Project Harmonia Mundi Part 9

Monteverdi - Selva Morale E Spirituale - Cantus Cölln, Concerto Palatino, Konrad Junghänel (2001) {3CD Set Harmonia Mundi HMC 901718.20}
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© 2001 Harmonia Mundi | HMC 901718.20
Classical / Baroque / Choral / Madrigal / Sacred

From the early 1630s onwards, Monteverdi had little by little become detached from his secular occupations – perhaps preparing to take his leave of earthly existence. But when he was already over 70 he set to work once more, publishing his eighth book of madrigals before offering the public a bulky collection of sacred works in the shape of the Selva morale e spirituale. Infinitely more ambitious than the comparable anthologies of his contemporaries, the work is here presented complete, enabling the listener to discover the whole range of Monteverdi’s output of sacred music, from madrigals and virtuoso solo motets to the most elaborate polyphony. In his preface evoking the multifarious “creatures” sheltered by this vast “moral and spiritual forest”, the father of Baroque music was merely emphasising the wonderful diversity of styles so characteristic of his wide-ranging genius.

The Ensemble Pygmalion directed by Raphaël Pichon commences its collaboration with Harmonia Mundi with this new recording of J.S. Bach’s lost music to the Köthener Trauermusik (Cöthen funeral music), BWV 244a. Founded in 2006 at the European Bach Festival, Ensemble Pygmalion is a combination of choir and orchestra - all young performers with experience of authentic instruments and period-informed performance. Its repertoire concentrates primarily on Johann Sebastian Bach and Jean-Philippe Rameau.

Isabelle Faust plays Bartok like a wonder-struck explorer confronting new terrains. She wrestles triumphantly with the First Violin Sonata's knotty solo writing, reduces her tone to a whisper for the more mysterious passages, employs a wide range of tonal colours and trans forms the finale's opening bars into a fearless war dance. This is cerebral music with a heart of fire and will brook no interpretative compromises: you either take it on its own terms, or opt for something milder.

Somewhat unexpectedly, baritone Matthias Goerne has emerged as one of the rising Wagnerian singers of our time, making something of a transition from the art song repertoire of Schubert and Schumann to music drama in a series of important recordings, including appearing as Wotan in Jaap van Zweden's Ring cycle on Naxos. For this 2017 Harmonia Mundi release, Goerne joins Daniel Harding and the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra in The Wagner Project, a double-disc sampler of vocal and orchestral highlights from Richard Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Tristan und Isolde, Der fliegende Holländer, Tannhäuser, Parsifal, and of course, Der Ring des Nibelungen.

Arvo Part - The Deer's Cry - Vox Clamantis (2016) {ECM 2466}
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© 2016 ECM Records | ECM New Series | ECM 2466
Classical / Contemporary Classical / Choral

The second ECM New Series album to fully showcase pure-toned Estonian vocal group Vox Clamantis and its artistic director/conductor Jaan-Eik Tulve is devoted to compositions by their great countryman, Arvo Pärt – whose music has been the most performed globally of any living composer over the past five years. This album – titled The Deer’s Cry after its first track, an incantatory work for a cappella mixed choir – is also the latest in an illustrious line of ECM New Series releases to feature Pärt’s compositions, the very music that inspired Manfred Eicher to establish the New Series imprint in 1984.

Arvo Pärt - Fratres (1997) {Naxos 8.553750}
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© 1997 Naxos / HNH International | 8.553750
Classical / Contemporary Classical / Minimalism

This is serial composition, or variation. The first 8 tracks are the same work in 8 very different styles. See if you even notice it is the same piece. Different instruments, and arpeggios. I like it all. The first and the 8 Cellos version are perhaps my favorites, if you do not want them all. Also the 2nd track, a hard almost scratchy arpeggio version. I am getting into Arvo Part a little more now, though this is more or less his "Bolero"; a signature piece that builds on a rather simple, repeating theme, which is not like anything else by him- or anyone else. Well, you have to love a Soviet era composer who when the authorities began to annoy him, rather than cower or placate them with what they asked for, became more religious and started a series of variations (according to the liner notes, 2 taboos they warned him about). Gulag or bust? Well he's still around.

Arvo Part - Collage - Neeme Jarvi, Philharmonia Orchestra & Chorus (1993) {Chandos CHAN 9134}
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© 1993 Chandos Records | CHAN 9134
Classical / Contemporary Classical / Orchestral / Symphony / Choral

For all of those who look for early works of Pärt this is a precious recording. I believe there are a lot of people who don't find much appeal in Pärt's late repetitive, mystic works for the very same reasons others prefer them. So what's up here is that Pärt has a few lesser known works before, say, his third symphony which are the "opposite" of the mentioned above. Those who are found of Schnittke will surely appreciate this. The most remarkable composition in this record is maybe the "Credo" for piano mixed choir and orchestra. It consists of 13 minutes of duel between the forces of the past (represented by Bach's well known motifs) and the eruptive resources of modernist aleatoric clusters of sound. So, pools of beautiful passages are interrupted by (or combined with) destructive (or desconstructive) interventions of the orchestra till the whole, peaking sometimes the frenetic, becomes yet a powerful block of distinctive sound.

The circumstances under which Mozart started to write uncompleted Singspiel Zaïde, some time in 1779 or 1780 in Salzburg, are not clear. It may have been in an effort to get a hearing at the new German Theater in Vienna, but by 1781 he realized that a serious opera of this kind was not suitable, given the Viennese preference for comedy. He then abandoned the project, and it was not staged until 1866 in an adaptation by Gollmick, with an Overture and closing section by Johann Anton Andrè. Further adaptations followed, but the version presented here consists only of the music Mozart wrote, adding up to about 80 percent of what the completed opera might have contained.