CD REVIEW: "A Carnegie Hall Christmas" (1991/1992)

I haven't/didn't have the most outwardly festive Christmas holiday because my sister was ill and friends were unavailable for various reasons, but I did enjoy some beautiful Christmas music, including this CD from a Christmas concert at Carnegie Hall in 1991. The soloists are Kathleen Battle and Frederica von Stade (a Sophie and an Octavian*; a Susanna and a Cherubino, Gretel and Hansel**), with Andre Previn, Nancy Allen on the harp, The Orchestra of St. Luke's, The American Boy Choir, The Christmas Concert Chorus, and The Wynton Marsalis Quintet. There's 76 minutes and 19 seconds of music: traditional, opera, classical, jazz, popular, etc.

One of the best tracks is number 8, American Songs (in special arrangements just for this concert):

"I Wonder as I Wander" by John Jacob Niles (from Appalachia) with Nancy Allen on the harp; and Five Traditional Songs: "Mary Had a Baby"; "Oh Mary, What You Gonna Name that Pretty Little Baby?"; "Who Was Mary? Mary Was Queen of Galilee"; "Sister Mary Had-a But One Child" and "Go Tell It on the Mountain"

These songs are unabashedly Christian, emphasizing Jesus as Savior and Lord and Mary as His Mother, and everyone on stage joins in this melodious sequence. 

Other highlights are Michael Praetorius's "Lo, How a Rose E'er Blooming" sung acapella by von Stade, the Boychoir, and the Chorus, Max Reger's "Maria Wiegenlied" with von Stade, Battle, and the Orchestra, and Pietro A. Yon's "Gesu Bambino" with Battle, von Stade, the Boychoir, and Orchestra. 

The last big number with the ensemble (arranged by Alexander Courage of Star Trek fame) presents French, Welsh, English, Traditional songs, including Adolphe Adam's "O Holy Night" and two settings of "Away in Manger"!

All of arrangements are classy and original, even if the *Sophie and Octavian insert part of the closing duet of Der Rosenkavalier into the "Twelve Days of Christmas"! There is another operatic number, the Evening Prayer from Humperdinck's **Hansel und Gretel. The Wynton Marsalis Septet and Andre Previn on the piano add some jazz to the soul and classical sounds of the concert.

There was also a DVD produced after this concert aired on PBS Great Performances and one can find excerpts on YouTube, but the CD sound is much better. It's a rich and elegant, spiritual and festive celebration of Christmas! The Metropolitan Opera also has the video available online for a fee.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! 

Image Credit: Cover Art from the (c) 1992 Sony Classical CD (Fair Use in a product review)

Spinning Some Discs

My husband bought a new needle or something for his old turntable (he's the audiophile, not me!) and we listened to a few LPs one night this week. He has lots of rock and roll and I have lots of opera and classical from the days before we were married. We listened to an LP he bought me a few years ago in Kansas City--the soundtrack of Ben Hur in the deluxe boxed set with the hardback book about the movie. It was in good shape, as guaranteed by the shop. My old LP of La Damnation de Faust from Decca with Frederica von Stade and Jose van Dam et al was a little worn and had some scratches.

We pulled out a couple of more unusual discs:

This is the cover of Seals & Crofts 1973 album with the controversial pro-life song, "Unborn Child"--which you can hear on YouTube here. Seals & Crofts were/are of the Bahá'í Faith and as this article notes, were therefore concerned about the rights of the unborn as part of the human family:

Jim Seals and Dash Crofts wrote their music to reflect—though never to proselytize—their Bahà’í faith, which sees all humanity as connected in one family. They understood the unborn child to be simply a part of that universal whole.

There was quite a backlash:

Dash Crofts told interviewer Bill de Young in 1993: “Warner Brothers warned us against it. They said, ‘This is a highly controversial subject, we advise that you don’t do this.’ And we said, ‘But you’re in the business to make money; we’re doing it to save lives. We don’t care about the money.’”

According to de Young, “The critics tore the record to pieces, and Seals and Crofts with it. . . . Unborn Child hurt Seals and Crofts’ reputation—it was as if they had crossed that thin line, that sacrosanct divider that separated their music from their religious beliefs.”

Oh little baby, you’ll never cry, nor will you hear a sweet lullabye.

Oh unborn child, if you only knew just what your momma was plannin’ to do.
You’re still a-clingin’ to the tree of life, but soon you’ll be cut off before you get ripe.
Oh unborn child, beginning to grow inside your momma, but you’ll never know.
Oh tiny bud, that grows in the womb, only to be crushed before you can bloom.

Mama stop! Turn around, go back, think it over.
Now stop, turn around, go back, think it over.
Stop, turn around, go back think it over.

Beautiful!

And the LP that had the best sound and fewest pops and/or scratches: A Classic Case: The London Symphony Orchestra Plays the Music of Jethro Tull with Ian Anderson playing his flute:

And in keeping with the beginning of the holiday season we listened to one side of a Deutsche Grammaphone album of Christmas Concertos conducted by Herbert von Karajan, which had a warm and glorious sound:

My husband has plans for more LP listening--he still has some "Yes" albums in storage to retrieve and sample!

Happy Thanksgiving!!

The Sound of Music: The Original Version?

You might have watched the live production of Rodgers & Hammerstein's stage version on NBC on Thursday, December 5--and that was the crucial note about the broadcast: that it was of the stage version. Too many people in on-line comments said the live version did not measure up to the original (the Julie Andrew's movie), not realizing that they had never seen the original: Mary Martin and Theodore Bikel as the Maria and the Captain in the last musical play that Rodgers & Hammerstein wrote together. I think many viewers expected a remake of the movie. What we saw was the (almost) original order and selection of the songs from the stage play--no "I Have Confidence in Me" (which Rodgers wrote for the movie). I was disappointed that they did not include "An Ordinary Couple" from the stage play, but instead chose "Something Good", which Rodgers also wrote (lyrics and music) for the movie.

I have not heard the soundtrack from the 1998 Broadway revival with Rebecca Luker but I did hear her sing "The Hills Are Alive" on the Kennedy Honors program for Julie Andrews. That revival included both "I Have Confidence in Me" and "Something Good" from the movie and the two songs for Elsa Schrader and Max Detweiler ("How Can Love Survive" and "There's No Way to Stop It"). The last song is really important to the plot because Elsa sings herself right out of her engagement to Captain von Trapp--and she knows it immediately.

For a really complete version of all the music for The Sound of Music, I guess the Telarc 1987 studio cast album wraps it all up: all the songs from both stage and screen. Frederica von Stade, Haken Hagegard, Eileen Farrell (the Abbess), and Barbara Daniels (Elsa Schrader) make up a strong vocal cast. Erich Kunzel, the late great conductor of the Cincinnati Pops did present a series of concert versions of the musical so there was some performing background for the opera stars. Except for Farrell (who did have a pop recording career along with her operatic career), the others sang operetta during their stage careers so they weren't completely unfamiliar with the musical form. Barbara Daniels sang Mama Rose and Dolly Levy!

Of course the movie version is what we think of first for this musical--and as I've watched it over the years, much as I have loved the music, it's the performance of Eleanor Parker as Baroness Schrader that I've appreciated more and more. She plays that role so brilliantly, because she doesn't let you hate her when you almost should. Even as she encourages Julie Andrews to leave and run back to the Abbey, it's clear that she is surprised at how right she is: the Captain and Maria do love each other, and "There's no Way to Stop It". She has some of the best lines in the movie--"Why didn't you tell me to bring my harmonica?"; the line about helping Maria becoming a nun in the Abbey, and even her breaking up with Georg: delicacy and some real strength of character there. Here's some that coincidential-connection trivia: Eleanor Parker played the role of opera singer Marjorie Lawrence in the 1955 movie Interrupted Melody, and Eileen Farrell, who sang the part of the Abbess on the Telarc CD, dubbed her opera performances.

Not Shakespeare's "Othello", nor Verdi's "Otello" . . .

. . . but Rossini's Otello was in our CD player this weekend, the digitally remastered version of Philips 1979 premiere recording with Jose Carreras, Frederica von Stade, and Samuel Ramey:

You do have to forget about Shakespeare's Othello, because as the liner notes in the CD state, Rossini's librettist turned the story into the usual tale of a secret marriage and animosity between rivals. Iago is not the great tempter of Otello, and Rodrigo has a much bigger role. Desdemona and Otello don't have any romantic duets at all--in fact, they sing only one duet and that is when Otello is preparing to kill Desdemona! This is not a tragedy, but an opera seria, and Rossini even wrote a comic--that is, happy--ending in which Otello and Desdemona are reconciled! (This recording ends with Otello killing Desdemona and then himself: no bacio, however.)

Here is the cover from the original LP release, which we also own:

 

Carreras appears in makeup as the Moor on the cover and in the booklet, and von Stade is also pictured in makeup and costume in the booklet, while the other singers are photographed in the recording studio. There was no stage production before the recording, however, as there had been of Massenet's Werther before von Stade and Carreras recorded it (at Covent Garden in 1980). In both recordings, however, Frederica von Stade was singing in her prime and with great dramatic fervour and affect. Years later, von Stade sang the aria "Assisa a' piè d'un salice" (The Willow Song) at a gala, and the harpist who accompanied her posted this on her blog about the experience!

A Revolutionary Recital in Salzburg, 1986

Something completely off topic:

As David Shengold in Opera News reviews this new release of an old recital notes, it seems strange, even to me after years of listening to recitals by Frederica von Stade (and even attending a few) that this program of French chansons, Strauss and Mahler, and some American composers was unusual in Salzburg during the 1986 season:

Frederica von Stade's protean approach to music has opened doors (and set standards) for Susanne Mentzer, Susan Graham, Joyce DiDonato and other lyric mezzos who have followed. On August 18, 1986, after more than a dozen years of stardom — largely in Mozart and Rossini, but with triumphs to her name in Monteverdi, Berlioz, Massenet and Richard Strauss in Europe and North America — she gave a solo recital at Salzburg's prestigious if acoustically demanding Grosses Festspielhaus. Orfeo now releases the happy results in its welcome series of live Salzburg Liederabenden.

Von Stade collaborated with longtime accompanist Martin Katz on a program whose diversity apparently raised eyebrows among the more tradition-bound Festival patrons. Yet the applause is generous. From our perspective today, the program doesn't seem all that revolutionary — Lieder eines Fahrenden Gesellen, groups of Fauré and Strauss, American songs by Copland, Ives and Pasatieri, three Brettl-Lieder, plus a quartet of sunny Canteloube songs, quite delightfully done, and encores by Poulenc and Offenbach. But a quarter-century ago, many recital audiences largely expected Schubert, Schumann and Brahms. Von Stade is in very good estate here, demonstrating a fine balance between the strengths of her youthful and mature vocal personae. Katz is an alert and supportive partner, his sound steady if sometimes a mite foursquare.

Von Stade kept many of these songs in her recital repertoire for years--we heard her Strauss, Faure, Canteloube, and more Poulenc at Johnson County Community College in Kansas City, Kansas years ago.

Composers/Works: (No texts or translations)

G. Fauré: Les roses d'Ispahan
G. Fauré: Mandoline
G. Fauré: Au cimetière
G. Fauré: La Rose
R. Strauss: Rote Rosen
R. Strauss: Die erwachte Rose
R. Strauss: Begegnung
G. Mahler: Wenn mein Schatz Hochzeit macht (aus: Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen)
G. Mahler: Ging heut' morgen übers Feld (aus: Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen)
G. Mahler: Ich hab' ein glühend Messer (aus: Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen)
G. Mahler: Die zwei blauen Augen (aus: Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen)
A. Copland: Why do they shut me out of Heaven?
Ch. Ives: Serenity (A unison chant, 1919)
Ch. Ives: Memories (Very Pleasant, Rather Sad)
Th. Pasatieri: Vocal Modesty
M.-J. Canteloube: Auprès de ma blonde (Ronde d'Ile de France)
M.-J. Canteloube: Où irai-je me plaindre? (Chant de Haut-Dauphiné)
M.-J. Canteloube: Au près de la Rose (Ronde d'Albret et Gascogne)
M.-J. Canteloube: D'où venez-vous, fillette? (Chant de Provence)
A. Schönberg: Galathea (aus: Brettl-Lieder)
A. Schönberg: Gigerlette (aus: Brettl-Lieder)
A. Schönberg: Arie aus dem Spiegel von Arkadien (aus: Brettl-Lieder)
F. Poulenc: Fêtes galantes
J. Offenbach: Ah! quel dîner je viens de faire (Schwipslied - aus: La Perichole)

One of my favorites in the collection is Faure's Mandoline set to verse by Verlaine:

Les donneurs de sérénades
Et les belles écouteuses
Échangent des propos fades
Sous les ramures chanteuses.

C'est Tircis et c'est Aminte,
Et c'est l'éternel Clitandre,
Et c'est Damis qui pour mainte
Cruelle maint [fait] vers tendre.

Leurs courtes vestes de soie,
Leurs longues robes à queues,
Leur élégance, leur joie
Et leurs molles ombres bleues,

Tourbillonent dans l'extase
D'une lune rose et grise,
Et la mandoline jase
Parmi les frissons de brise.

If you want to hear Frederica von Stade's voice ten years earlier in a live recital, there is a CD of one in Edinburgh with Martin Isepp as accompanist. Mahler, Ives, Poulenc, and Offenbach are on the program there too:

--Cachez beaux yeux ; L'amour de moy ; Le célèbre menuet / Arne Dorumsgaard
--Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen: Wenn mein Schatz Hochzeit macht ; Ging heut' morgens übers Feld ; Ich hab' ein glühend Messer ; Die zwei blauen Augen / Gustav Mahler
--Ann Street ; Two little flowers ; The side show ; Memories ; Tom sails away / Charles E. Ives
--A sa guitare ; Chansons villageoises: Les gars qui vont à la fête ; Banalités: Hôtel ; Le portrait ; Deux poèmes: Fêtes galantes / Francis Poulenc
--Folksong arrangements: O Waly, Waly ; Come you not from Newcastle; Oliver Cromwell / Benjamin Britten
--La perichole: Ah, quel diner! / Jacques Offenbach
--Jenny Rebecca / Carol Hall

Many of von Stade's CBS Masterworks LPs have been reissued on CD by Archiv Music, including her first CBS Song Recital, but they have not released her Live! Recital with arie antiche by Vivaldi, Durante, Scarlatti, Marcello, and Rossini--plus a repeat of the Copland song on this new disc, Virgil Thomson's "Prayer to St. Catherine" and two songs composed by Richard Hundley. Her performance of "Come Ready to See Me" by Richard Hundley is wonderfully evocative.

I agree with her boilerplate bio's comments about her recitals:

A respected recitalist, Miss von Stade combines her expressive vocalism and keen musicianship with a gift for communication engaging audiences throughout the world. Here too, her repertoire encompasses an expansive range, from the Italian "Arie antiche" to the songs of contemporary composers such as Dominick Argento, who compose specifically for her, from the classical style of Mozart and Haydn to the music of Broadway's greatest songs.

I hope that Archiv Music do release the Live! disc simply because it has some unique repertoire! (And while they're at it, her recording of Raymond Leppard's version of Claudio Monteverdi's Il Ritorno d'Ulisse in Patria with Richard Stilwell cries out for re-release, too).

Sir Colin Davis, RIP

Before the English Reformation and the Catholic Martyrs of England and Wales became my main focus of attention, classical music and opera were my passions. The death of Sir Colin Davis on Sunday, April 14, really struck me, primarily because he conducted two of my favorite recordings--two very different works:

This Philips Silver Line recording of Mozart's Requiem is a great performance of this unfinished work (the Sussmayer edition). The BBC Symphony Orchestra, John Alldis Choir, and the soloists, including Helen Donath, all follow Davis's lead in this dynamic, dramatic, and grand performance. Some of the sections of the Dies Irae--the Lacrimosa, the Rex Tremendae, the Confutatis, are just brilliantly exciting and moving. Davis makes the contrasts of the Day of Wrath completely evident.

I have listened to this 1980 opera recording of Von Stade and Carreras so often that I've nearly memorized it. It was made after performances at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden and that stage background shows in the drama and passion, restraint and lyricism of von Stade's performance especially. She is certainly not Goethe's Lotte, cutting bread as Werther's body passes. After all the romanticism and restraint of Acts 1 through 3 (even with Charlotte's break down aria, "Va! laisse couler mes larmes"), Davis, Von Stade, and Carreras certainly help us suspend our disbelief that a man who just shot himself can sing for 15 minutes! (You can see Von Stade and Alfredo Kraus in this video from the Met in 1988 just to see how it's done onstage.)

May Sir Colin Davis rest in peace.