In Brief: Independence Day Edition

Here is your regular Sunday selection of links to good things in Blogville and Beyond.

• This blog is expressly not about politics, and we do our best to stay on the topic of classical music and the arts. This does not mean that we are not interested in current affairs, but our expertise is not in politics or foreign affairs. That being said, when it comes to the incredible news coming out of Iran in recent weeks, some great coverage has come from, of all places, a news parody show on Comedy Central, reporting on the post-election fallout and showing the human side of life in Iran, even interviewing people who have since been arrested by the government there. [The Daily Show]


• American readers, take a chance to cherish your freedom by viewing the entries in this Photoshop contest, remaking the Statue of Liberty. [Worth1000]


• Just when revisiting the recorded corpus of Michael Jackson's songs had you feeling good about being a child of the 80s, a 13-year-old kid writes a feature piece about having to give up his iPod for a vintage 80s Walkman. It took him three days to figure out that a cassette tape has two sides, and he noted that there was no shuffle feature. OMG: I'm so old. [BBC News Magazine]


• With hat tip to Boing Boing, an aerial survey of the English countryside drew attention to some circular and oblong irregularities in a farm field near the village of Damerham, which turned out to be major archeological sites. Underneath the ground, only about 15 miles from Stonehenge, is an enormous complex that includes two long barrows, large tombs covered by mounds and thought to be 6,000 years old. Researchers have also found the ruins of wooden temples. [National Geographic]


• Following in the footsteps of Paul McCartney and others, Michael Jackson apparently had plans to do a crossover classical album. According to David Michael Frank, the composer whom Jackson enlisted to help him with the orchestration, Jackson had an impressive knowledge of classical music and had some of the pieces he wanted to write semi-completed in his head. [The Guardian]

Summer at the Opera: Castleton Festival 1

(L to R) Harry Risoleo (Miles), Rachel Calloway (Mrs. Grose), Charlotte Dobbs (the Governess), and Kirby Anne Hall (Flora) in The Turn of the Screw, Châteauville Foundation (photo by Nicholas Vaughan)

The area's newest summer opera festival, the Castleton Festival, opened on Friday night at Lorin Maazel's estate in Rappahannock County, Virginia. This festival's model, if indeed it has one, is likely Glyndebourne: an improbable location far into the countryside where city-dwelling opera lovers would come on pilgrimage to get away from it all. As the roads became narrower and narrower on the drive to Castleton Farms, the location of Maazel's Châteauville Foundation, the clean air and rural smells flowed through the car window. As I waited for the curtain of the festival's first production, Britten's Turn of the Screw (libretto by Myfanwy Piper, based on the novella by Henry James), the sound of cows lowing and frogs croaking wafted over the pond behind Festival House. Surrounded by a menagerie of animals -- a camel (named Omar and fond of matzo), a zebra, and the fabled zonkey (the zebra's offspring with a donkey) -- Maazel reigns here like Prospero on his island, directing young performers he invites to mount productions of chamber operas.

Maazel has been hosting concerts in his home for over a decade, but he first came onto the Ionarts radar when a chamber opera production sponsored by the Châteauville Foundation suddenly appeared on the schedule of the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater back in 2005. Not quite sure what to expect, both Jens and yours truly showed up and were very impressed by that bone-chilling performance of The Turn of the Screw. Maazel decided not to revive that sinister staging, by director Barbara Eckle and choreographer Abigail Levine, instead entrusting a new staging to William Kerley, recently appointed as the festival's Resident Stage Director. It took advantage of the unusual shapes and details of the smaller Festival House stage, with Miss Jessel and Peter Quint serenading the children from the rail of the balcony. The single set backdrop (sets and costumes by Nicholas Vaughan) established the predominant tone of black color, with a large window and columns that moved back and forth, adding to the possessed, claustrophobic feel of this incarnation of Bly Manor. A black arch framed the proscenium, echoed by a narrow walkway that extended the stage space around the pit, which also served as Bly Park's lake.

Charlotte Dobbs (the Governess) in The Turn of the Screw, Châteauville Foundation (photo by Nicholas Vaughan)

At the top of the young cast was the Flora of Kirby Anne Hall, singing with a convincing child-like tone (which did much to strengthen the sound of her Miles when they sang together) and acting with commitment and an intensely sinister face. She was matched well by the ghoulish Miss Jessel of Greta Ball, who with her sharp and present voice was much more insidious in this production than Quint, rising up like a viperous specter from a patch of reeds (the only time the hair on my arms stood on end) and again, her hair dripping, from the lake-pit in Act II. The Quint of Steven Ebel was rounded and suave more than particularly evil, although one might suspect that, given Britten's attachment to teenage boys, the role might have some ambiguities. The Miles of St. Alban's student Harry Risoleo, while admirably composed and glowingly sung (the Malo aria was boyishly sweet), seemed curiously detached, deflating some of the opera's most anxious moments.

The dryness of the theater, perhaps affected unfavorably by the addition of the proscenium and walkway, seemed to expose the voice of Charlotte Dobbs as the Governess, although that timorous quality also suited the character's neurotic hysteria, which she captured beautifully. Dobbs's knowledge of the role did not seem all that secure either, with at least one false entrance and numerous others prevented only by the firm gesture of Maazel's cue hand. She had a strong counterweight in the vocally stout Mrs. Grose of Rachel Calloway. Thirteen young musicians from the Royal College of Music in London gave a mostly smooth reading of this complex score, an extended set of variations growing from the theme presented in the prologue. For the first time in the history of Festival House, a real (spinet) piano was somehow hoisted down into the pit (the harp, timpani, and tubular bells must have been hard enough). All in all, it was not the stunning experience of that first Turn of the Screw in 2005, but it was a fine opening to three weeks of Britten's chamber operas.

This opera will be repeated this evening (July 4, 5 pm) and tomorrow afternoon (July 5, 2 pm). Today's performance is the crowning moment of an Independence Day Open House at the Castleton Festival, with chamber music performances, food and activities, and post-opera fireworks and dancing.

Alan Curtis Signs Almost Definitive 'Alcina'

Handel, Alcina, J. DiDonato, M. Beaumont, K. Gauvin, Il Complesso Barocco, A. Curtis (released on April 14, 2009) Archiv 477 7374 Online full score: HWV 34 (old complete works edition) Libretto (.PDF file, adapted from libretto of L'isola di Alcina, by Riccardo Broschi, the brother of the castrato Farinelli)

Preceding their release of Handel's Ezio, reviewed last week, Alan Curtis and Il Complesso Barocco rang in the Handel anniversary year with a long-awaited recording of Alcina. Although this opera more or less died with Handel, not to be revived again until the 20th century, it has been one of the favorites of the Handel revival. We have reviewed two stagings of it in the last three years, by Opera Vivente in 2007 and by Wolf Trap Opera in 2008. (La Scala even mounted the opera earlier this year.) Likewise a new recording of the work does not automatically find itself in control of a field empty of competitors. The natural competition is William Christie's stunning (if not universally liked) recording of the opera from a decade ago, combining his historically informed performance ensemble, Les Arts Florissants, with mainstream opera stars Renée Fleming, Susan Graham, and Natalie Dessay. The embellishments and cadenzas were (quite appropriately for Baroque opera) out of control, and while Fleming especially is no great Handelian, it makes for an exciting listening experience.

We cannot recommend the Christie version as the reference recording to own, however, because he did not include the ballet music (conceived by Handel for the French dancer Marie Sallé) and made some cuts to the vocal music, although now that Warner Classics UK has re-released both Christie's Alcina and Orlando as a bargain-price 6-CD set ($31.98), the Handel enthusiast would be crazy not to buy it. Joan Sutherland's various recordings of the role, for which she was rightly acclaimed, are interesting to hear and quite beautiful in their own way, but all with many cuts to the complete score and not performed on historical instruments. Prior to the Curtis version, the recording to own was the one featuring the incomparable Arleen Auger in the title role, with the late Richard Hickox leading the City of London Baroque Sinfonia. A stellar conductor, Hickox recorded the entire score (and I mean everything, including the controversial ballet scene at the end of Act II), and while the rest of the cast, although good, is not up to Auger's level, it is a beautiful recording, now heavily discounted in its re-release from EMI Classics.

Alan Curtis's Handel: Ezio (2009) Tolomeo (2008) Floridante (2007) Radamisto (2006) Rodelinda (2005)

The cast assembled by Curtis is outstanding, beginning with the unusual decision to have a mezzo-soprano, Joyce DiDonato, sing the soprano title role. DiDonato wrote about her anxiety in taking on the role at her blog Yankeediva (along with many interesting posts on the recording sessions), but the results are uniformly impressive. One might wonder why Curtis did not cast Karina Gauvin, whom we heard sing excerpts of the title role with Les Violons du Roy a few years ago. Quite brilliantly, Curtis gave Gauvin the role of Morgana, much more a true soprano role (created by the English soprano Cecilia Young), in which she gives a performance of breath-taking clarity and innocence (Winton Dean describes the role of the sorceress's sister as one of the most sincere in the opera). It was the Italian singer Anna Maria Strada del Pò who created the role of Alcina, an Italian distinguished by her hideous looks (Charles Burney records that one of her nicknames was The Pig) and a voice that at first was compared to Faustina Bordoni (a mezzo-soprano) and eventually burnished and extended by the efforts of Handel and others. DiDonato's voice has just that grain and tension in this more dramatic role.

The soprano Laura Cherici, although lovely in tone, could perhaps be a bit more boyish in the role of Oberto, the son of Astolfo looking for his father on the island, a role created by the boy soprano William Savage (Handel often refers to him only as "The Boy" in his score). Maïté Beaumont is consistently silken in the equally demanding role of Ruggiero, created by alto castrato Giovanni Carestini, giving some impression of the agility and clarity of that legendary voice type. As Bradamante, created as a trouser role by Maria Caterina Negri, Sonia Prina is the more intense of the two mezzos. The virtues of the male supporting cast, tenor Kobie van Rensburg (Oronte) and bass Vito Priante (Melisso), are familiar from other recordings. The members of Il Complesso Barocco play with all of their accustomed ensemble precision and stylistic panache, with fine obbligato turns by lead violinist Elizabeth Blumenstock, cellist Nils Wieboldt, and the recorders, as well as the flauto piccolo solo in the Tamburino dance from the end of the third act. The continuo is enlivened considerably by Pier Luigi Ciapparelli's theorbo.

Curtis has created his own performing score from the sources, available from Novello, something he would have likely done even if the score had been published in the new Hallische Händel-Ausgabe, which it has not yet. He includes all of the vocal music, even reinstating Ruggiero's Bramo di trionfar, a virtuosic aria that Hande cut from Act I before the premiere (eventually incorporating it into the revived version of Athalia). Curtis also keeps the second version of the Act I chorus Questo è il ciel (Handel also reused the first version in the Athalia revival). The only music that Curtis does not include, somewhat oddly, is the little ballet divertissement of the Songes agréables, funestes, et effrayés at the end of Act II. Here is what eminent Handel authority Winton Dean has to say about this music (Handel's Operas, 1726-1741, pp. 325-26):

At the end of Act II Handel imported the composite dance finale written for Act II of Ariodante but excluded from that opera. This has been doubted, but its presence in several copies authenticates its performance in Alcina. The entire section, including the end of Ginevra's previous aria and her concluding accompagnato, was transferred from the performing score of Ariodante to that of Alcina. The 'späterer Schluss' added by Handel in faint pencil is difficult to account for; it does not appear anywhere else. The sequence is a powerful example of ballet d'action, but more effective in its original context, where it represents the dreams of the sleeping Ginevra, than in Alcina.

The end of Act II certainly has more dramatic punch without the ballet scene (the omission seems to be at least tacitly approved by Dean), and it does seem like a clumsy graft onto its new branch in Alcina. I think Curtis made a mistake in this case, however, by not including these entrées, at least as an appendix at the end of the third disc, where there is plenty of room. Not only in the interest of making this superb recording as complete as possible (Hickox did record them, remember), but because, as remarked of a performance of them by Les Violons du Roy a few years ago (along with a few of Alcina's arias by Karina Gauvin), the music is gorgeous.

203'16"



Alan Curtis (0:40) -- "Today, many people still have the prejudice of thinking
that the oratorios are the great pieces -- [fake adoring tone] 'The Messiah!'"

Summer Opera: Wolf Trap's Coozey 'Così'

(L to R) Rena Harms (Fiordiligi) and Jamie Van Eyck (Dorabella) in Così fan tutte Wolf Trap Opera, 2009 (photo by Carol Pratt)

Mozart's evergreen Così fan tutte is one of the most often produced operas on the modern stage, officially ranked as the 15th most often performed opera in North America. In the past three years alone, we have reviewed productions at Santa Fe Opera, the Munich Opera Festival, the Washington National Opera Young Artists, and Opera Theater of Northern Virginia. Add to that a fifth one this summer, the first production of the summer by Wolf Trap Opera, heard in its final performance on Tuesday. Some early critics found the mildly salacious libretto by Lorenzo da Ponte, which concerns two men seducing one another's fiancees, beneath the composer's noble genius, which is absurd. The opera asks more questions about the nature of love, attachment, and sexual desire than it answers. In fact, modern stage directors fail with it when they try to make explicit what Mozart and his librettist left, quite brilliantly, subtle and ambiguous. Do the lovers want to return to the relationships as they were at the opera's opening or not? It is a question that does not necessarily require an answer.

Director Eric Einhorn, who meddled just a bit too much with Handel's Alcina last year at Wolf Trap, seized on the theme of wife swapping and set the opera in a white-walled sex clinic (sets by Erhard Rom). A lab-coat-wearing Don Dr. Alfonso takes the role of a slightly kinky, voyeuristic Alfred Kinsey, conducting an experiment on the two couples as the chorus of lab assistants takes notes behind two-way mirrors. The prim, begloved women and straight-backed men in plain black and white gradually let go of their inhibitions and embrace the role-playing, complete with colorful costumes (designed by Mattie Ulrich). Nothing wrong with time or location transpositions in opera productions, of course, but while this concept had possibilities, it mostly just did not make sense. Why were the men going to a sex clinic and signing a contract to do this experiment, apparently without the consent of their fiancees? Why would the women show up at the clinic on their own, without knowing why they are there? Who was Despina, since she was not the womens' servant and clearly not their friend?

Mozart, Così fan tutte, B. Fink, V. Gens, W. Güra, Concerto Köln, R. Jacobs

Musically, the evening was more satisfying, with a cast selected, or so it seemed, more as an ensemble than as individually striking voices -- which plays to the opera's strengths. The voices were all appropriately balanced with one another, although both Matthew Hanscom's Guglielmo and especially Carlos Monzón's Don Alfonso were overshadowed. Tenor David Portillo sang with a resonant ping as Ferrando, giving a tender performance of Un aura amorosa. Rena Harms showed a potent, if edging toward too nasal soprano as Fiordiligi, with smooth crossing of registers in Come scoglio immoto resta. Mezzo-soprano Jamie Van Eyck built on the promise showed in a smaller role in last year's Ariadne auf Naxos. Her voice had a warm, bountiful sound, especially when combined with other voices, as in the smooth, sotto voce rendition of the trio Soave sia il vento (which lost most of its meaning, without a ship to bear the men away). Alicia Gianni got in touch with the virago side of her soprano to bring off this ballsy, sexually frank Despina.

Other Reviews: Anne Midgette, New 'Così,' Fresh Troubles (Washington Post, June 29) T. L. Ponick, Musicians put fun into 'Cosi' (Washington Times, June 29) Tim Smith, Wolf Trap Opera takes clinical look at 'Cosi fan tutte' (Clef Notes, July 1)

Timothy Myers led a generally fine performance from the pit orchestra, with especially agile playing from the paired woodwinds. Even though the two trumpets and timpani were located in a tiny room just off the already crowded pit, they kept themselves admirably together with the rest of the group. Cuts were made to the score (the usual ones, plus a couple more) to keep the overall performance time, with one short intermission, to just over three hours. Even so, the constant puzzlement about the director's reworking of the story made the opera seem longer than ever. In general, if a director feels the need to dress up an overture -- especially Così, perhaps Mozart's finest -- with invented supernumerary stage business, it is a sign of weakness, that the director does not trust the work on its own, and from the overture on, this Così struck the eye as over-manipulated. It was telling that the few moments where the busy silliness stopped and Mozart's music was allowed to stand on its own -- like the end of Un aura amorosa (where Ferrando sang to Dorabella on the other side of a door) and Fiordiligi's Per pietà -- were the most captivating ones in the production. With a great opera like Così, one is often better off just getting out of Mozart and Da Ponte's way.

Many of the cast members will return later this month in the company's second production, Monteverdi's Il Ritorno d'Ulisse, which we expect to be the highlight of the season (July 24, 26, and 28). Finally, we get to find out what all those Penelope references in Così were about.

Reviewed, Not Necessarily Recommended: Bach’s Missa

Bach, Missa (1733), N. Harnoncourt / Concentus musicus Wien et al. Warner Classics 2564 69057 (Teldec, Das Alte Werk) [54:26] (to be released shortly in the US) Available on Amazon.co.uk Available on Amazon.de

The Missa (BWV 232a) is that first part of what would later become the Mass in B minor. It consists of the Kyrie and the Gloria (half of which is a reworking of Cantata BWV 191) Bach composed in 1733 and dedicated to the Elector of Saxony as part of an (unsuccessful) application to the job of Saxon Court Capellmeister in Dresden. When Nikolaus Harnoncourt recorded the Missa as a stand-alone piece in 1972, that was far from common knowledge: not until the 1950s was did scholars propose that the Mass in B minor wasn’t a monolith. Public perception of the works as a musical quilt set in only much later. So as much as anything else, Harnoncourt’s recording was a statement to perceive Bach in new ways. Since there are no changes from the original to the first half of the latter gallimaufry-masterpiece (in fact, I believe this is simply the first disc of Harnoncourt's first B minor Mass), you might as well experience the Missa by simply not listening to CD 2 of your favorite recording of the B minor Mass.

Why, then, do we need a recording of Bach’s Missa? Completism, that’s why. Good enough a reason for me. If not for you, there is no reason to read on. Harnoncourt’s recording offers nothing (except the sweet aural scents of nostalgia for those early “Das Alte Werk” releases) that will transcend the limited initial appeal the Missa has in an age burgeoning with great ‘complete’ recordings. The vibrato of the female voices (Rotraud Hansmann, Emiko Iiyama, Helen Watts) isn’t at all conforming to our current understanding and expectations of historically informed performances. And the playing of the orchestra, especially the brass, conforms only to our stereotypical negative expectations of it. HIP orchestras—Harnoncourt’s Concentus musicus Wien not the least—have come a long, long way since those days. I have always liked Harnoncourt’s idea of using a boys’ choir (one of the best available, at that). Unfortunately the idea is nicer than the intonation-ambiguous result.

Those not reared on Harnoncourt (or not interested in the Missa-only) but curious about his seminal recordings for Teldec’s Das Alte Werk are better off with a recording of a favorite cantata from his cycle. The rest can safely stick to their Mass in B minor of choice—mine currently being Karl Richter, Jos van Veldhoven, and Marc Minkowski.

Thus Do All Women

Mozart, Così fan tutte, J. Watson, D. Montague, T. Spence, C. Maltman, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, C. Mackerras (released on April 29, 2008) Chandos 3152(3)

Every opera lover should own at least one recording of Mozart's Così fan tutte, an opera that may not rank all that high on the list of the composer's "important" operas but that remains one of the most enjoyable and beloved of audiences -- ranked as the 15th most often performed opera in North America. (My review of Wolf Trap Opera's new production will be published tomorrow). The best version to own remains the revelatory and authoritative recording made by René Jacobs in 2004. In the category of secondary performances of Così that are worth a listen, the great Mozart conductor Charles Mackerras returned to the opera for a second recording in 2007. It is unusual because he made it with the historically informed performance ensemble the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. Also, the singers use not the Italian original but -- for Chandos's Opera in English series -- a clever, slightly twee English translation made by the Rev. Marmaduke E. Browne for an 1890 production by the students of the Royal College of Music under Charles Villiers Stanford.

Mackerras has a generally fine cast, especially on the male side, with the ardent tenor of Toby Spence's Ferrando and the robust baritone of Christopher Maltman's Guglielmo balanced by the veteran weight of Thomas Allen's Don Alfonso. The women are led by the vivacious Lesley Garrett as a witty and slightly zany Despina, against whom Janice Watson and Diana Montague seem a little nondescript as Fiordiligi and Dorabella, respectively. The OAE sounds gorgeous and full of colors, especially in the woodwinds (so important in this orchestration), led with a sprightly hand by Mackerras. Other HIP touches include the use of a fortepiano to accompany the recitatives (although the critical edition indicates "cembalo" -- or harpsichord), as well as ornaments for the singers transcribed from an 18th-century source (now in the Fürstenberg Library in Donaueschingen).

Another argument against recommending this as a reference recording is that it does not include the complete score, making the usual cuts in most staged performances (Don Alfonso's Vorrei dir, e cor non ho, the Ferrando-Guglielmo duet Al fato dan legge, Ferrando's aria Ah lo veggio -- although the OAE certainly has the basset clarinet called for in that piece -- and some parts of the recitatives). Guglielmo also sings Non siate ritrosi, as is customary, instead of the more difficult Rivolgete a lui lo sguardo Mozart originally composed as the opera's fifteenth number, deciding to cut it before the premiere.

160'34"

Summer at the Museums: Portland, Maine

This is a continuation of Summer at the Museums, the Working My Way North Edition. If you find yourself on a Maine adventure this summer, a good stop on your way is the port city of Portland. Portland has some very interesting history and a few great restaurants (Bresca and the new Salt Exchange are two recommendations). I think there is some sort of subsidy from the local government to open a coffee shop here: there must be fifty of them and they all look pretty good, too.

After you’ve eaten and got your caffeine fix the Portland Museum of Art has a pretty fair collection, including five or six N. C. Wyeths -- Lobstering off Black Spruce is enough reason to stop on its own. A Marsden Hartley, Camden Hills from Bunkers Island, is a close second. An exhibit, Call of the Coast: Art Colonies of New England, explores the influence of four communities (some images here): Cos Cob and Old Lyme in Connecticut and Ogunquit and Monhegan on the Maine coast. There are lots of Impressionist landscapes and seascapes in the Monet style, but the show gets more interesting for me with the Robert Henri-inspired group mixing it up on the Maine coast: Rockwell Kent, Yashiro Kuniyoshi, Edward Hopper, and (new to me) Gertrude Fisk. The exhibit will be up through October 12.

My goal is to follow the Maine Art Museum Trail of seven museums: now the pressure is on.

PREVIOUSLY IN SUMMER AT THE MUSEUMS:
Walters Art Museum | Museum of Modern Art | National Gallery of Art | Hirshhorn

Beethoven Sonatas - A Survey of Complete Cycles Part 7, 2006/07

	Gerhard Oppitz 2004 - 2006 - Hänssler Oppitz' Beethoven cycle flew under the radar, compared to those of Schiff and Lewis, but it is, along with those two, one of the most notable to have been produced in this decade. I've not come across anything fancy in this cycle, but some astonishingly fine playing. Availability (previously in eight individual volumes, now also as a box): Country / Label USA UK France Germany Hänssler Yes Box Yes Box Yes Box Yes Box
	Garrick Ohlsson 1992 - 2007 - Bridge (Arabesque) Availability (in eight individual volumes): Country / Label USA UK France Germany Bridge Yes Yes Yes Yes
	Idil Biret 1994 - 2005 - IBA This sonata cycle is part of a Beethoven Edition that launched Idil Biret's own label, Idil Biret Archive. It's practically a sub-label of Naxos, the company that has brought her from relative obscurity to becoming a household name. The Beethoven Edition will include not only the sonatas and concertos but also Liszt's Symphony transcriptions which are being re-released on CD for the first time since Biret took them down on LP for EMI in the mid-eighties. Availability: Country / Label USA UK France Germany IBA Yes Yes Yes Yes
	András Schiff 2004 - 2007 - ECM Schiff used a Boesendorfer and a Steinway Grand for these recordings, taped live (except for the last three sonatas) and played in sequence. A review of volume one exists here. Charles has reviewed several other volumes as they came out. Availability (in eight individual volumes): Country / Label USA UK France Germany ECM Yes Yes Yes Yes
	Paul Lewis 2004 - 2007 - Harmonia Mundi Availability (in four volumes): Country / Label USA UK France Germany Harmonia Mundi Yes Yes Yes Yes
	Kun-Woo Paik 2005 - 2007 - Decca (Korea) Perhaps Decca sent up a test-balloon in the West when they released one volume of this cycle world wide. After that it was back to releases for the Asian (Korean?) market only. Availability of Sonatas 16-26 (complete set only in Asia): Country / Label USA UK France Germany Decca Partial Partial Partial Partial
	Below follow those cycles that I have overlooked. Many of them were only ever distributed on the Asian market. Any further information about these would be much appreciated. The same goes to anyone who can confirm the existence of an alleged cycle by a Michael Steinberg (apparently on Elysium LPs, possibly recorded in Germany). Eventually these will all be moved to the appropriate parts of this series of posts.
	Shoko Sugitani ???? - 2007? - IDC Classic Not available as far as I know. (Volume 11 found on HMV.co.jp)
	Kazune Shimizu 1995 - 1997 - Sony (Japan) Live recordings. Out of print as a set with individual copies hard to find at HMV.co.jp.
	Daniela Varinska ???? - 2009? - Diskant Available (9 of 11? volumes) from Slovakia or in Japan:
	Ikuyo Nakamichi 2002? - BMG Japan Ikuyo Nakamichi studied under Mitsuko Kinpara, Phyllis Rappaport (Michigan), Kazuhiko Nakajima and Prof. Klaus Schilde at the Hochschule fur Musik in Munich on a scholarship from the Japanese Ministry of Cultural Affairs. In 1982 Nakamichi won first and the Masuzawa Prize at the 51st Annual Japan Music Competition. Available from Japan.
	Akiyoshi Sako 2003 - 2005 - Camerata Available (partially?) from Japan.
	Takahiro Sonoda I ????- ???? - Denon Apparently one of the grand figures in Japanese music and someone of whom I hitherto, somehow, knew nothing. He is to have recorded the complete Beethoven sonatas three (!) times, as only Barenboim and Brendel have. I cannot track down the third (there may be confusion on this point, as he also issued an edition of the Beethoven sonatas as scores), but this one on Denon can still be found. Available from Japan, Germany, and France.
	Takahiro Sonoda II 1993 - 1996- Evica Available in 12 individual volumes from Japan:

This concludes the listing of all Beethoven Sonata Cycles that are currently complete* and finished‡. There are, however, 14 (or more!) cycles under way, of which Ronald Brautigam's will most likely be the next complete one (and one of the most important, at that). I will list all cycles that are under way--as well as a selection of historically important attempted cycles that were never finished but include >20 sonatas.

* If you count, as I did, Backhaus II and Arrau II as complete, despite one and two (respectively) missing sonatas.

‡ This includes Idil Biret's cycle which has been all recorded but won't have been issued in its entirety until later this year or early 2010.


Part 1: 1935 - 1969
Part 2: 1967 - 1974
Part 3: 1977 - 1989
Part 4: 1990 - 1996
Part 5: 1996 - 1999
Part 6: 1996 - 1999

If you have additional information about recording dates, availability, cover art -- or corrections and additions -- your input is much appreciated.

This survey is meant to list all complete sets of Beethoven's Piano Sonatas and their availability in different markets, not to review them.

Singer Recitals: Villazón and Bartoli

Rolando Villazón, Handel, Gabrieli Players, P. McCreesh (released on March 31, 2009) Deutsche Grammophon B0012818-02

Tenor Rolando Villazón has been plagued with vocal troubles in the last couple years, making a comeback last year only to withdraw from more performances for the rest of this year and much of the next, reportedly to have a cyst removed from his larynx. Somewhere in the good months (April 2008), he made this album of Handel arias, and happily, with a few noticeable edits here and there, he sounded pretty good. Few would suspect that Villazón would even be interested in singing Handel, but he has been listening to Baroque specialists' recordings since the start of his career. Two years ago, in fact, the French historically informed performance (HIP) conductor Emmanuelle Haïm convinced him to work with her on a recording of Monteverdi's Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda.

Can a voice trained primarily to sound fabulous soaring up to and holding long notes in the stratosphere and pumping out volume work in Handel? Well, yes, in more or less the same way that Plácido Domingo sounded good in Handel's Tamerlano last year. Villazón's voice has greater agility, too, with only the more disjointed passages, especially requiring the voice to bridge its registers rapidly, sounding a little off-kilter. Even the ornamented da capo repeats and occasional cadenza (credited to Jory Vinikour, whose recording of Handel harpsichord suites we admired recently) are well done. Handel would surely have relished writing for this sort of voice, although he would have composed something specifically for its strengths. If Villazón is good enough for Paul McCreesh, whose Gabrieli Players provide stylish backup, then who am I to complain?

59'26"

Cecilia Bartoli, La Danza: Melodie italiane, J. Levine (re-released on March 3, 2009) Decca 478 1380

One of the singers whose interpretation of Baroque music Rolando Villazón says he admired was Cecilia Bartoli. Bartoli often seems most suited to 17th- and 18th-century music, where the clarity and agility of her voice is best featured. In her recent attempts to claim some of the 19th century, often under the aegis of HIP research, she has not met with approval from some listeners, for the same reasons that Villazón may seem unsuited to Handel, just in reverse. Those who are put off by her vocal mannerisms will never be convinced, but one of Bartoli's virtues is her interest in music off the beaten path. Decca has recently re-released this 1997 recital of rarely heard Italian art songs by opera composers, now available at a pleasantly discounted price if you missed it the first time around.

As the eminent musicologist Philip Gossett wrote at the time in his liner essay, "A vast literature of Italian nineteenth-century song, deposited in libraries and private collections throughout the world, remains to be explored. The music is found in early printed editions as well as in composers' own autograph manuscripts (often unique sources)." (A complete edition of the Rossini songs is planned by Gossett for the University of Chicago complete works.) Gossett points to modern listeners' familiarity with "nostalgic invocations" of this sort of Italian song by northern Europeans although the real thing is mostly forgotten: as part of the "nation-building process accomplished by the Italian Risorgimento," all major Italian composers wrote these sorts of songs. No one is likely to mistake most of these little songs by Bellini, Donizetti, and Rossini (all but one actually published in modern editions, a fraction of the number known to exist) for great art, but Bartoli, with all of the vocal intensity and agility adored by her fans, makes a case for them as at least very happy listening. A few, like the quietly smoldering setting of the Requiem Mass introit text that Rossini dedicated to his "beautiful mother," deserve to be much better known (many would make brilliant encore pieces). James Levine provides sparkling, sensitive accompaniment at the piano.

67'23"

In Brief: Leaving the Lake Edition

Here is your regular Sunday selection of links to good things in Blogville and Beyond.

• The magnitude of reactions to the death of Michael Jackson this week was, frankly, surprising. His music (mostly mediocre, in my opinion), his performing personality (memorable, if weird), and (most of all) his perversions, excesses, and eccentricities have surely left a mark on the popular imagination. But was the outpouring of grief and commemorations really warranted? In lieu of my own assessment of one of the strangest lives of our age (I just don't care that much), read this one. [Countercritic]


• Tim Page's look back at his career as a music critic should be required reading for anyone trying to write critically about music. [Opera News]


• A sneak peek at the set for Santa Fe Opera's premiere production of Paul Moravec's new opera The Letter, from the librettist, Terry Teachout. [About Last Night]


• Congratulations to Jessica Duchen, who has landed one of those rare blogger/columnist jobs, replacing Ian Bostridge as music writer for a relatively new British intellectual magazine. [Standpoint]


• Anne Midgette published some great articles on tour with the National Symphony in China and South Korea. Watch her speak about the experience in an interview for PBS. [NewsHour with Jim Lehrer]

À mon chevet: Debussy and Wagner

À mon chevet is a series of posts featuring a quote from whatever book is on my nightstand at the moment.

In this nothingness lies (though it is more in the nature of a metaphysical speculation than these concrete examples I have just been discussing) the final Tristan connection in Pelléas. The Tristan progression originated as a breath, the breath, as Wagner said, that 'blurs the clarity of the heavens ... grows, condenses, and solidifies, until finally the whole world confronts me in its impenetrable bulk'. Debussy reverses this process; he liquefies, dissolves, and diminishes, until the impenetrable bulk of the Tristan world vanishes into the empty nothingness from which it had been summoned. And Pelléas has its 'nothingness motif' -- a single tone. As a part of every other motif, or merely an intervallic oscillation, it is omnipresent; it permeates the loose-knit texture more thoroughly than the Welt-Atem or Tristan progression does Wagner's essentially symphonic score -- without, however, binding it together. It is in fact the embodiment of the whole disintegratory, anti-matter emptiness which the work, by its means, consists of as well as expresses. The richness of Wagner's score is already implicit in the progression of the Welt-Atem; the Welt-Atem is pregnant with the abundance and profusion of the accomplished work. By contrast the parsimony of means in Debussy's fully achieved work implies the possibility of a reduction to the central minimum, the nothingness of a single tone.

-- Robin Holloway, Debussy and Wagner, p. 135

In summing up his analysis of Wagner's (unacknowledged) influence on Pelléas et Mélisande, Holloway quotes an apt aphorism attributed to Lichtenberg: "To do just the opposite is also a form of imitation and the definitions of imitation ought by rights to include both." Holloway has the goods in tangible score analysis that show passages in Wagner's operas filtered into Debussy's score, but he does not push his case too far, in light of Debussy's later professed anti-Wagnerism. When Holloway knows that he is making a speculative leap, he says so, and it rarely feels like a stretch. The rest of the book, no less interesting, concerns other Debussy works, including Le Martyre de Saint Sébastien and the ballet Jeux.

Singer Recitals: Garanča and Royal

Elīna Garanča, Bel Canto, Filarmonica del Teatro Comunale di Bologna, R. Abbado (released on April 28, 2009) Deutsche Grammophon B0012818-02

Elīna Garanča made a fairly sensational debut at the Metropolitan Opera last year as Rosina in Barber of Seville. Her name first came up at Ionarts because she sang a small role in Europa Galante's memorable recording of Vivaldi's Bajazet a couple years before that. According to my review her voice had "a husky sound, not overburdened with active vibrato" and was "evocative" and "a little Marilyn [Horne] on the low notes." The Latvian mezzo-soprano's second recital disc for Deutsche Grammophon, a selection of bel canto opera excerpts, confirms that favorable assessment. Many of the pieces are for small ensembles, which highlights Garanča's voice in combination with soprano Ekaterina Siurina, tenor Matthew Polenzani, and bass-baritones Ildebrando d'Arcangelo and Adrian Sâmpetrean. Garanča has received praise for her Mozart and other early opera, too, so her voice is versatile, and she certainly has the power, beauty of tone, and agility for bel canto. This type of disc is not really of interest for the serious collector, of course -- buy the (heavily discounted) complete recording of I Capuleti e i Montecchi with Anna Netrebko (review forthcoming) instead of the few excerpts found here -- but it does give a worthwhile impression of the possibilities of this voice, at least until you have the chance to hear her live in an opera near you.

UPDATE:
See the profile on Garanča by Matthew Gurewitsch in the New York Times.

64'36"

Kate Royal, Midsummer Night, Orchestra of English National Opera, E. Gardner (released on June 2, 2009) EMI 50999 2 68192 2 8

Kate Royal has followed up brilliantly on the success of her debut recital album for EMI, with this selection of mostly 20th-century opera excerpts, called Midsummer Night. The program is likely to be of greater interest to the serious collector, alluring rarities -- like Walton's Troilus and Cressida, William Alwyn's Miss Julie, Bernard Herrmann's Wuthering Heights, as well as pieces by Britten, Barber, Messager, Korngold -- rather than tired favorites. Her voice continues to impress my ears -- as it did live during her first U.S. appearance (reviewed by Jens), here in Washington in 2006: well-aimed if not all that overpowering (no need for that yet, so no pushing), with transparency throughout its range and the true intonation that makes it devastatingly effective in the modern repertoire (think Dawn Upshaw). According to Royal's introductory remarks in the liner notes, the program was inspired by the experience of her first role in a 20th-century opera, as the Governess in Glyndebourne's touring production of The Turn of the Screw. She was surely a good match for the role, and the excerpt recorded here (How beautiful it is, when the Governess sees Quint's ghost appear mysteriously on a tower), as well as the Embroidery Aria from Peter Grimes, indicates that she will likely be a first-rate Britten interpreter. Her statuesque beauty would make her a natural Titania, for example. The same conductor from her first recital disc, Edward Gardner, again proves an excellent accompanist, this time with the ENO Orchestra.

61'45"

Summer at the Museums: Herman Maril @ the Walters

Another gem of a summer exhibit, Herman Maril: An American Modernist, will open at the Walters Art Museum on Sunday. Maril, a Baltimore native, taught in the University of Maryland’s Art Department for 37 years. His first exposure to modern art took place at none other than Etta Cone’s apartment at Eutaw Place. Etta and her sister Claribel’s collection is now the backbone of the Baltimore Museum of Art.

He was a part of the New York art scene of the 30s, befriending such artists as Rothko, Gorky, the Soyer brothers, and of course Milton Avery, with whose work, besides that of Matisse, he is most associated. In addition to the many Baltimore scenes that I became familiar with since moving here in the 80s, Maril also summered on Cape Cod beginning in the 30s, where he produced some of his best work, seascapes, sand dunes, and beach scenes.

It was on the Cape that Maril found his palette and simplified style of painting. Another painter who summered on the Cape with Maril and a kindred spirit is the NYC artist and long-time Parsons teacher, Paul Resika. Although Resika may be more polished, the similarities in their work are striking. Dialogue At Five, shown below, for that matter, a depiction of the Provincetown summer scene, resembles an early Alex Katz composition. Stop me before I connect again! The show is up through August 30th -- images of the installation on Flickr.