Weinberger: Švanda the Bagpiper

opera no 182

Weinberger: Švanda the Bagpiper

Soloists

Wexford Festival Opera

Julian Reynolds

Szymanowski: King Roger

 Opera no

Szymanowski: King Roger

Soloists

CBSO

Simon Rattle

Szymanowski’s first violin concerto made a big impression on me last year and I am surprised that somewhere along the way I haven’t listened to this opera before. Now that I have heard it I doubly wonder why it has taken me so long. I thought that it was an absolutely gorgeous piece. Szymanowski has a wonderful ear for orchestra colour but what really struck me was the beauty of the choral writing. The big set pieces at the beginning and the end of the opera were almost overwhelming in their power - I would love to hear the work sung live - I expect that it would be quite spine tingling. The lyrical writing balances out the big moments and Roxana’s aria, which is the centrepiece of the opera, was quite lovely - there are several different vocal and instrumental arrangements of it as a stand-alone piece. So this confirms the very positive impression of Szymanowski that I had last year - I really must get round to listening to more of his music.

Sallinen: The King Goes Forth to France

Opera no 180

Sallinen: The King Goes Forth to France

I don’t think that I have heard any of Sallinen’s music (he didn’t feature in last year’s project) so I approached this opera with a completely open mind. I thought that it was a very entertaining piece but with some serious overtones. The King and his entourage start their journey during a future ice age and journey back to the 100 years war in the Middle Ages. The general style is somewhere between Britten and Stravinsky, with touches of Shostakovich, but there are references along the way to many musical styles from the 18th and 19th century. Somehow the composer pulls it altogether into a coherent whole and it left me with a very positive impression of a composer who I obviously need to explore in greater depth.

Bittner: Der Musikant

 Opera 179

Bittner: Der Musikant

Soloists

Felix Prohaska

This is a real rarity by a composer I had not heard of until I started hunting around for CD’s of rare operas to use in this project. Bitner (1874-1939) was part of the circle round Mahler. In fact Bittner, who was a lawyer, was involving in settling the affairs of Mahler’s estate after his death. He had some success as a composer in the early years of the 20th century, writing 8 operas , a couple of Symphonies and a couple of String Quartet. This opera was premiered at (what is now) the Vienna State Opera conducted by no less a figure than Bruno Walter.

It is quite a light-hearted work which is clearly indebted to Richard Strauss but also I thought to composers such as Cornelius and Humperdink. But there are certainly some suggestions of Mahler, particularly a long section in 3/4 landler rhythm which would not have been out of place in the middle movement of a Mahler symphony.  Some of the humour is a little heavy-handed but it is generally good natured. A work like this has no chance of being revived nowadays (this CD comes from which I think was a radio recording 1949) and yet if it were put as a recently discovered work of a ‘name’ composer I suspect that it would be received quite well. As so often in the project it shows just how narrow the operatic repertoire actually is - thank heavens for historic CD recordings.

Busoni: Arlecchino

 Opera no

Busoni: Arleecchino

Solists

Opera de Lyon

Kent Ngano 

I found it difficult to make much sense of this piece. This is largely because I heard it in transit and didn’t have access to a score or libretto. That might not matter for some operas but this one had significant amounts of spoken dialogue and, more importantly, all sorts of allusions to operas of the 18th and 19th century. It is obviously set in a theatrical context and pays homage to the Commedia d’el arte. I quite enjoyed listening to it with an innocent ear but I can’t say that it made a strong impression on me. Certainly I enjoyed it much more than Busoni’s piano concerto, which made it onto my list of ‘worsts’ in last year’s project, but I didn’t feel the need to get out the score and listen to the whole thing again. Perhaps it is my loss, but so far I can’t quite why Busoni is rated so highly by so many musicians. 

Villa-Lobos: Magdelena

 Opera no 177

Villa-Lobos: Magdalena

Soloists

Magdalena Ensemble

Evans Haile

The Villa Lobus piece I listened to in last year’s project https://andrew365newpieces.blogspot.com/search/label/Villa-Lobos didn’t make much of an impression. I was hoping for vivid South American rhythms but was disappointed as to how bland it all was. But this made up for it. It it something between a light opera and a broadway musical - indeed it was performed on Broadway but without much success and was then almost forgotten. A strike meant that no original cast recording was made. 

That’s a pity because the work comes up as fresh as a daisy in this revival. It has all of the latin American flavour one would hope for as well as some great tunes and some lovely choral writing. The most natural point of comparison is probably with Bernstein, though this pieces predates West Side Story by almost a decade. I listened to this during a long wait for a flight home - it made the time pass very quickly!

Holmès: La Montange Noire

 Opera no 176

Opera no 176

Holmès: La Montagne Noire

Soloists

This is a real curiosity. Augusta Holmes had Irish routes but settled in France , where she acquired the accent on her name. She was one of the very few women composers whose operas reached the stage in the 19th century, although it has to be acknowledged that she wrote three others which were never performed.

This was a big full-blooded work on a large scale. To start with I felt that it was rather stiff and old fashioned, looking back perhaps 50 years to the work of Auber and Meyerbeer. But as the work progressed I sense that Holmès found her own voice and the idiom became much more akin to the works of the late 19th century. Part of it could have passed for Massenet and Saïnt-Saens and I suspect that Carmen was never far way from the composer’s mind. Some of the impassioned writing for the main female character was very disincentive and leapt off the page in this performance. Although it was an uneven work - rather like the symphonic poem of her’s that I included last year, at its best this was an opera of real distinction and certainly was worthy of performance at the Paris Opèra.

This recording is rather odd. It is on a private label and has never been issued commercially. It stems from a recent revival (the first in over 100 years) where the director, for some reason that I can’t fathom, decided that it needed a framing reference, so the performance starts with dialogue in Japanese with accompaniment by a tradition Japanese instrument. That recurs later in the opera. Fortunately it is no superimposed on the music of the opera so it doesn’t detract from the performance, but it threw me completely when I started listening to the opera. People so such strange things - the opera in perfectly capable of standing on its own two feet.