdi expert Roberto
Abbado conducts with throbbing vitality.
Janos Gardonyi
Voice of Nature: The Anthropocene
Renée Fleming; Yannick Nézet-Séguin
Decca Classics (deccaclassics.com/de/
kuenstler/reneefleming)
! Voice of Nature:
The Anthropocene
is another album
responding to
the devastating
current pandemic.
According to celebrated
veteran
American opera
diva Renée Fleming it was inspired by
the solace she found while hiking near
her Virginia home during lockdown.
Canadian conductor and pianist Yannick
Nézet-Séguin and Fleming have chosen 16
songs which feature lyrics exploring “the
centrality of nature in Romantic-era song and
highlight[ing] the peril … of the natural world
today. … Now, in the Anthropocene, we see the
effects of our own activity, and the fragility of
our environment,” reflects Fleming.
A dedicated performer of art song, she
draws on her classical repertoire including
scores by Liszt, Grieg, Fauré and Hahn for
the core of this recital. Also featured are
recording premieres of Caroline Shaw’s 2017
Aurora Borealis, evoking flickering lights in
the northern sky, plus two commissions from
American composers.
Pulitzer Prize-winner Kevin Puts gives
Evening by the American poet Dorianne Laux
a retro-musical setting, characterized by a
supple lyric soprano melody highlighted by
Fleming’s soaring high notes, and supported
by Nézet-Séguin’s rippling tonal arpeggios
and harmonies.
Nico Muhly’s bricolage-like Endless Space,
on the other hand, draws on several disparate
texts: poetry of the 17th-century English
theologian Thomas Traherne plus writing by
climate change journalist Robinson Meyer. It
starts with a sort of recitative before taking
advantage of Fleming’s core vocal strengths
still at her command in her sixth decade:
velvety rich lows, graceful high passages,
flawless intonation and dynamic control.
Andrew Timar
Patrick Cassidy – The Mass
Laude; David Harris; Christoph Bull
Supertrain Records
(supertrainrecords.com)
! The Catholic
Mass is one of the
most frequently set
texts in the history
of music, encompassing
works
ranging from the
14th century to
modern times.
Whether Palestrina’s marvellous Missa
Papae Marcelli or Beethoven’s grandiose
Missa Solemnis, performances and recordings
of these masterpieces bear testament to
the inspirational power of these ancient rites
and texts.
Unique among the plethora of recordings
of the Mass, however, is this documentation
of Patrick Cassidy’s The Mass, originally
composed for choir and orchestra and later
adapted for choir and organ. Growing from
the challenges of quarantine, it is perhaps
among the first major works in history to be
recorded virtually, with each member of the
choral group singing their individual part
in isolation. Anyone who has worked on a
virtual choir project is aware of how involved,
tedious and time-consuming such a task can
be, especially when the result is intended to
be a release-worthy recording, and the excellence
attained in this instance cannot be
overstated.
Cassidy’s writing is stunningly beautiful
and primarily uses a late-Romantic idiom,
with luscious harmonies and gorgeous
melodies that are both profound and sublime.
The singers, despite their isolation, blend
with a precision and clarity that is, in a word,
unbelievable, while Christoph Bull, organistin-residence
at the First Congregational
Church of Lost Angeles – which houses one
of the world’s largest pipe organs – is in fine
form, making that single instrument sound as
38 | February 2022 thewholenote.com