Andriessen, L: La Commedia

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it is encouraging to hear Andriessen himself shifting his language decisively away from everybody else's pigeonholed view of his music...Reinbert de Leeuw directs the combined ASKO and Schonberg... — Gramophone Magazine, Awards Issue 2014 More…

Release Date: 30th Jun 2014
Catalogue No: 7559795900
Label: Nonesuch
Length: 1 hour 44 minutes

Opera

October 2014

Recording of the Month

Andriessen, L: La Commedia

Work length1:44:02

Album only

Louis Andriessen (lead vocals), Dutch National Opera (lead vocals), Children's Chorus de Kickers of Music School Waterland (lead vocals), Asko|Schönberg (lead vocals)
Reinbert de Leeuw

Part I: The City of Dis, or The Ship of Fools

Track length20:18

Album only

Part II: Racconto dall'inferno

Track length19:26

Album only

Part III: Lucifer

Track length24:05

Album only

Part IV: The Garden of Earthly Delights

Track length16:44

Album only

Part V: Luce Etterna

Track length23:29

Album only

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Nonesuch Records releases Louis Andriessen's Grawemeyer Award-winning La Commedia on June 9. The film opera, a collaboration with director Hal Hartley, is based on Dante's Divine Comedy, with additional texts from the 16th-century German theologian Sebastian Brant, the 17th-century Dutch dramatist Joost van den Vondel, and the Old Testament's "Song of Songs”. This Dutch National Opera production features the Asko and Schönberg Ensembles, led by Reinbert de Leeuw, with vocal soloists Claron McFadden (Beatrice), Cristina Zavalloni (Dante), Jeroen Willems (Lucifer/Cacciaguida), and Marcel Beekman (Casella). The children's choral parts are sung by Waterland's Kinderkoor De Kickers, conducted by Jan Maarten Koeman.

In the composer's words, "The simultaneous existence of heaven, purgatory, and hell; parallels between various scenes; and the use of film and stage effects all create the complexity that is necessary to do justice to Dante's greatest creation. To this end, all events portrayed on the film screen and on stage, including dance, the spoken word, and song, should be regarded as a reaction to the music."

Dutch composer Louis Andriessen's music has explored politics, time, velocity, matter, and mortality in five works for large ensemble: De Staat (Nonesuch, 1991), De Tijd (Nonesuch, 1993), De Snelheid, De Materie (Nonesuch, 1996), and Trilogy of The Last Day. In addition to La Commedia, his stage works include the operas Writing to Vermeer (Nonesuch, 2006) and Rosa: The Death of a Composer (Nonesuch, 2000), as well as the monodrama Anaïs Nin. Nonesuch also released an album with his De Stijl and M Is for Man, Music, Mozart in 1994.

Hal Hartley is an American independent filmmaker (writer, director, producer, and composer) active since 1989. His films include Trust (1990, winner best screenplay Sundance Film Festival), Henry Fool (1998, winner best screenplay Cannes Film Festival), and Meanwhile (2010). He has written and staged his play Soon at the Salzburg Festspiele in Austria (1998) and in America (2001). His association with Louis Andriessen began with the short film The New Math(s) in 1999. Hartley has just completed shooting his 13th feature film, Ned Rifle. He lives in New York.

Reviews

Awards Issue 2014

it is encouraging to hear Andriessen himself shifting his language decisively away from everybody else's pigeonholed view of his music...Reinbert de Leeuw directs the combined ASKO and Schonberg ensembles with clinical, steadfast accuracy - getting music of this complexity right must be hell.

October 2014

The range is breathtaking: I spotted Bach, minimalism, Stravinsky, ragtime, Messiaen, children’s songs, pop, Bernstein, Broadway, Impressionism, big-band jazz, the Renaissance motet, modern Italian popular song, folk song these are faithfully summoned, but more often they’re presented through what appear grotesque, ribald, corrupt, or infernal. Yet, for all that, the score is remarkably uncluttered. Sometimes it is also radiantly, unashamedly beautiful.

Opera News October 2014

The intersecting between stage and film is beautifully handled in the DVD. It represents a huge advance over an early example of the technique. The score, five movements of about twenty minutes each, is enormously attractive. Andriessen’s music shows the influence of Messiaen in rhythm and melody, though the harmonic sense is pared down.

Andriessen, L: La Commedia

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