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Presto News - 9th May 2011Handel's Ariodante |
 After venturing into little-charted territory with his acclaimed recording of Berenice (reviewed by Chris around this time last year – Presto News, 14th June 2010), Alan Curtis continues his Handelian project with one of the composer’s best-known operas – Ariodante. It is a barnstorming tale of skulduggery, betrayal and mistaken identity, set in medieval Scotland: the melodramatic plot (which hinges, like Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, upon a maid disguising herself as her mistress receiving a lover the night before her wedding) and string of bravura arias won Ariodante instant success when it opened at Covent Garden in 1735. Since the Handel revival in the late twentieth century it has regained a prominent place in the repertoire, both in the opera-house and on disc.  Joyce DiDonato Recorded in the Northern Italian village of Lonigo last January, this new set has all the hallmarks of Curtis’s earlier projects: the pacing (even during the dramatically static first act) is immaculate, the continuo-playing (the excellent Andrea Perugi on harpsichord) is characterful yet never obtrusive and – most importantly for an opera which contains so much ballet-music – the music really dances. The dance-music may be in the French tradition, but Curtis’s pointing of the snappy dotted rhythms and judicious use of bagpipe-like drones in the continuo section remind us that the work is set in Scotland, something that has never occurred to me on listening to rival recordings. The cast is headed by Joyce DiDonato as the eponymous prince who is duped into believing that his fiancée Ginevra (daughter of the King of Scotland) is having an affair with his rival, the dastardly Duke of Albany who himself has pretensions to the throne. Canadian contralto Marie-Nicole Lemieux is thrillingly butch and deliciously insinuating as Polinesso, the Machiavellian Duke who eventually gets his comeuppance in best Baroque tradition: some slight fogginess in the low-lying passagework is a small price to pay for the pleasure of hearing a voice of this amplitude in Handel, and she extracts every last drop of malevolence from the text without ever straying into hammed-up moustache-twirling territory. Finnish tenor Topi Lehtipuu sings with his usual class as Ariodante's brother Lurcanio, switching convincingly from dejected lover in the first act to swashbuckling avenger in the second, where his fiercely virtuosic ‘Il tuo sangue’ is one of the stand-out arias of the entire set. The four women’s voices are well differentiated (on some recordings, it can be difficult to tell the characters apart in the early scenes), yet complement each other beautifully: the silvery soubrette of Sabina Puértola (a new name to me, but on this evidence definitely one to watch) contrasts nicely with the darker-hued soprano of Karina Gauvin’s Ginevra; Gauvin, in turn, blends gorgeously with DiDonato’s high mezzo in their duets, particularly the lovingly-sculpted ‘Prendi per questo mano’ in Act One. As for DiDonato, it seems impossible to imagine this role sung better: she’s no stranger to the ferocious technical demands of music written for the iron-lunged castrati (the role was created by the superstar male soprano Carestini) so it goes without saying that she despatches the endless reams of fearsome coloratura with consummate panache, but her opening aria ‘Con l’ali di costanza’ still took my breath away on first hearing! In the two great laments (‘Scherza, infida’ and ‘Cieca notte’) she’s utterly heartbreaking, with each repetition of a phrase or section conveying a subtle shift in emotion so that the dramatic tension never flags (her excellent blog reveals that these arias incorporate newly-discovered ornamentation thought to be by Handel himself or by one of the singers who worked with him – see here). There may be no shortage of good Ariodantes on disc, but this new contender scores highly both as a team effort and for the spellbinding central performance from DiDonato: top marks!
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 Handel: AriodanteJoyce DiDonato (Ariodante), Karina Gauvin (Ginevra), Marie-Nicole Lemieux (Polinesso), Sabina Puértolas (Dalinda), Topi Lehtipuu (Lurcanio), Matthew Brook (King of Scotland), Anicio Zorzi Giustiniani (Odoardo) Il Complesso Barocco, Alan Curtis |
Katherine Cooper - katherine@prestoclassical.co.uk |
New Releases9th May 2011 |
This is just the pick of the recent releases. The New Releases and Future Releases pages are always available for browsing all the new and forthcoming releases. |
 Wolf: Italienisches Liederbuch (46 songs, complete)Mojca Erdmann (soprano), Christian Gerhaher (baritone) & Gerold Huber (piano)Baritone Christian Gerhaher has already set new standards with his interpretations of the most famous romantic song cycles. On his new album he turns his attention to Hugo Wolf’s ‘Italian Songbook’ together with the young German soprano Mojca Erdmann. They are accompanied on the piano by Gerhaher’s long-term musical partner Gerold Huber. |
 Philipp Schöndorff: The Complete WorksCinquecentoGramophone award nominees Cinquecento add another glorious recording to their Hyperion discography. This vocal sextet, comprising six professional singers from five European countries, are rapidly becoming one of the most admired early music ensembles of the time. The lithe, clear yet rich and warm tones of the six singers are the perfect instruments for the complex polyphony of the sixteenth century. Their profound collective and individual musicianship, mellifluous phrasing, perfect intonation and commitment to their chosen repertoire is clearly apparent in this gem of a disc. |
 Le Divin Arcadelt: Candlemas in Renaissance RomeMusica Contexta with The English Cornett and Sackbut EnsembleThrough the works of Arcadelt, de Silva, and Palestrina, the vocal ensemble Musica Contexta, with The English Cornett and Sackbut Ensemble, takes us on a journey of musical Rome on a February day at the end of the sixteenth century. Imagine walking through the streets of the city at Candlemas, the Day of Purification – in the Catholic Church, this day celebrates the Purification of Mary and the official presentation of Christ at the Temple forty days after his birth – and at each church we come to we stop and listen to a piece of music. In one church we might find a single falsetto voice accompanied by sackbuts, in the next an unaccompanied choir, and elsewhere a full choir with wind instruments. |
 Beethoven: Gods, Heroes and MenOrchestre Symphonique de Montréal, Kent NaganoThere are countless recordings of Beethoven’s Third Symphony ‘Eroica’, which he was originally going to dedicate to the revered Napoleon Bonaparte before the latter turned into a tyrant. What sets this new album apart from all the other recordings is the attractive programme: the American-Japanese conductor Kent Nagano combines the famous ‘Eroica’ with Beethoven’s lesser-known ballet music ‘The Creatures of Prometheus’. Nagano is ably supported here by the renowned Montreal Symphony Orchestra, whose music director he has been since 2006. |
 Gillian Keith bei StraussGillian Keith (soprano) & Simon Lepper (piano)Strauss displays a consistent ability to bring out the best in a singer, and soprano Gillian Keith – accompanied here by pianist Simon Lepper – amply showcases Strauss’s unique reverence for the female voice. In song-writing, as in orchestral music, Richard Strauss hit his stride early. His range and confidence is displayed in this group of songs; as the selection shows, he wrote some superb examples in his teens, and by his mid-twenties was already an assured master of the Lied; mastery which continued to develop into old age. |
 O Guiding Night – The Spanish MysticsThe Sixteen, Harry ChristophersO Guiding Night is the fascinating result of The Sixteen’s second major collaboration with the Genesis Foundation and features six new works by contemporary British composers Tarik O’Regan, Roderick Williams and Ruth Byrchmore. The new works are all inspired by the poetry of two principals of The Spanish Mystics movement – St Teresa of Ávila and St John of the Cross. |
 Britten: Complete Songs Volume 1Caryl Hughes, Andrew Tortise, James Greer, Ben Johnson, Katherine Broderick, Nicky Spence, Robin Tritschler, Philip Smith & Malcolm Martineau (piano)Britten was a prolific composer of songs throughout his creative life, producing over 100 settings for voice and piano, in addition to the works for voice and orchestra. His songs for voice and piano – of which this is the first in a two-volume 4CD cycle – contain settings by poets as diverse as Michelangelo, Hölderlin, Hardy, Pushkin, Auden and Soutar. |
 ica classics5 new CDs and 4 new DVDSThe latest batch of new releases from ica classics features 4 DVDs and 5 CDs. The DVDs include Solti, Rozhdestvensky and Munch, while the CDs include Renata Tebaldi’s 1955 Covent Garden debut (as Tosca), Sir Adrian Boult’s 1971 Enigma Variations, a Shura Cherkassky recital and more. |
Listen - sound samples available for this item BBC Radio 3 CD ReviewSaturday 7th May 2011 |
Building a Library - Tomas Luis de Victoria round-up |
In a break from the normal format this week Simon Heighes rounded up some recent recordings of works by Tomas Luis de Victoria in his 400th anniversary year. You can view all his featured discs here. |
Disc of the Week |
 Delius: Appalachia & The Song of the High HillsBBC Symphony Chorus & BBC Symphony Orchestra, Sir Andrew Davis |
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