Volume 27 Issue 5 | March 4 - April 15, 2022

Sonata, and some assured playing in the Heifetz transcriptions of
Poulenc’s Mouvements perpétuels and Presto in B-flat Major.
Restless Nation – The Music of Andy
Teirstein features works that were inspired
by world music traditions (Navona NV6397
navonarecords.com/catalog/nv6397).
The Cassatt String Quartet performs
the title work, its impressions of a yearlong
family expedition evoking “the fierce
energy” of American fiddling.
On Secrets of the North the Mivos String
Quartet is joined by Marco Ambrosini on
the nyckelharpa, the traditional Swedish keyed fiddle, in a work that
incorporates elements inherent in Swedish folk music.
Azazme Songs, Suite for String Quartet, Oud and Dulcimer was
composed after a four-day trek with Azazme Bedouins across the
Aravah desert. They are not direct transcriptions but rather impressions
gleaned, the dulcimer representing the sound of the Bedouin
sumsumia, a strummed psaltery-type instrument. The Mivos String
Quartet performs again, with the composer playing dulcimer and Yair
Dala on the oud.
Teirstein plays a brief harmonica solo to open Letter From Woody
with the Janáček Philharmonic Orchestra under Jirí Petrdlík.
Inspired by one of the letters that Woody Guthrie wrote to his future
wife, it “draws on traditional American folk string bowings and
energies.”
VOCAL
Messiah
Karina Gauvin; Ensemble Caprice;
Ensemble Vocal Arts-Quéébec; Matthias
Maute
Leaf Music LM247 (leaf-music.ca)
! Canadian
soprano Karina
Gauvin, Germanborn
Matthias
Maute and the
ensembles he
conducts, Ensemble
Caprice and
Ensemble Vocal
Arts-Québec,
present a new recording with highlights
from Handel’s Messiah.
Although it would be easy to dismiss the
recording as “another Messiah,” this interpretation
is a unique and valuable contribution
to the large number of recorded offerings
of Messiah. Dictated by COVID restrictions
in place at the time of recording, the chorus
includes only 12 voices. Although, unlike the
large choruses of contemporary times, this
reading does somewhat align with musicological
research that estimates the original
performances of Messiah comprised only 16
men and/or 16 boy choristers. More controversial
for Messiah and Baroque music purists
are the many chorus sections with notable
faster tempi than what modern ears are
used to as well as unusual and sometimes
chopped phrasing as in the opening of the
“Hallelujah” chorus.
Artistic choices notwithstanding, this
Messiah offers an intimate experience that
never feels underpowered because of its
smaller effective. Both ensembles offer
solid musicianship and musicality; Gauvin,
renowned for her performances of Baroque
repertoire, is at ease and delivers her usual
abilities with elegance, depth and conviction.
The album also offers two new choral works
Hope and Belief by Jaap Nico Hamburger on
a text from Polish Jewish writer Isaac Leib
Peretz (1852-1915) and O Magnum Mysterium
by conductor Maute based on the sacred
Latin text of the same name. Both works
featured prominently in the Mini-Concerts
Santé, a Maute initiative that provided
uplifting concerts to thousands during the
2020 lockdown.
Sophie Bisson
Amata Dalle Tenebre
Anna Netrebko; Orchestra del Teatro alla
Scala; Riccardo Chailly
Deutsche Grammophon B0034484-02
(deutschegrammophon.com)
! The great
soprano, Anna
Netrebko, is the
epitome of the
larger-than-life
opera star; a diva
who ought to be
credited with
perpetuating the
mysterious appeal of the genre. She has the
prodigious gift not only of reaching extraordinarily
high notes – her high C is sung
with electrifying charisma – but she also
graces the roles she brings to life with a tragic
grandeur. There can also be no doubt that
she is Riccardo Chailly’s operatic muse. The
repertoire on Amata Dalle Tenebre certainly
suggests that she has been so anointed –
literally and figuratively – with the ink-black
heartbreak of these arias.
Netrebko can easily lay claim to being the
diva assoluta of our time. The disc is kicked
off by the dark honeyed voicing of Richard
Strauss’ Es Gibt ein Reich, moulding the lyric
from Ariadne auf Naxos as if with molten
lava. Then she proceeds to unveil – from her
palpitating heart – the elemental ache of her
very being with her touching evocations of
Verdi’s Aida, Puccini’s Madama Butterfly
and Manon Lescaut. Netrebko’s Dido from
Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas is a deeply cathartic
evocation of grief.
Her Wagner is perfectly judged. Both arias:
Dich, Teure Halle (Tannhäuser’s Elisabeth)
and Einsam in Trüben Tagen (Lohengrin’s
Elsa) are shaped in majesty and eloquence,
transcending the pitch blackness of operatic
emotions. Her Cilea is gorgeous, but the
apogee of the disc is Tchaikovsky’s Pique
Dame in which Netrebko plays Lisa with
unbuttoned authority and anguished poetic
brilliance.
Raul da Gama
Henze – Nachtstücke und Arien; Los
Caprichos; Englische Liebeslieder
Narek Hakhnazaryan; Juliane Banse;
Radio-Symphonieorchester Wien; Marin
Alsop
Naxos 8574181 (naxosdirect.com/
search/747313418176)
! Right from
the start of Hans
Werner Henze’s
long and productive
career, performers
and audiences have
connected viscerally
with his music
– some of the most
lyrical, complex, passionate, committed,
literate, uncompromising, provocative,
confrontational and powerful of its time.
Today, ten years after his death, it speaks to us
just as directly as ever.
The works on this recording were never
among Henze’s best-known pieces, compelling
though all three are. The one I find most
moving is Englische Liebeslieder. This collection
of love songs is based on poems by
Shakespeare, the Earl of Rochester, Joyce and
Graves. But the texts are never actually heard.
Instead, they are interpreted by a solo cello.
With cellist Narek Hakhnazaryan’s openhearted
lyricism, and the responsiveness
of the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony under
chief conductor Marin Alsop, the effect is
uncannily intimate – and utterly ravishing.
In Nachtstücke und Arien, the arias
are sung, to exquisite poems by Ingeborg
Bachmann. But here the three dreamy instrumental
movements work better than the two
wistful arias. Soprano Juliane Banse captures
the essential theatricality of Henze’s style.
But her shrillness and pronounced vibrato
dampen the mystery and magic for me.
Los Caprichos transports us to the world
of foolishness and folly depicted in Goya’s
series of 80 etchings of the same name. Under
Alsop’s insightful direction the orchestra
42 | March 4 – April 15, 2022 thewholenote.com