ORFEO International – New Releases

New Releases briefly introduced

March 2009 — February 2010

February 2010

Verdi: Luisa Miller

It took a long time – more than 120 years –
C 784 102 Ibefore Vienna’s opera fans were able to experience Verdi’s Luisa Miller (based on the spoken drama Kabale und Liebe by Friedrich Schiller) in its original Italian. This first performance did not take place until January 1974, though the impressive cast assembled for it could be said to have made up for the fact. Lilian Sukis, Christa Ludwig
Lilian Sukis
Christa Ludwig
Lilian Sukis, Malcolm Smith
Lilian Sukis
Malcolm Smith
Fotos: FayerIt is this production that can now be heard on CD. Under the baton of Alberto Erede, the orchestra of the Vienna State Opera gave a superb performance such as is sadly all-too-rare for Verdi’s early and middle-period works. The instrumental tone is supple and full of colour across the whole orchestra, which plays as it were in “high definition”, whether at dramatic climaxes or when accompanying the singers. But the protagonists themselves could hold their own too. Lilian Sukis sang the title role of the bourgeois girl Luisa – innocence personified, but doomed by the intrigues of her lover’s aristocratic family. Sukis was from Canada and had already in the 1960s sung at the New York Met. Lilian Sukis, Giuseppe Taddei
Lilian Sukis
Giuseppe Taddei
Foto: FayerShe here gives impressive proof of why she also acquired an excellent reputation in Europe as a lyric soprano. Her slender, but always open, floating voice is a joy in this portrayal of a young girl; here, any artificiality or affectation in the high notes would have been doubly damning. The role of the count’s son Rodolfo is played with lyric-dramatic aplomb by Franco Bonisolli, though without sacrificing nuance or elegance of tone in favour of his brilliant top notes. Giuseppe Taddei was ideal for the role of Miller, finding just the right tone for both the tender love of Luisa’s father and for his anger at those whom society has placed above him, and who misuse their position shamelessly to their own advantage. The villain in question, Count Walter, was given music by Verdi that was almost too “beautiful” for him, though this is no problem in Bonaldo Giaiotti’s authoritative characterization. And that even this powerful man is manipulated by his own secretary is evident from the portrayal by Malcolm Smith, whose bass voice is no less memorable. This extravagantly gifted team of singers is completed by Christa Ludwig as Rodolfo’s fiancée, Federica. She has a brief role with just two appearances, but Ludwig’s unmistakeable mezzo-soprano allows her to convey in succinct fashion the human aspect of this character, swaying as she does between sympathy and jealousy.

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January 2010

ORFEO 1 CD C 764 091 A

Gottfried von Einem (1918-1996)

The criticism levelled at many composers of the 20th century, namely that they sacrificed personality to the requirements of their respective schools, cannot be made against Gottfried von Einem. Throughout his life he held fast to tonality, though without letting himself be appropriated by conservative circles on the music scene. And even if it’s difficult to regard him as an avant-gardist, his oeuvre is characterized by a dogged questioning and opening up of traditional formal models.
C 764 091 AThus it was important to him in his Dantons Tod Suite that it should not be seen just as a “potpourri” from the stage work that made his name (in 1947 at the Salzburg Festival), but as an independent work for the concert hall. It is in this form that it is represented in the new Orfeo recording by the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra and its chief conductor designate, Cornelius Meister.
Konstantin Lifschitz
Foto: Serban MestecaneanuThe motto of “transformation” is even clearer in the case of Wandlungen (literally “transformations”), Gottfried von Einem’s introduction to a Divertimento for Mozart that the Donaueschingen Music Days commissioned from a total of twelve different composers in the “Mozart year” of 1956. The Wandlungen are based on Papageno’s aria “Ein Mädchen oder Weibchen” from the Magic Flute. While von Einem’s concern here is a musical synthesis of different epochs, in the case of his Piano Concerto op. 20 he is no less keen to enrich his music by establishing stylistic connections to jazz and dance music. Konstantin Lifschitz is the soloist in this new recording, and he shows here why his outstanding reputation is not just based on his Bach interpretations. Even when interpreting music of the 20th century, he fascinates us with his sovereign technical command and the transparent structures that he makes audible in von Einem’s Concerto. The Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra and Cornelius Meister are here his precise, dynamic partners. In the remaining works on this new Orfeo compilation CD they have the field to themselves, displaying in impressive terms the subtleties and the atmospheric density to be found in Gottfried von Einem’s oeuvre: here in Night Piece op. 29 and in the Suite after the ballet Medusa op. 24, which even without its scenic component is highly effective.

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January 2010

ORFEO 2 CD C 786 102 I

Albert Lortzing: Der Wildschütz

In comparison to French opéras comiques, German comic operas with spoken dialogue have always struggled to maintain a foothold in the repertory, a state of affairs that begs a number of questions. After all, one of the best-known representatives of the genre, Albert Lortzing (1801–51), successfully combined the most disparate elements in his stage works: witty librettos with a dash of social criticism, great ensembles in the Mozartian manner and Romantic melodies and orchestral colours.
C 786 102 IAll these features are found in Der Wildschütz, a comedy of mistaken identity that the Vienna State Opera staged in 1960 with a finely balanced and ebulliently witty ensemble headed by Irmgard Seefried, whose Baroness is a precursor of Lehár’s Merry Widow, seeking a new husband in a whole series of new disguises. In the role of the Baron, Waldemar Kmentt once again proves an ideal partner in every sense of the term, his youthful tenor both radiant and powerful. In Georg Völker’s Count he has a rival who at the end of the work generously admits that he has been courting his own sister – in Lortzing’s opera the incestuous entanglement eschews the tragic outcome found in Wagner’s Die Walküre, a work in which the baritone’s father, Franz Völker, had scored some of his greatest successes. In the 1960 Vienna production, the aristocrats’ social inferiors were played by no less distinguished singing actors: Renate Holm is an altogether ravishing Gretchen with her clearly focussed light soprano voice, while opposite her – confirming the proverb that opposites exert a magical attraction – is Karl Dönch in the part of her elderly fiancé, who is also the alleged poacher of the title. His ability to point up the text and bring original insights to the part in the finest buffo tradition confirms the reputation of Vienna’s opera ensemble during the post-war period, a reputation based on its impressively large number of distinctive personalities. The conductor in 1960 was Heinz Wallberg, who coaxes from his soloists, chorus and orchestra a performance that reveals their evident delight in the task in hand, while the spoken dialogue, as rehearsed by the director Adolf Rott, is a source of unbounded delight.

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December 2009

ORFEO 1 CD C 803 091 A

Andris Nelsons - Richard Strauss

For all its undoubted brilliance, Ein Heldenleben – especially at a first hearing – remains one of Strauss’s most problematical tone poems. Dating from the dying moments of the nineteenth century, it is notable for the late Romantic exuberance of its opening;
C 803 091 Afor the tonally extremely free motifs associated with what are described in the musical programme as the hero’s enemies; for the sweetness and the capers on the solo violin and in the orchestra that characterize the hero’s “companion”; and for the subsequent martial and transfiguring stages in the musical argument. And yet all of this can easily give the impression that the work carries an excessive amount of often autobiographical baggage. What the piece needs is not only a first-class orchestra but also a conductor with a clear sense of the work’s underlying structure, a conductor, moreover, who is able to maintain the tension and respond quickly and consistently to the work’s countless details. This is certainly how Andris Nelsons sees his task, a task that he realizes magnificently in this, his second Orfeo recording with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. The orchestra and its music director allow the orchestral colours to gleam and ensure that the individual sections that make up the score flow smoothly, sweeping the listener along with them. From start to finish this reading of Ein Heldenleben has such a stringency and rigour that many of the aesthetic objections to the work merely add to our pleasure at individual details, while never calling into question the piece’s overall design. The fact that Nelsons is also a master of the art of transition in the music theatre and can achieve this on the concert platform, too, is clear from his recording of the Suite from Der Rosenkavalier. For listeners familiar with what is arguably the 20th century’s best-known “comedy for music”, the episodes and high points that make up this suite may seem to be no more than paratactically juxtaposed, but under Nelsons’ direction they merge together to create an impression that strikes even the first-time listener as spontaneously compelling and coherent. If Ein Heldenleben runs the risk of luring interpreters in one particular direction before an unexpected turn of events leads them off in another, then this stratagem turns out to be the guiding principle in the Suite from Der Rosenkavalier, providing listeners with delightful surprises and catching them unawares, something that Andris Nelsons and his orchestra take evident delight in doing.

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November 2009

ORFEO 1 CD C 598 091 B

Irmgard Seefried

Today she would probably be marketed as an all-rounder. After all, Irmgard Seefried was not only an acclaimed opera singer whose interpretation of the Composer in Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos at the Vienna State Opera is said to have inspired Strauss himself to exclaim that until then he had not known how good his Composer was,
C 598 091 Bbut she was also a lyric soprano whose initial engagement in Aachen in 1940, at a time when Herbert von Karajan was the company’s general music director, was followed only three years later by her move to Vienna. Last but not least, she was one of the most sought-after concert singers and lieder recitalists of her age. From an early date it was above all in the intimate, miniature form of the art song that Irmgard Seefried developed her whole range of expressive colours, enjoying the chance to regale her audiences by means of a musical narrative with only her pianist as her partner onstage. Not released until now, the many recordings included in the present CD attest to the richness and variety of that palette even during the early years of her career. Her three accompanists are Viktor Graef, Leopold Ludwig, who was later to become the general music director of the Hamburg State Opera and whose fame as an opera conductor also extended to the English-speaking world, and, above all, Erik Werba. With all three, she recorded a cross-section of the song repertory ranging from some of the most famous composers to others who still await their rediscovery. The earliest of these recordings are Peter Cornelius’s Brautlieder from the heyday of the Romantic art song, settings in which the soprano’s exemplary treatment of the words and the vocal line are fully in evidence. The affinities between this cycle of six songs and the traditional German folksong offer the singer – a native of Swabia – a welcome opportunity to colour her tone even further, an approach that is also found in her recordings of songs by Mozart, Brahms, Wolf and two lesser-known composers, Wilhelm Kienzl and Joseph Marx. This compilation of Irmgard Seefried’s recordings from the first ten years of her career in Vienna additionally includes some of Strauss’s most popular songs, songs such as Morgen and Allerseelen that make it clear why, as we noted above, their composer held the soprano in such high regard.

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November 2009

ORFEO 2 CD C 785 092 I

=Bedrich Smetana: The Bartered Bride

Vienna has played an important role in the performance history of Smetana’s The Bartered Bride ever since the work achieved its international breakthrough in the city at the time of the 1892 World Fair. Performed in German, it has long been a regular part of Vienna’s mainstream operatic repertory.
C 785 092 IIn 1959, for example, Günther Rennert’s new production at the State Opera went on to achieve cult status, enjoying a grand total of ninety performances in all. In 1960 this production was captured by the microphones and recording equipment of Austrian Radio in a performance that immortalized the interpretations of the original principals from 1959. The cast was headed by Irmgard Seefried, a great favourite with Viennese audiences and one whose natural musicianship still seems particularly well suited to the character of Maøenka, or Marie as she is always known in German-language performances of the piece. At the time of this recording she could already look back on a stage career lasting two whole decades, and yet she had been able to retain the youthful freshness of her tone – an indispensable prerequisite for any successful interpretation of this role. The other half of this dream couple was Waldemar Kmentt as Jeník, or Hans, one of the roles with which the Austrian tenor was rightly most closely associated. With his dark-toned tenor voice, vivid diction and radiant top notes, he provides a wholly convincing portrayal of the youthful lover who is also a cunning gambler. The tragicomedy of his stuttering stepbrother is well caught by Murray Dickie with both skill and an equally beautiful tone, avoiding all sense of buffo excess. That the self-infatuated and vainglorious marriage broker Kecal is bent on palming off the bride on him, treating her as a mere object, seems entirely plausible when the role is played by another Viennese operatic institution, the distinguished Upper Austrian bass Oskar Czerwenka, an outstanding singing actor who invests the part with an altogether unmistakable profile. Even the smaller roles are cast from strength by singers of the calibre of Hilde Konetzni, Rosette Anday and László Szemere, all of whom milk their brief scenes for all that they are worth. A lively and yet always well-disciplined performance is further guaranteed by the Chorus and Orchestra of the Vienna State Opera under the direction of Berislav Klobuèar, who, often criminally undervalued, presided genially over countless repertory performances in Vienna.

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October 2009

ORFEO 1 CD C 760 091 A

Petra Maria Schnitzer • Peter Seiffert: Richard Wagner

To describe Petra Maria Schnitzer and Peter Seiffert as the dream couple of the Romantic world of Wagner’s operas and music dramas would be an otiose exercise indeed.
C 760 091 ADuring the last three seasons alone they have appeared together as Elisabeth and Tannhäuser in San Francisco, Barcelona and Madrid and as Sieglinde and Siegmund in Florence and Valencia, affording their audiences ample opportunity to appreciate their partnership onstage. The 2009/10 season, too, began with performances of Tannhäuser in Berlin, while their diaries for the next twelve months contain many other joint engagements, not just in Wagner but in works by other composers, too, all of them at leading houses. As Elsa and the eponymous Lohengrin, finally, they will be appearing in Vienna and elsewhere. Both singers can be heard in excerpts from all three of these Wagner operas in this new CD on the Orfeo label, in which they are joined by the Munich Radio Orchestra under its principal conductor, Ulf Schirmer. It is clear from all these excerpts of solo scenes and duets that both of these internationally acclaimed singers have long been associated with these roles and that they have appeared together on many different occasions. Rarely has Wagner been sung with such clarity of diction and such beautiful phrasing, producing a wonderfully cantabile approach to this repertory. One of the reasons for this is no doubt the fact that both Petra Maria Schnitzer and Peter Seiffert have built up their careers very slowly and without undue haste, initially proving themselves in the Mozart repertory before facing up to the challenges posed by Wagner’s music dramas. In this way the word-tone relationship demanded by the composer is given its due, and the Sprechgesang so often derided as the “Bayreuth bark” is avoided. Elsa’s Dream, the scene in the bridal chamber in Act Three and Lohengrin’s Grail Narration have rarely been sung with such nuanced, subtle lyricism, while Elisabeth’s Greeting to the Hall of Song and the following duet for Elisabeth and Tannhäuser are both crowned with radiant top notes. In Tannhäuser’s Rome Narration, the character’s inner turmoil and defiance are brought out to highly expressive effect, while avoiding the “effects without causes” decried by the composer himself. The great duet for the incestuous lovers in Die Walküre is a worthy conclusion to this Wagner CD, the success of which is underscored by the playing of the orchestra, which under Ulf Schirmer’s direction is notable for its tonal beauty and avoidance of all bombast.

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October 2009

ORFEO 3 CD C 763 093 D

Felix Mendelssohn – The Complete String Symphonies

According to a well-known German proverb, no one is born a master, but this adage is hard to credit when the master in question reveals his genius at the tender age of ten.
C 763 093 DIt is said that soon after starting lessons with Carl Friedrich Zelter, the young Mendelssohn had already outgrown his mentor. The thirteen string symphonies that he wrote between 1821 and 1823 are not only evidence of his exceptionally rapid development, they are also, and above all, examples of wonderful, virtuoso music in the galant style that reveals the influence of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach.
Michael Hofstetter (li)
Foto: Deniz SaylanOther influences, especially in the slow movements, which often recall chorales and anticipate Mendelssohn’s later mastery in the field of the oratorio, are those of Johann Sebastian Bach and Handel. This mixture of traditional and forward-looking features is particularly clear from the new complete recording of these works on the Orfeo label. Founded more than fifty years ago, the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra has gradually built up a repertory that extends from the Baroque to the present day, thereby guaranteeing a flexible and keenly differentiated kind of playing, a flexibility due not least to the ensemble’s principal conductor, Michael Hofstetter, who is likewise at home in a wide variety of styles. The verve of the first symphony’s opening Allegro is maintained throughout all the fast movements, while the slow movements are characterized by their gently flowing cantabile lines, which extend to the quotations of folksongs found in the two “Swiss” symphonies. The last two symphonies, finally, are notable for their contrapuntal procedures and polyphonic accomplishment. Here the composer and his interpreters have found an appropriately playful approach to complex fugal subjects and developments. In this way this set of youthful works is brought to a suitably masterly conclusion, providing a further powerful addition to the 2009 celebrations marking the Mendelssohn bicentenary.

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October 2009

ORFEO 2 CD C 783 092 I

Giuseppe Verdi: Falstaff

Giuseppe Verdi’s Falstaff, the last opera of the Master from Busseto, is one of the most multi-facetted scores in opera history
Falstaff
Foto: Wiener Staatsoper/Axel Zeininger(and for that reason is perhaps one that needs several hearings in order to grasp it). It is at once comic and serious, an intimate chamber opera and a large-scale ensemble work, and it draws cleverly on musical tradition while at the same time indulging in near-avant-garde boldness. Falstaff has a long performing history in Vienna (it was first performed there in 1893), and just as long is the list of great conductors who have conducted it at the Vienna State Opera. These include Lorin Maazel, who presented his interpretation of the work there in 1983. He took great pleasure in sending the listener off on the wrong track, only to catch him by surprise again a moment later. No orchestral detail was left out, and yet he always maintained close contact with the stage.
C 783 092 IFor that stage also featured a magnificent ensemble of singers, first and foremost Walter Berry, who in the Indian summer of his career conquered a stellar role for himself once more, this time as fat Sir John. He was equally at home in the joviality of the role and in its ruminative moments as he was in its roguish and impulsive emotional outbursts. The portly knight’s object of desire and his antagonist was Pilar Lorengar as Alice Ford, possessed of vocal luminosity and perfect accentuation. Her jealous husband was played as an unbridled, dashing cavalier by the baritone Giorgio Zancanaro. As the young lovers, the silvery-bright soprano of Patricia Wise and the dark-toned tenor of Francisco Araiza complemented each other charmingly, both in timbre and in the naturalness of their intertwined phrasing. Nor did Christa Ludwig hold back in her renowned interpretation of Mrs Quickly, luring both Walter Berry and the Viennese public to their assignations in Ford’s house and under Herne’s Oak. With an ensemble such as this, the final fugue can truly make us believe that all the world’s a joke – and listening to this live recording merely confirms it.

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October 2009

ORFEO 1 CD C 781 091 A

Daniel Müller-Schott: Schumann - Strauss - Volkmann - Bruch

On his latest CD, Daniel Müller-Schott devotes himself to the cello’s Romantic and late-Romantic solo concerto repertoire. It is a voyage of exploration that offers things both known and worthy of (re)discovery.
Daniel Müller-Schott
Foto: Christine SchneiderAfter the Classical period, the cello fell out of fashion as a concertante instrument. When that changed again in the mid-19th century, it fascinated composers more than ever, and this in turn had an impact on their creative muse. For Robert Schumann, to be sure, the composition of his Cello Concerto in A minor op. 129 was bound up with major disappointments – he himself did not live to hear its world première. But the concerto’s give and take between soloist and orchestra is exciting, as are its contrasts between discretion and impulsiveness, and it is today well-loved by both audiences and interpreters and a firm feature in the repertoire. The interpretation of the concerto here by Daniel Müller-Schott and the NDR Symphony Orchestra of Hamburg under Christoph Eschenbach is characterized by untrammelled music-making and a homogenous ensemble. Eschenbach’s rich experience as an instrumentalist and in the world of opera is evident in the way his phrasing „breathes“ with the soloist.
C 781 091 AThe dramatic aspect of the music comes as much to the fore here as it does in our recording of the Cello Concerto in A Minor by Schumann’s contemporary Robert Volkmann. It is considerably less popular than Schumann’s, but it thrives on singing, melodic themes and their sophisticated elaboration. These two concertos are complemented by two shorter pieces: Max Bruch’s Kol Nidrei op. 47 after Old Hebrew melodies, whose rich musical spectrum is savoured uninhibitedly and to the full by Daniel Müller-Schott, Christoph Eschenbach and the NDR Symphony Orchestra. Then there is the Romance in F Major for cello and orchestra by Richard Strauss, who despite his youth (he wrote it when 19) already offers us a hint of the originality of his later tone poems.

For more details, fotos and audio examples see also "www.daniel-plays-schumann.com".

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September 2009

ORFEO 1 CD C 597 091 B

=Hilde Konetzni, Josef Kripfs: Songs

The recording conditions could hardly have been more dramatic. In the bleak mid-war winter of 1942-3, the lirico-spinto soprano Hilde Konetzni learnt a romantic song programme with Josef Krips as her accompanist and mentor (Konetzni is best known to connoisseurs as the Sieglinde in two complete recordings of the Valkyrie under Wilhelm Furtwängler). The Nazis' policies of “Aryanization” had resulted in Krips being banned from working. So his coaching activities had to be carried out “underground”, under a constant threat to his life.
C 597 091 BThese private recordings were made by Hermann May, the then sound engineer of the Vienna State Opera, and can now be released on CD thanks to their careful restoration by the Eichinger recording studio in Vienna in collaboration with Gottfried Kraus. The resultant sound quality will delight more than just those interested in Josef Krips's legendary talent for carefully coaching singers - a talent that made him a model for later generations, especially as a result of the post-War Mozart performances in Vienna. One might sing Schubert and Schumann lieder with less rubato today and without the portamento usual at the time (such as we hear from Hilde Konetzni here). But all these performances are able to move us on account of the warmth and immediacy of the ensemble achieved by Konetzni and Krips. This is just as evident in the songs by lesser-known composers such as Robert Franz and Joseph Marx. And despite Konetzni's expansive timbre in all the songs, she is still able to offer a trenchant playfulness in certain of the songs by Hugo Wolf and Richard Strauss. The Gypsy Melodies by Antonín Dvorák are both the highpoint and the culmination of this recital, not just on account of the interpretative art they display, typical of the time, nor merely as a document of two artistic personalities. They are also a testament to a friendship that was sustained despite adversity, and which enjoyed a brilliant continuation in the frequent collaboration between Hilde Konetzni and Josef Krips as conductor in Viennese operatic life just after the war, when they could at last perform together in public.

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September 2009

ORFEO 1 CD C 801 091 B

George London

It is not unique, but it will probably remain an occurrence as rare as it is welcome when the leading heroic baritone of his generation is also a master of the „small“, subtle form of the lied. George London was the outstanding Amfortas, Wotan and Dutchman of the late 1950s and early ’60s, but also belonged among those singers with a mature vocal technique and intelligent characterization who were able to enthuse audiences in the concert hall without relying merely on their stage charisma (even though that was present in abundance).
C 801 091 BAt the height of his career – which was cut short tragically – London gave a lieder recital at the Theater an der Wien. He had already sung there as a member of the Vienna State Opera, which was based there during the post-war rebuilding of the opera house on the Ringstrasse. It was there that he had laid the foundations of his European career (and thus also of his later, triumphant return to his native North America). It was also there that he had soon found several of his star roles, such as Don Giovanni, Amonasro, the villains in the Tales from Hoffmann, and Eugene Onegin.

In tune with the spirit of the place, London began his recital with the Heine songs from Schubert’s Schwanengesang, in which he could explore (but not exceed) the dramatic boundaries of songs such as Atlas and Doppelgänger. As Boris Godunov, London travelled the world – from the Bolshoi in Moscow to the New York Met – but in this recital, too, he wandered in the footsteps of Feodor Chaliapin by singing Jacques Ibert’s Iberian-influenced Don Quichotte and finally Modest Mussorgski’s Songs and Dances of Death – tone paintings of archaic grandeur in which he was wholly in his element. In all three cycles, Erik Werba as accompanist completely lived up to his reputation as a modest, but equal partner. In addition to this live recording from Austrian Radio, ORFEO here offers as a bonus the five songs by Henri Duparc with which George London had ten years earlier made his lieder debut before a microphone, in Canada, the country of his birth.

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August 2009

ORFEO 1 CD C 801 091 B

Salzburger Festspieldokumente 2009

Ever since its launch in 1992,
C 799 091 BOrfeo’s Salzburger Festspieldokumente series has showcased particularly memorable performances from the Salzburg Festival, and 2009 is no exception. No fewer than six new releases cover a whole range of genres, with the emphasis once again on the continuity of individual artists’ links with the Festival, often documenting their first appearances in Salzburg and occasionally taking the form of gratifying departures from the beaten track. Among this last-named category is our reissue of the first and, indeed, the only song recital that Lisa Della Casa gave in the Mozarteum in 1957 with Arpad Sándor at the piano. The legendary Swiss soprano, who this year celebrated her ninetieth birthday, was able to display her gifts to great and justified acclaim not only in songs by Richard Strauss but also in Romantic and late Romantic lieder by Schubert and Hugo Wolf as well as in a number of folksong arrangements by Brahms and Ravel.

The following year
C 798 091 BPierre Fournier made his belated Festival début, again at the Mozarteum, in a recital accompanied by the pianist Franz Holetschek. In the process he confirmed his reputation as the “aristocrat of the cello”, magisterially rising to the manifold challenges of his chosen programme and doing justice not only to the cantabile qualities of Brahms’s Second Cello Sonata op. 99, to the fury and technical recklessness of Kodály’s op. 8 and to the neoclassical form of Debussy’s Cello Sonata of 1915. His programme culminated in a performance of Tchaikovsky’s Rococo Variations. It is no wonder, then, that in the wake of his brilliant début, Fournier was from then on a welcome visitor to the Salzburg Festival.

A further début in 1958
C 795 091 Bwas that of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam, one of the most famous and versatile orchestras in the world. The Concertgebouw gave five concerts that summer, the first of which was devoted to Mozart, with the two G minor Symphonies K 183 and K 550 framing the E flat major Piano Concerto K 449. Even in a live performance, Wolfgang Sawallisch phrases the music with extreme precision, proving himself as great a Mozartian as he had proved himself a great Wagnerian when making his Bayreuth Festival début in 1957 at the helm of Tristan und Isolde. No less acclaimed by this date in his career was the soloist, Friedrich Gulda, whose performance provided the concert with its point of calm repose, countering virtuoso expectations and in that way anticipating the musical “chameleon” of the later period.

The Salzburg performances of
C 796 091 BWilhelm Backhaus, by contrast, all had something imperturbably monumental about them. For Backhaus, 2009 marked a double anniversary – the 125th anniversary of his birth and the fortieth of his death. The Austrian Radio archives contain tapes of him playing two concertos with the Vienna Philharmonic under Karl Böhm, the first from 1960, the second from 1968, on both occasions in the Großes Festspielhaus, neither performance showing any signs of artistic compromise in spite of Backhaus’s advancing years. To Mozart’s final piano concerto, K 595 in B flat major, he brings extreme delicacy and a sense of rapt otherworldliness, whereas Brahms’s Second Piano Concerto has all the weight of tone that one could possibly want not only in the work’s chordal textures but also in its pounding passage-work. Nor is the concerto’s careful structure neglected by Böhm, who was no less strict with himself than he was with his partners when it was a question of imposing his commanding grasp of architectural form on a piece.

That the “impossible art form” of opera may occasionally require the ordering hand of a strong directorial team and that such an approach may pay handsome dividends was demonstrated by the version of Jacques Offenbach’s Les contes d’Hoffmann on which Jean-Pierre Ponnelle and James Levine collaborated in the early 1980s, a production guaranteed to cast its bewitching spell on Salzburg audiences.
C 793 093 DThe production opened in 1981 and is captured here in its 1982 revival, when its protagonist, Plácido Domingo, was at the very peak of his form. Appearing alongside him were two brilliant young female singers, Catherine Malfitano, who successfully faced up to the challenge of singing all three of Hoffmann’s loves, Olympia, Antonia and Giulietta, and Ann Murray, who was ideally cast in the double role of Niklausse and Hoffmann’s Muse, her solo numbers a notable feature of Fritz Oeser’s new performing edition of the score and, as such, largely unfamiliar to the majority of the audience. With the mercurial José van Dam in the role of the four villains and with James Levine’s unerring instinct for the theatre firing the Vienna Philharmonic in the pit, Offenbach’s opéra fantastique was brought to vibrant life.

First staged in 1990,
C 794 092 IHans Werner Henze’s opera Das verratene Meer is based on Yukio Mishima’s novel Gogo no eiko (The Sailor who Fell from Grace with the Sea) and harks back to the traditions of literary naturalism and the verismo of early 20th-century music theatre. At the suggestion of the conductor Gerd Albrecht, Henze prepared a Japanese version of the score that was performed for the first time in Salzburg in 2006. Under Albrecht’s direction, the Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della RAI gave a sympathetic account of an iridescent score that ranges from exotic reminiscences of Japan to the impressions of a large city and from the atmospheric portrait of a doomed love story to a drama about juvenile violence, all of which strands are tightly interwoven right up to the moment of the final fatal confrontation in the closing scene of the opera. The cast includes three outstanding singing actors, the soprano Mari Midorikawa, the tenor Jun Takahashi and the baritone Tsuyoshi Mihara, all of whom create gripping portraits of the widow Fusako Kuroda, her thirteen-year-old son and the boy’s stepfather. The recording affords further proof of the Salzburg Festival’s ongoing commitment to broadening its repertory and to its desire to juxtapose the old and the new in thrilling ways that never compromise on quality.

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August 2009

ORFEO 2 CD C 692 092 I

=Press Conference of ORFEO together with Bayreuther Festspiele on 8th of August 2009

Hans Knappertsbusch
C 692 092 Iconducted Der fliegende Holländer at only a single Bayreuth Festival. Even in retrospect the opening night of the 1955 Festival seems altogether exceptional. This was also the first time that Wagner’s early Romantic opera – chronologically speaking, the first of the ten canonical works to be staged on Bayreuth’s Green Hill – had been performed in New Bayreuth. In the run-up to the opening night, there had been copious discussions about the work’s suitability as a Festival offering, but when the production finally opened, such discussions suddenly seemed otiose, so high were the standards of the performance. In Wolfgang Wagner’s production, the cast was dominated by three performers who can stand comparison with any of their successors. The hochdramatisch Swedish-American soprano Astrid Varnay had first made her mark in Bayreuth in 1951, and as the girlish figure of Senta she presented an impressively accomplished portrait, colouring her voice to produce a multi-dimensional character. Listeners may have heard a more youthful timbre in the part, but rarely has the Ballad been sung with such a convincing note of fascination bordering on the obsessive. Rarely can her duet with the Dutchman have built to such an emphatic climax. And rarely can the finale have been so resolute in its expression. Varnay often appeared alongside Hermann Uhde in Bayreuth performances of Lohengrin and Götterdämmerung.
Christiane Delank at the Press Conference together with Eva Wagner-Pasquier
Foto: Jörg SchulzeAs the Dutchman he gives an exemplary performance both vocally and expressively, while coping impeccably with Knappertsbusch’s broad tempi and extreme dynamics. As with Knappertsbusch, Wolfgang Windgassen’s appearances in Der fliegende Holländer can be counted on the fingers of one hand. The role of Erik is not an especially grateful one and is often undercast, but Windgassen brought to it his incomparable intensity, his performances, as always, remarkable for their unity of words and music. In this way Senta’s jilted lover became a genuine antagonist for the Dutchman. As Daland, too, Ludwig Weber brought to his part the right mixture of vocal experience and sufficient reserves for each of his appearances, all of which demand great vocal and dramatic authority. And as Mary, Elisabeth Schärtel invested her various admonitions with all the requisite precision. As the Steersman, finally, Josef Traxel demonstrated such a fresh and bright tenor voice that with hindsight it seems only logical that within a year he should have been promoted to the role of Erik. Although it almost goes without saying, it none the less remains to be mentioned that Wilhelm Pitz’s chorus was on top form under Knappertsbusch’s direction, which never lost sight of the overall picture. In every respect, the achievements of all concerned were thoroughly worthy of this or, indeed, of any other festival.

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July 2009

ORFEO 1 CD C 642 091 A

On his visits to England between 1791 and 1795, Joseph Haydn not only enjoyed growing popularity, but also developed a taste for arranging folk songs from the British Isles. To celebrate the Haydn bicentenary this year, ORFEO presents a selection of Scottish songs performed by the soprano Julie Kaufmann, who has been much in demand for many years on concert platforms and opera stages internationally – as well as by the Munich Piano Trio, who have already recorded a selection of Scottish and Welsh songs for this label (with the tenor James Taylor).
C 642 091 AAs so often Haydn delights us with his originality in providing the traditional texts and melodies with unexpected harmonic and rhythmic twists and turns. With her fine lyric soprano and exemplary diction, Julie Kaufmann is expert at further heightening this pleasure: in a performance superbly calibrated with the Munich Piano Trio, she relishes the moments when the dance speeds up or slows down, doing so lustily and with an audible twinkle in her eyes, so to speak. The songs Fee him, father and Maggy Lauder with their slightly frivolous texts may serve as examples of this. A more serious and thoughtful note is struck in the first volume of the Original Canzonettas, six song-settings of poems by Anne Hunter. Here, thanks to her considerable stage experience, Julie Kaufmann is able to find just the right nuances of expression, both for the hopes and the disappointments of love. Two piano trios which can be regarded as paradigms of this form of composition complete the programme. While the Trio in C major Hob. XV:27 is impressive for its carefully balanced developments and transitions, the “Gipsy” Trio in G major Hob. XV:25 features a captivating final rondo “in the gipsies’ style” (from which it takes its name). The piece is songlike and melodic not only in the opening variation movement but also in the slow middle section, which precedes the whirligig finale – a piece that is tailor-made for the Munich Piano Trio on account of their often praised homogeneity, precision and agile phrasing.

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July 2009

ORFEO 1 CD C 779 091 A

Adrianne Pieczonka

There’s no doubt about it. Adrianne Pieczonka’s diary for the next few months makes it clear that this soprano, long celebrated for her Wagner and Strauss roles across the world, is now also in international demand for the Italian repertoire. She is singing Tosca in San Francisco, Desdemona in Munich, Amelia in Simon Boccanegra at the Met (alongside Plácido Domingo) and the soprano solo in Verdi’s Requiem at New York’s Carnegie Hall. None of this should surprise us, as her vocal line has always displayed the legato qualities we associate with the bel canto, while her diction is exemplary.
C 779 091 AIt is thus perfectly logical that her new recital for ORFEO – her second – should be a programme of purely Puccini. Adrianne Pieczonka’s foray into the soprano roles of this master from Lucca takes us from his debut opera Le Villi to his late work Turandot. Yearning, love and death take their turn here – sometimes emerging all at once. In these monologues and surging ariosos, Adrianne Pieczonka’s unerring dramatic instinct allows her on the one hand to make full use of her glittering, radiant soprano voice with its blossoming top register, and on the other its delicate, matt colourings and nuances too. Yet she still manages throughout to achieve a slim, yearning tone without any excess of the pathos that one sometimes hears in Puccini today. All these musical precepts are audibly shared here by Dan Ettinger at the helm of the Munich Radio Orchestra. Thus, although she can offer with ease the dramatic power necessary for the title roles of Madama Butterfly or Tosca, Adrianne Pieczonka still remains true to the lyrical ideal – whether in Lauretta’s “O mio babbino caro” from Gianni Schicchi, in which we can all but see the twinkle in her eye, or in the discreet sorrow of the protagonist of Suor Angelica, the sophistication of Magda in La Rondine or the soulful phrases of a Mimì or a Liù that are so beloved by the public. Tosca’s prayer has become an acknowledged highpoint in the repertoire of Adrianne Pieczonka, though the same should now be said of the whole role itself. She may have famously borrowed the jewellery of Maria Callas to sing Tosca, but she needs no borrowed plumes. For as we all can hear on this CD, Adrianne Pieczonka has herself emerged as an utterly independent Puccini singer of the first rank.

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June 2009

ORFEO 1 CD C 778 091 A

Arabella Steinbacher

It is rare indeed to encounter an artistic collaboration that is so harmonious and results in such fine music-making. In this recording a soloist and a conductor of the younger generation, both of whom have already made a name for themselves internationally, perform the violin concertos of Ludwig van Beethoven and Alban Berg – works which revolutionised this type of composition in very different ways. Arabella Steinbacher here collaborates for a second time (following the Shostakovich concertos) with conductor Andris Nelsons; the orchestra in this performance is the WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln. The listener is left in no doubt as to why the musicians involved are regarded as being as much at home in the classical-Romantic repertoire as they are in the modern and avant-garde repertoire. The clear structure and sense of form, which lies at the heart of both the Beethoven and the Berg concertos, albeit under different conditions, is presented with great transparency by Arabella Steinbacher and Andris Nelsons.
C 778 091 ATogether they render, in a compelling and moving way, the elegiac and other-worldly moments in the concerto Berg dedicated “To the memory of the angel”. The link forged between late Romanticism and modernism, the bringing together of a quotation from Bach with Schoenberg’s tone-row technique seems logically consistent and convincing, especially given the simplicity, purity and subtlety of Arabella Steinbacher’s tone and the faultless support of the orchestra. In Beethoven’s concerto, composed one and a quarter centuries earlier than Berg’s, the ground-breaking technique of placing the violin and orchestra on an equal footing and interweaving their voices here inspires the soloist, conductor and orchestra to play in a full-bloodedly Romantic style which nonetheless never appears overblown or obscures the natural elasticity of the score. Fritz Kreisler’s cadenzas sound organic in the agogic and dynamic context of this interpretation and function admirably as bravura passages – they too are after all part of a tradition within which Beethoven and Berg are here placed convincingly side by side and in which Arabella Steinbacher can hold her own in any of the world’s major concert halls.

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June 2009

ORFEO 1 CD C 780 091 A

Audience, press and organisers all agree that Andris Nelsons possesses all the qualities of a great conductor.
Andris Nelsons
Foto: Marco BorggreveWithin only a few seasons he has created a sensation with many of the most important concert orchestras, from Amsterdam to Philadelphia, as well as at major opera houses such as the Vienna State Opera. On the first ORFEO CD featuring Nelsons with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, where the young Latvian has been principal conductor since last year, he demonstrates his versatility with Pyotr Il’yichTchaikovsky – notably Symphony No. 5 and the Hamlet Fantasy Overture. Nelson’s “strong sense of architecture and dramatic momentum”, as lauded for example in the Financial Times, shows to full advantage not only in this overture with its wealth of contrast and tone colour. It is readily perceptible that since his youth Andris Nelsons has been influenced and fascinated by Russian music as well as by the overwhelming emotional power and deeply confessional element in Tschaikowsky’s music, which Nelsons sees as personal, in contrast to Beethoven’s and Wagner’s universal message.
C 780 091 ANelsons takes the numerous variants of the “Fate” motif in Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony and develops them clearly as stages in a crisis of a genius whose doubts are not completely dispelled, even in the superficially triumphal final march; as subtle nuances they pervade the piece, as amply brought out by Nelsons and the CBSO – both conductor and orchestra fearless in the face of artistic venture. Between the instrumental groups, the phrases in the middle and subsidiary voices are further elaborated with amazing flexibility in the tempi and fine detail, within an apparently unlimited tonal spectrum. Whether strings, woodwinds or brass – throughout all groups, enthusiasm for collaborative music-making with Nelsons is evident; they are all on the same wavelength, fuelled by the same unbridled energy that forms the basis of this promising partnership.

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May 2009

ORFEO 2 CD C 761 092 A

Felix Mendelssohn - Early Concertos for Violin and Piano

Youth and maturity – that could be the motto of the first new ORFEO recording for the Mendelssohn year 2009, with the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra and its chief conductor Michael Hofstetter. Mendelssohn wrote his first concertos between 1821 and ’23 while still only a boy, fresh from his meeting with Goethe in Weimar.
C 761 092 AThere was a double concerto for violin, piano and orchestra, plus one solo concerto each for the two instruments (they are all without opus number and not to be confused with the later piano concertos or the Violin Concerto op. 64). It was Mendelssohn’s teacher Zelter who had set up that meeting with Goethe, but his pupil would soon be surpassing him by far. Mendelssohn’s compositional technique and his early maturity are striking, though these works serve less to underline his reputation as a Romantic musician than as someone whose models were Classical, such as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach and Johann Nepomuk Hummel. Mendelssohn’s originality in the presentation and development of his themes seems to grow with every new piece, just as his use of form displays increasing freedom and independence. On this recording, the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra under Michael Hofstetter achieves just the right degree of concentration and transparency, while the soloists themselves are a perfect example of our above motto. On the one hand, Dinorah Varsi’s approach to the classicality of Mendelssohn’s piano writing is one of undiminished freshness – while she also plays his rapid runs, chains of trills and parallel octaves with all the necessary virtuosity.
C 761 092 AAnd on the other hand, we have Alexander Sitkovetsky, discovered at just eight years of age by Yehudi Menuhin, who furthered his career and under whose baton he even later played Mendelssohn. (It was Menuhin, incidentally, who rediscovered Mendelssohn’s early violin concerto and whose performances brought it to the public’s attention). Sitkovetsky moves effortlessly between the ‘galant’ and the French styles, and in the double concerto he and Dinorah Varsi together offer a virtuoso display, pulling out all the stops. Yet their performance never ceases to breathe and to move naturally. This CD is a must for everyone who wants to get to know Mendelssohn’s early works, or who knows them but wishes to deepen that acquaintance.

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May 2009

ORFEO 1 CD C 782 091 A

Simona Saturová - Haydn Arias

Simona Saturová, with her crystal clear, supremely flexible soprano voice, has already long established herself in the world’s concert halls, working with conductors such as Christoph Eschenbach, Sir Neville Marriner, Jirí Belohlávek and Manfred Honeck.
C 782 091 ABut she has also already enjoyed success on the international operatic stage, beginning in Prague and moving on to Paris, Buenos Aires, Frankfurt and elsewhere. If someone can sing both lyrical and coloratura roles like her, offering vocal warmth and virtuosity in equal measure, then she must be all but predestined to sing to perfection the vocal works of Joseph Haydn, the Viennese classic whose anniversary we commemorate this year. The soprano parts of Haydn’s operas and oratorios are proof enough of the quality of these works, though with the exception of the Creation and the Seasons, they still tend to be regarded askance today. But this is unjustified, as we can easily confirm upon perusing the arias of L’anima del filosofo or Orfeo ed Euridice. These open our CD with Simona Saturová and the NDR Hanover Radio Philharmonic under the baton of Alessandro De Marchi, himself a specialist in the music of the 17th and 18th centuries. Simona Saturová sets alight a veritable firework of coloratura in the aria of the Genius from L’anima, while in those of Euridice, she reveals lyrical simplicity and intensity of expression. An aria from Armida, perhaps Haydn’s best-known opera, offers a synthesis of these performance possibilities. This opera was a highpoint of Haydn’s three decades working as capellmeister at Esterházy Castle. The same flexibility is demanded by the Scena di Berenice, a large-scale dramatic monologue for concert performance that Haydn wrote in London, and whose text was taken from the libretto for Antigono by Pietro Metastasio (a suitable comparison would perhaps be with Beethoven’s soprano aria ‘Ah perfido’). For the ‘world on the moon’ – Il mondo della luna, one of Haydn’s early, cheerful operas for the Esterházy princes – Simona Saturová achieves a light, hovering, charming tone. As in the oratorio Il ritorno di Tobia and the ‘dramma giocoso’ Orlando Paladino, it is the formal structures that strike one here on account of their proximity to Mozart. In both their vocal line and orchestral accompaniment (sung and played with complete command and beauty of tone), Haydn displays no less aplomb. What more could one wish for in a Haydn year?

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May 2009

ORFEO 1 CD C 770 091 B

Waldemar Kmentt

In 1955, he was already singing Jaquino in the production of Beethoven’s Fidelio for the reopening of the Vienna State Opera, and performed internationally in roles such as Mirko Zeta in The Merry Widow until the turn of the century. During all this time, the tenor Waldemar Kmentt gave countless dazzling performances on the world’s greatest opera stages. From lyric tenor to roles bordering on youthful heroic tenor, there is hardly a part he has not sung.
Waldemar Kmentt as Faust
Foto: Fayer, Wien
Waldemar Kmentt as Hans
Foto: Fayer, Wien
Waldemar Kmentt as Ramiro
Foto: Fayer, WienThis portrait in honour of his 80th birthday is an impressive reflection of his versatility, with excerpts from roles he performed at the Vienna State Opera, where he was always based, even when travelling for guest performances between Bayreuth and Buenos Aires, and where he received the title of “Kammersänger” and was eventually made an honorary member. The flexibility and brilliant timbre of his voice brought him many roles at the State Opera, both in the legendary Mozart Ensemble under Karl Böhm and as an ‘Italian’ tenor (though, as usual at that time, mostly in German). Thus the portrait includes his Idomeneo and Ferrando in Così fan tutte as well as Don Ramiro in La Cenerentola. Not quite so well-known is the fact that Kmentt increasingly sang the French fach in the 1960s; the excerpt included in the CD is Gounod’s Faust under Georges Prêtre – here in the original language, with Wilma Lipp. His duet with Anja Silja from Offenbach’s Tales of Hoffmann (under Josef Krips) testifies to Kmentt’s exceptional talent as a musical partner. This is also evident in his performance of Janacék’s Jenufa together with Sena Jurinac, as well as in the dialogue with Peter Weber’s Music Master in Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos, where, in a 1996 recording of the speaking part of the Major-Domo, Waldemar Kmentt’s precise articulation and vocal skill are clearly audible. Thus it is hardly surprising that even in less frequently performed works such as Gluck’s Iphigenie auf Tauris (Pylade) and Stravinsky’s classicistic The Rake’s Progress, he gave a striking though lyrical portrayal of his characters – and also a brilliant rendering of dreaded short roles such as the Italian tenor in Strauss’s Rosenkavalier at the première of the opera in 1968 under Leonard Bernstein. This aria concludes the cross-section of the prodigious career of a tenor who, ever modest, never relied on mere showmanship.

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April 2009

ORFEO 2 CD C 777 082 H

Dvorák: Kate and the Devil

After our complete recording of Král a uhlír ("King and Charcoal Burner"), which won a MIDEM Classical Award, we now present a further instalment of our Dvorák opera cycle with the WDR Cologne Symphony Orchestra under Gerd Albrecht: Cert a Kaca ("Kate and the Devil"). Based on a Czech folk tale, it is the humorous story of the shrewish Kate who allows herself to be dragged to hell by a blundering devil who is out "in the field". The result – for him – is disastrous.
C 777 082 HThe real beneficiaries of this "dangerous liaison" are the crafty shepherd Jirka and a princess who at the start is not well-liked by her people. Gerd Albrecht was able to fill these roles with international stars who all had much experience singing Dvorák already. There was Michelle Breedt in the female title role, who had quite audible pleasure at singing a comic pendant to her serious mezzo roles such as her Fricka for Bayreuth. Peter Mikulá sings the pitiful devil Marbuel, holding his own against his highly strung female counterpart with his undiminished, rich bass voice; the same is true of his fellow bass, Arutjun Kotchinian, in the part of Lucifer. We breathe a deep sigh of relief along with the Princess when she at the end succeeds in evading the clutches of this arch-devil – especially since Olga Romanko knows how to make her sympathetic, while also assigning her the necessary dramatic weight with her luminous Verdi soprano voice. And as Jirka, Peter Straka proves once more that with his beautiful, idiomatic tenor voice he is unequalled in the world when it comes to the Czech operatic repertoire. The two choirs involved – the WDR Cologne Radio Choir and the Prague Chamber Choir – have also both appeared repeatedly in Albrecht's Dvorák cycle, and their contribution is deserving of special mention here. They play a major role in Dvorák's massed scenes, sweeping the listener along with their rousing, folksy dance and march rhythms.

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March 2009

ORFEO 2 CD C 767 092 I

Puccini - Madama Butterfly

Even though Puccini’s Madama Butterfly flopped so spectacularly at its La Scala world premiere in 1904 that the composer was forced to revise the opera prior to subsequent performances in Brescia and Paris, the opera remains a hugely popular favourite – particularly if, as is the case with our 1961 recording, it stars a singing legend. Sena Jurinac possessed the dark-coloured soprano required to explore the full range of expressive nuances hidden within the role. From her appearance alone, she was anything but the submissive Japanese woman who naively marries an American lieutenant, portraying instead from the outset a self-confident young woman prepared to challenge the conventions of Japanese society.
C 767 092 IShe knew how to use her vocal and dramatic talents to convey both the happiness and sorrows that Cio-Cio-San is forced to endure; the person she represented on stage was one whose fate could move us all. In vocal terms, Sena Jurinac had reached a pinnacle that placed her among the world’s leading sopranos of her day. The conductor of the present recording dating from 25 March 1961 is Berislav Klobuèar. His involvement at the Vienna State Opera had begun with a performance of Madama Butterfly on 15 May 1953. The two male protagonists in our performance joined the company in 1958. During his five-year sojourn at the opera house on Vienna’s famous Ring Boulevard, Ermanno Lorenzi (Pinkerton) was deployed in a wide variety of roles. The Greek baritone Kostas Paskalis, who was immediately engaged at the State Opera following his highly acclaimed guest performances as Renato in Un ballo in maschera and Rigoletto, subsequently developed into a singer of international renown. Of the many familiar cast members – such as contralto Hilde Rössel-Majdan (Suzuki), the company’s leading tenor for buffo and character roles Peter Klein (Goro) and the versatile bass-baritone Alois Pernerstorfer (Uncle) – who fill the minor roles in this live recording, one outstanding talent is the young Gundula Janowitz as Kate Pinkerton.

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March 2009

ORFEO 3 CD C 768 093 D

Puccini - Il Trittico

Puccini’s three one-act operas Il Trittico are rarely encountered as a whole on a single evening. The „satyr play“ of the three, Gianni Schicchi, is usually uncoupled and staged alongside other short operas. But this black comedy only makes its true impact as a part of the contrasting trilogy originally intended by the composer – and the same is true of its sister pieces, the naturalist tragedy of jealousy Il Tabarro and the psychological drama Suor Angelica. In 1979, the Trittico was performed at the Vienna State Opera for the first time entire in the original Italian.
C 768 093 DGerd Albrecht was in the pit, and the excitement that he was able to maintain throughout the evening comes across even when listening to the recording of it. In contrast to many other performances, whether on stage or in the recording studio, no one from the house ensemble here took on a role in more than one of the operas. The result was a cast able to convey a maximum degree of identification with their respective roles. Thus the love triangle in Tabarro grips us thanks to Marilyn Zschau’s energetic vocal achievement as Giorgetta and to Renato Bruson’s mighty, flowing baritone as her jealous husband Michele – thus equipped, he is even a match for the elemental vocal prowess of Vladimir Atlantov in the role of his rival Luigi. In Suor Angelica, Pilar Lorengar offers a deeply moving interpretation of the title role, for she manages in masterly fashion to find the balance between beauty of sound and expressive power – a balance so hard to achieve in Puccini. The Swedish mezzo Kerstin Meyer as the Princess is an impressive foil to her, for while her voice is more powerful than that of many of her famous peers, she still manages to convey a residual ounce of humanity behind her character’s steely façade. And finally, as one would expect, Walter Berry’s portrayal of Gianni Schicchi offers us a slice of life at its fullest, while Sona Ghazarian as his daughter Lauretta has a voice ideal for the task. With Yordi Ramiro, Margarita Lilova and Marjana Lipovek, the legacy hunters too are given real personality, while Erich Kunz, late in his career, provides a showcase characterization of the doctor Spinelloccio.