Benedict
Sheehan: Ukrainian War Requiem. Axios
Men’s Ensemble and tenors and basses of Pro Coro Canada conducted by Michael
Zaugg. Cappella Records. $19.99 (SACD).
Vivaldi:
Arsilda, regina di Ponto. Benedetta
Mazzucato, Vasilisa Berzhanskaya, Nicolò Balducci, Marie Lys, Leonardo
Cortellazzi, Shira Patchornik, José Coca Loza, and La Cetra Barockorchester
& Vokalensemble Basel conducted by Andrea Marcon. Naïve. $19.99 (3 CDs).
The assertion of Ukrainian culture and solidarity in light of Russia’s
annexation of Crimea in 2014 and its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 is
the explicit motivating force for Benedict Sheehan (born 1980) in Ukrainian War Requiem. There is a lengthy
history of occasional music intended to celebrate battles (Handel’s Dettingen Te Deum, Beethoven’s Wellington’s Victory, Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture, and many more); and music
of wartime defiance and assertiveness has long has its place, too
(Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 7, “Leningrad,” is just one example). The history
of requiems for the dead is a longstanding one as well. The heartfelt nature of
much of this music is not to be denied, even when the words are formulaic – in
works using the traditional Latin mass for the dead, for example. Sheehan’s Ukrainian War Requiem draws on different
but related traditions, notably that of a Ukrainian memorial service called panakhyda, upon which Sheehan builds a
strictly a cappella work that draws
mostly on Ukrainian prayers and also on some Latin texts and, for a sort of
musical seasoning, Jewish melodies – a subtle reference to Russia’s claim that
it invaded Ukraine to root out resurgent Nazism even though Ukrainian President
Volodymyr Zelenskyy is Jewish. It is difficult to know what to make of this Ukrainian War Requiem on a strictly
musical basis, because it is not really intended to be listened to strictly as
music. The extent to which Handel, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Shostakovich and
others succeeded in creating music that is still performed today, despite being
written in what can be thought of as a war-related subgenre, relates directly
to how well the music transcends the time and purpose for which it was conceived.
There is no such transcendence in Sheehan’s work, which is very strictly of and
for its time and is designed both to mourn the depredations inflicted on
Ukraine and to celebrate the nation’s resilience. The music itself, listened to
objectively, is very fine: sensitive to the words, which are set in ways that
use voices effectively without over-straining them, and effectively emotive
even for audiences that do not know the languages used – the expressiveness of
the material speaks, or rather sings, for itself, with Michael Zaugg conducting
a performance replete with emotive evocation. But listening to this music
objectively is the opposite of its point. Centered at a very specific moment in
time, created as a kind of cultural assertion for a nation attempting to avoid
despair while negotiating deeply fraught political circumstances as well as
horrendous ongoing combat, Sheehan’s Ukrainian
War Requiem exists to rally the troops, both literally and figuratively:
the singers emote through their words, encouraging further resistance and
national assertiveness while mourning all that has been lost already and all
that may yet be lost in the future. Ukrainian
War Requiem is a deeply moving work for anyone who keeps its reason for
being firmly in mind throughout its 67-minute duration. But it is not a work
intended to persist in the future for its purely musical qualities, despite
having many fine ones. It is a piece that exists for sociopolitical and
geopolitical purposes; the fact that it engages those purposes through music
rather than, say, painting (as Picasso did in Guernica), is simply testimony to the particular artistic medium in
which Sheehan’s skills lie.
The purpose of Naïve’s new recording of Vivaldi’s 1716 opera Arsilda is more prosaic: this is part of the wonderful, ongoing Vivaldi Edition that is exploring works by Vivaldi found at the Biblioteca Nazionale in Turin. Specifically, it is the 74th release in the series. Vivaldi’s own purpose in creating Arsilda was more prosaic still: it was and is merely an entertainment of a specific type, designed to transport audiences to a much-fictionalized ancient time period when, the opera suggests, the ins and outs and intrigues of romance and politics were much the same as in the audience’s own 18th century. Ancient Pontus had a fascination for several opera composers, including the 14-year-old Mozart (Mitridate, re di Ponto, K. 87). Vivaldi’s Arsilda was censored in its time because the title character falls in love with another woman, Lisea – although to modern sensibilities this is understandable enough, given that Lisea spends two acts pretending to be Tamese, her twin brother. None of this is played for any sort of humor: Arsilda is a dramatic work that includes ceremonial elements, battles and a prison scene. It is also packed with freshly composed music, which was by no means true of other operas of its time, including Vivaldi’s. One aria is repeated from the oratorio Juditha Triumphans, but everything else in Arsilda was composed for it – perhaps contributing to its popularity and success in the 1716 and 1717 seasons. Structurally, the opera is very much of its time, with the plot carried along mainly through recitativo secco and recitativo accompagnato and the arias being illustrative of characters’ personalities and their feelings about various events. There are some musically clever moments, such as the second-act aria Quell' Usignuolo with its birdsong imitations, but by and large the virtuosic vocal requirements are unsurprising – which does not make them any less impressively executed by the seven soloists, who are solid in their understanding of the style of Vivaldi’s time and generally have breath control that is often, well, breathtaking. The chorus and orchestra also perform in very fine style under the direction of Andrea Marcon, who paces everything suitably and balances vocal and instrumental parts with calculated skill and a clear understanding of Vivaldi’s priorities. The modern audience for Arsilda will inevitably be a limited one: there is nothing especially gripping either in the plot (which involves mistaken identities and royal machinations) or in the music (which is expertly made and well-balanced but in no way groundbreaking or especially distinctive within Vivaldi’s oeuvre). But listeners enamored of the top-notch Vivaldi Edition as a whole, and of its opera components in particular, will be more than satisfied with the chance to experience yet more evidence that Vivaldi, who has long been known for only a tiny percentage of his music, was as much an expert in producing entertaining and well-made operas as he was in creating the huge number of three-movement concertos with which he is most closely associated.
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