Bonney

Apart from very occasional live performances of the Italian Songbook, Wolf’s 46 remarkable songs can only be experienced and appreciated in their entirety from recordings. This disc from Bonney and Hagegård keeps distinguished company with Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Irmgard Seefried (twice: 1958 and 1959); Fischer-Dieskau and Elisabeth Schwarzkopf (1969); and Ruth Ziesak and Andreas Schmidt (1991). Wolf’s settings of Paul Heyse’s mid-19th-century translations of Italian folk verses offer an intricate and colourful tapestry of reflections on life and love. The craftsmanship of these songs is truly amazing.

“During this visit, these young ladies were so obliging as to sing me a Salve regina, lately set by their father, in duo. It is an exquisite composition, full of grace, taste and propriety.” What more could one ask of an antiphon than that which Charles Burney found in an impromptu performance by Hasse’s daughters during a visit to their father in Vienna in 1772? Hasse composed several settings of the Salve regina of which Reinhard Goebel has chosen two for his interesting programme of vocal and instrumental pieces by the composer.

Convinced that Renee Fleming, Susan Graham, and Barbara Bonney are the trio du jour for Richard Strauss' "Der Rosenkavalier", it was with great anticipation that I listened to this CD consisting of all Strauss songs. I am very impressed with the level of sophistication of this fantastic collaboration between Bonney and Martineau. Exquisite music making as a true partnership between piano and voice and with with sensitivity to the texts….refreshing. A fine addition to the growing discograghy that Fleming, Graham, and Bonney are gifting us!

Pergolesi’s sublime setting of the Stabat mater, a 13th-century text that was accepted as part of the Catholic liturgy only in 1727, was written at the end of his brief life (he died in 1736 at the age of 26) and suggests that had he lived longer his name might be as familiar as Vivaldi. Rossini, in particular, admired it to such an extent that he was reluctant to accept the commission for his own setting (1842) on the grounds that it could never equal Pergolesi’s.

“The Other Mozart” is Franz Xaver, son of Wolfgang Amadeus, who was born in the year of Wolfgang Amadeus’s death, 1791. Franz Xaver lived into the era of high romanticism and died in 1844. Franz Xaver’s lineage, some enthusiastic early reports from his teachers (not least Salieri!) and the influence of his mother, Mozart’s widow Constanze, ensured that Franz Xaver’s talents as a pianist and composer allowed him a career. He grew up and lived his last years in Vienna, but spent most of his adult life in and around Lvov (in present-day Ukraine). Constanze complained of his easy-going nature; whether this was the cause of his limited success is not known.

Away from the clamor of grand opera and soaring symphonies, Fairest Isle takes us into the quiet, intimate world of English Elizabethan song, and you could hope for no better guide than Barbara Bonney. Her clear, beautifully rounded voice is superbly controlled, making light of a masterful technique; if you want to hear art concealing art, look no further. This is intensely private music, in a program that cleverly sidesteps any risk of listener fatigue by starting with lute accompaniment (infinitely tender playing by Jacob Heringman), moving on to a viol quartet, then finally to the richer sound of the Academy of Ancient Music under Christopher Hogwood. Leavening the mix are three instrumental interludes. The title piece is a blithe, dancelike song.

Among all his remarkable and varied compositional talents, Purcell was the supreme craftsman when it came to setting his native language to music. Addison wrote of Purcell’s ‘Tunes so wonderfully adapted to his Words’ and Playford, in his introduction to the first volume of Orpheus Britannicus (1706) commented that ‘The Author’s extraordinary Tallent in all sorts of music, is sufficiently known; but he was particularly admir’d for his Vocal, having a peculiar Genius to express the Energy of English Words, whereby he mov’d the Passions as well as caused Admiration in all his Auditors’. Purcell combined an innate sense of the natural rhythms of speech and a wonderful melodic flair with a richness of harmonic language that few composers have ever matched.

Graham Bonney is a British pop singer and songwriter who has mainly lived and worked in Germany. Although he only had one UK chart hit, "Super Girl" in 1966, his success has continued in Europe.

No matter how passionate soprano Barbara Bonney gets, she never loses the unsullied purity of her tone. And in this 1994 disc of Schubert songs, Bonney often has cause to get passionate: her artless Der Hirt auf dem Felsen (D. 965) is transformed by passionate virtuosity, her mournful Mignon Lieder (D. 877) are transcended by passion, and her ecstatic Ganymed (D. 544) is transfigured by passion. But through all of it, Bonney's tone stays pure, the voice of stainless innocence in the face of sorrow, shame and even death. This is almost – but not quite always – a good thing. Bonney can surely sing the songs: her voice is sweet and her technique is graceful…

Barbara Bonney's recital of the Schumanns' songs is prefaced, in the booklet-note, with a little feminist homily from the singer defending the reputation of Clara as woman and artist. Clara hardly needs that kind of defence nowadays, witness recent CDs by Skovhus and Stutzmann, plus several others not reviewed in these pages; her songs are far from patronized, let alone neglected. Yet, for all the advocacy of these singers, her inspiration remains for me intermittent, though thoroughly conventional songs are occasionally leavened by notably individual ones, such as, here, her very last and unpublished song, Loreley, which vividly conjures up that dangerous creature, particu lady in the hectic piano part, evocatively played by Ashkenazy. Indeed it seems that Heine most inspired her, as "Sic liebten sich beide" from her Op. 13 provoked a setting of economically intense meaning, to which Bonney finely responds.

– Gramophone [9/1997].