Curio 8.4.1

"A newly reissued private-press curio from 1974 captures the bygone sounds of daily life in Portland, Oregon, in dreamy, proto-ambient form." Ernest Hood’s Neighborhoods was released some two decades after the Portland, Oregon born and raised musician’s first forays into field recordings. These very recordings, and those captured over intervening years, define the universal sound and aural images of childhood, a theme memorialized by Hood’s privately-pressed opus of 1975.

This 1997 follow-up to The Naked Truth repeats the basic "live and acoustic" formula of that album, but it isn't the uninspired retread one might expect. Since the last album used most of the group's familiar numbers, this collection of songs digs deeper into the group's catalog to highlight some lesser-known gems that will delight Golden Earring fanatics. Two of the best examples are "Buddy Joe," a rousing adventure tale that translates perfectly to the acoustic setting, and "Bombay," a tune that takes an almost hoedown-style quality when stripped of its electric guitars. The set list also includes a few covers that appeared on Love Sweat, "Who Do You Love" and "This Wheel's on Fire."

It is usually the big nineteenth-century opera sets that are bought for their singers; but with a line-up of principals such as we have here Handel too is swept into the golden net. Lucia Popp, two years into her career after her Vienna debut, Christa Ludwig, Fritz Wunderlich, Walter Berry: that is a quartet which in its time may have seemed no more than standard stuff, but at this date looks starry indeed. […] The Orfeo, for one thing, is sung in German instead of Italian; it has cuts, though many fewer than the Mackerras recording in English with Dame Janet Baker; it has the solo voices recorded very close indeed (those that are supposedly off-stage are just about where many modern recordings would have them except when off-stage); and the orchestra sounds, to our re-trained ears, big and thick, with the heavy bass-line that used to seem as proper to Handel as gravy from the roast was to Yorkshire pudding. The roles of Caesar and Sextus, moreover, are taken by men, and there is not a countertenor in sight.

In campo operistico, il periodo storico tra Cavalli e Handel - quello, per capirci, che comprende giganti come Stradella, A. Scarlatti, Legrenzi… - è il più trascurato dalla discografia. Ed è un peccato, perché è il periodo nel quale si sviluppano le forme e gli stili che saranno tipici del Barocco maturo, come l'aria con il da-capo ed il virtuosismo belcantistico. Benvenuta quindi questa produzione dell'austriaca ORF, che documenta dal vivo l'esecuzione di questo rarissimo "Giulio Cesare in Egitto" del veneziano Antonio Sartorio, uno dei maggiori eredi di Cavalli nel florido operismo lagunare.

It is a studio production with all the benefits of excellent acoustics, perfect balance, no disturbing noises from stage movements or audience reactions and the option to re-record momentary lapses. And there is another advantage: these studio sessions were based on a staged production at the Thesaloniki Concert Hall in March 2008! I suppose this is a misprint. If it is, this is the only error in this wholly delightful production.

When this set appeared it pushed all the other recorded versions of Giulio Cesare aside, and now, examining it again and even finding some things to argue with, it maintains that supreme position. The opera is given complete and all the roles are sung in their original octaves (no bass-baritone Caesar, for instance). René Jacobs' tempos are ideal for each dramatic situation, and if the recitatives have a formality that slows them down somewhat, well, we are dealing with Caesar, Cleopatra, and very grand historic deeds. Both orchestra and singers embellish their written lines, and from this vantage point, those embellishments seem very tame–but they're still welcome, highly musical, and apt.