Early Music America Fall 2012 - (Page 23)

two suites of literary inspiration: Burlesque de Quixotte (based on the novel by Miguel de Cervantes) and Intrada, nebst burlesquer Suite (based on Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift). The former amusingly depicts a mélange of scenes from the novel, including the knight’s famous encounter with windmills. The so-called “Gulliver Suite” is more structural, using recognizable forms: a scurrying Lilliputian chaconne is followed by a slow Brobdingnagian gigue, while a dignified loure and unstructured furioso flourish depict the gentle Houyhnhnms and chaotic Yahoos. The addition of the Introduzzione à tre, depicting five historical women, shows that Telemann could musically dramatize people as well as situations. The recording is rounded out with two delightful concertos for flute and recorder, the E minor one notably ending with a presto peasant dance, and a quite lovely final work from Tafelmusik. —Lance Hulme Georg Philipp Telemann Germanicus Olivia Stahn, Elisabeth Scholl, and Friedrich Praetorius, sopranos; Matthias Rexroth, alto; Albrecht Sack, tenor; Henryk Böhm and Tobias Berndt, basses; Dieter Bellmann, speaker; Sächsisches Barockorchester, Gotthold Schwarz, conductor CPO 777 602-2 www.jpc.de/jpcng/cpo/home Telemann the opera composer is still unfamiliar to most listeners, and with good reason: the majority of his stage works are lost, and the seven full-length operas that have come down to us are seldom performed; one even received its modern premiere earlier this year. Only the comic intermezzo Pimpinone can make some claim to being well known, though not to the extent that it deserves. All eight works belong to the composer’s maturity, leaving us virtually in the dark about the 20odd operas he claimed to have written for the celebrated Leipzig Opera before it folded in 1720. This recording is something of a reclamation project. Only recently was the German musicologist Michael Maul able to confirm that 40 anonymous arias and duets in a manuscript collection belonged to Telemann’s Germanicus, first given at Leipzig in 1704. Since the 18th century, there had been some confusion over who wrote the opera, which explains why it does not appear in current catalogs of Telemann’s works. The discovery is exciting because it not only provides a musical snapshot of the 23-year-old university student but also enhances our knowledge of the Leipzig Opera repertory, only fragments of which survive. In fact, the arias and duets document a 1710 revival of Germanicus for which Telemann substituted 16 Italian arias for his German originals, the change reflecting a preference for bilingual librettos at Leipzig. By this time, Telemann was long gone from the city and was supplying the opera company with new works from his position as music director at the Eisenach court. Rendering the opera performable again presented serious challenges. For one thing, 13 pieces and all the recitatives did not make it into the aria collection. And of course, most of the story, involving love triangles, mistaken identities, and political intrigue during the second German campaign of Nero Claudius Germanicus (15-16 CE) is told through recitative. Rather than compose new recitatives (a practice with 18th-century precedents), Maul opted to separate the arias with spoken narration and bits of dialogue based on the surviving libretto. And since the texts to five of the missing 13 pieces were judged essential to the plot, he substituted arias and choruses from other Leipzig operas by Telemann and his contemporaries, modifying the original words to fit the action. The result is a Singspiel-like pastiche that gets the story across well enough but strikes me as dramatically, if not musically, neutered. And because the texts of the spoken narration and dialogue do not appear in the recording’s booklet, non-German speakers will have to rely on the plot synopsis to determine what the characters are singing about at any given moment. Such reservations aside, this live recording has much to recommend it. Sopranos Olivia Stahn (Claudia) and Elisabeth Scholl (Agrippina), HAYDN: Symphonies GRAMMY® nominee! No. 104 “London,” 88, 101 “The Clock” “Fresh and vital…beautifully produced and engineered” – e New York Times Scholarly performing editions and recordings of lost eighteenth century liturgical music. HANDEL: Atalanta New Realease Dominique Labelle, soprano; Susanne Rydén, soprano; Cécile van de Sant, mezzo-soprano; Michael Slattery, tenor; Philip Cutlip, baritone; Corey McKern, baritone; Philharmonia Chorale, Bruce Lamott, director “Magni cent” –San Francisco Chronicle VIVALDI The Four Seasons Violin Concertos, RV275, RV277 Il favorito, RV271 L’amoroso Elizabeth Blumenstock, violin Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, Nicholas McGegan (224) 649-6000 www.GalantMusic.com Lorraine Hunt Lieberson BERLIOZ: Les Nuits d'été HANDEL: Arias “Commanding…dazzling…astounding” – e New York Times Philharmonia Baroque Productions available at philharmonia.org, iTunes Early Music America Fall 2012 23 http://www.jpc.de/jpcng/cpo/home http://www.GalantMusic.com http://www.philharmonia.org

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Early Music America Fall 2012

Editor’s Note
EMA Competition
Sound Bytes
Musings: Listening Forward
Profile: A Classical Playlist on Your Cable Television
Recording Reviews
Reconstructing Spanish Songs from the Time of Cervantes
Janet See: Traversist on Two Continents
Musical Mosaic Explores “Perspectives of Interspersing Peoples”
Book Reviews
Ad Index
In Conclusion: Conducting Early Music

Early Music America Fall 2012