Charpentier:
Les Arts Florissants; Sonata a 8, H548.
Haley Sicking, Kara McBain and Stéphanie Varnerin, sopranos; Dianna Grabowski,
mezzo-soprano; Matthieu Peyrègne, tenor; Patrick Gnage, David Grogan and Andrew
Dittman, basses; New York Baroque Dance Company and Dallas Bach Society
conducted by James Richman. Rubicon. $16.99.
Music
for Chorus by Schumann, Brahms, Viktor Ullmann, Ernst Krenek, and Max Reger. Seicento vocale with Cornelia Samuelis, soprano;
Henriette Gödde, alto; Cornelia Glassi, piano; Jan Croonenbroeck, musical
direction; conducted by Alexander Toepper. Resonando. $14.99.
Traditional Western classical music is, in one sense, all about discord
and ways to overcome it: dissonance resolving to consonance, modulations
through keys that sound “right” or “wrong,” disharmony and eventual harmony. So
music is a natural way to explore competition, up to and including warfare, and
ways to resolve it in the world at large. Marc-Antoine Charpentier (1643-1704)
was one of many composers who did just such an exploration – in an interesting
way and with interesting effect – in his 1685 chamber opera, Les Arts Florissants. The work,
available in a very fine Dallas Bach Society performance on a new Rubicon CD,
is a tribute to King Louis XIV and is structured as an allegory involving a
scarcely surprising dispute between Peace (soprano Haley Sicking) and Discord
(bass Patrick Gnage). The stage action shows the arts flourishing under the Sun
King until Peace and Discord get into their struggle – in which Discord and his
followers are about to triumph when Peace gets Jupiter to unleash thunderbolts
to chase the discordant characters to the underworld so a time of peace can
again prevail and persist. Among Peace’s followers are characters representing
Music (Kara McBain), Poetry (Stéphanie Varnerin), Painting (Matthieu Peyrègne),
and Architecture (Dianna Grabowski) – all areas that are shown to flourish as
long as Peace persists through the reign of Louis the Great. James Richman
directs a highly idiomatic reading of the score: all the soloists are
well-versed in period performance practice; the chorus is suitably small
(Charpentier expected the soloists themselves to make up most if not all of the
choruses); and the modest instrumental ensemble (Baroque flutes, Baroque
violins, Baroque violoncello, viola da gamba, theorbo and harpsichord, the last
of those played by Richman himself) is just right for the work and for its role
in underlining and enhancing the vocal material. Charpentier’s opera is brief, running
less than 50 minutes, and is not intended to make any significant points about
peace and the lack thereof – or even about the beneficent rule of the king
(which underlies the opera but is not a point belabored). Les Arts Florissants is intended as entertainment of a particular
type, with attractive sung passages (some of them vocally challenging) and
musical expression that breaks no new ground but throughout displays poise,
elegance and balance – characteristics also associated with peace, music,
poetry, painting and architecture, and by implication with King Louis XIV.
Richman makes no attempt to overdo anything in the work or to present it more
grandly than Charpentier intended. Instead, he allows it to flourish fully
within its limited musical and emotional scope – a very effective approach. The
CD also includes a Charpentier instrumental work that gives the ensemble
chances to shine instead of appearing only in a supporting role. The Sonata a 8, H548 is really a suite,
containing the expected dances (sarabande, bourrée, gavotte, gigue, passecaille
and chaconne) and giving individual players chances to show some of their solo
capabilities. It is a very pleasant complement to a very pleasant performance
of an opera packed more with pleasantries than with profundities.
The selections performed by the ensemble Seicento vocale (so spelled) on a new Resonando CD are much more recent than Charpentier’s music, having been composed in the 19th and 20th centuries. The underlying mood is darker, too, and the concerns about conflict expressed more directly and by no means in allegorical form. The disc includes works both written and arranged for chorus; the focus throughout is less on the music (although everything is sung very well) than on the underlying theme of the depredations of war. There is no suggestion here that music is one of the handmaidens or fruits of peace, as in Charpentier – instead, the ensemble chooses works that comment directly on war and in some cases were created in wartime, the better to put across themes of sorrow, depredation and remembrance. The concerns here are scarcely unique, and listeners interested primarily in the music – notably the centerpiece of the disc, Victor Ullmann’s Die Weise von Liebe und Tod des Cornets Christoph Rilke – will be disappointed: the work by Ullmann (1898-1944), which he wrote in the Theresienstadt concentration camp, is arranged for chorus by Jan Croonenbroeck and interrupted several times to insert pieces on analogous themes by Brahms and Schumann. The setup is surely well-meaning, the interpolations being designed to enhance Ullmann’s message and heighten its effect, but from a strictly musical standpoint, the approach here overdoes the presentation of admirable but unexceptionable feelings and attitudes, making the CD into more of a lecture and less of a musical event. The result is that this is a (***) disc: it features excellent performances with strongly felt emotional underpinnings and a very fine sense of ensemble throughout – but the music is put too strongly at the service of a cause that, however worthy, is presented a bit too intensely through the modification of works that communicate quite effectively on their own. True, that communication is more subtle and less direct and pointed than in the arrangement of material here. But for that very reason, there is more thoughtfulness in the original material than in the modified presentations on this disc. The Ullmann/Brahms/Schumann mixture is preceded on the CD by Schumann’s Schnitter Tod, Op. 75, No. 1, and is followed by three additional works: Kantate von der Vergänglichkeit des Irdischen, Op. 72, by Ernst Krenek (1900-1991); Requiem “Seele, vergiß sie nicht,” Op. 144b, by Max Reger (1873-1916); and Brahms’ Dem dunkeln Schoß der heilgen Erde, WoO 20. Each of these pieces, like the original version of Ullmann’s, has something meaningful to communicate, and each is intriguing in its own right. The Reger, for example, sets words by Christian Friedrich Hebbel (1813-1863) instead of the usual Latin text used in a Requiem. And the Brahms, from Schiller’s Das Lied von der Glocke and with its meaning of “the dark womb of the holy earth,” may put some listeners in mind of Das Trinklied vom Jammer der Erde from Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde. But the fact is that strictly musical thoughts and connections are not the primary interest here: the concern of the CD is to find ways to communicate the suffering brought by war and the importance of peace. As admirable as that aim is, the approach of the disc, by bending the music to a nonmusical (or supra-musical) theme, undermines to some extent the excellent performances and the composers’ foundational thoughtfulness and expressivity.
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