All The Verbal

Artaxerxes, premiered in London in 1762, was the first full-length opera seria sung in English. It proved a great success and helped to revive the fortunes of Thomas Arne, whose career had been in the doldrums. The opera featured his new protégée and mistress Charlotte Brent in the role of Mandane and Arne lavished attention on her music. Mandane’s arias and those of the hero Arbaces provide many of the opera’s high points, with their rich orchestrations, virtuoso vocal parts and captivating tunes. Though based on the Handelian model, Artaxerxes shows both Arne’s talent at the later galant style and his penchant for folk-like, pastoral airs. The results are mostly a delight (if a tad lightweight for the libretto’s blood ’n’ thunder deeds), with a variety of attractive arias further enhanced by Arne’s deft use of woodwind. Christopher Robson in the title role and Catherine Bott, thrilling as Mandane, head a fine team of singers: my only complaint is that Patricia Spence’s forceful Arbaces too often slips into shrill and strident mode.

Boris Yoffee was born in Russia in 1968. There, he studied violin and composition and before the breakup of the Soviet Union he immigrated to Israel, where he studied at Tel Aviv University. In 1997, he moved to Germany to study composition with Wolfgang Rihm. By 2009, he had amassed an enormous number of short works. Thus, the performers who had been asked to record his Song of Songs looked through approximately 800 of them in order to select the pieces they wanted to perform. The Rosamunde Quartet is a German string quartet that was formed in 1992; since the group disbanded in 2010, this is its last recording. The Hilliard Ensemble is a British male vocal quartet that is well known for its performance of Renaissance, medieval, and contemporary music. It has often performed the works of Arvo Pärt, whose music is somewhat similar to that of Yoffe.