(++++) UTOPIA, SOMEWHAT SELF-LIMITED

Gilbert and Sullivan: Utopia, Limited; King Arthur—Suite from the Incidental Music. Soloists; Chorus of Utopia, Limited; and The Orchestra of Scottish Opera conducted by Derek Clark. Opus Arte. $31.99 (2 CDs). 

     The penultimate Gilbert and Sullivan operetta is arguably the most English of them all, and for that very reason is difficult for non-British audiences to follow. The very title can confuse Americans, since it does not mean “Utopia, constrained” but “Utopia, Inc.,” the British “Limited” (Ltd.) being the equivalent of the American “Incorporated” (Inc.). Beyond that, the entirety of the work is a complex, indeed somewhat over-complex, interweaving of satires of very specific English/British matters and customs – not only the creation and meaning of corporations but also prudish traditions, forms of conversation, “government by party,” the War Office, the Admiralty, the Lord Chamberlain’s office, the County Council, and more. As barbed as some of the satire is, it goes above the heads, or flies below the radar, of audiences not thoroughly versed in the system that Gilbert pricked and poked to, it must be said, somewhat too great a degree. Unlike the prior operetta, The Gondoliers, to which Utopia, Limited bears numerous superficial similarities – from a setting on a distant South Sea island to critiques of the abuse of limited-liability-company creation and management – Utopia, Limited is so crammed with commentary that its plot can be hard to follow on both sides of the pond. 

     The work is chock-full of dramatis personae, too: its subtitle, The Flowers of Progress, refers to no fewer than six representatives of British customs and approaches, who together remake the formerly quiet and peaceful island of the title. Why six? The rules for establishing a limited-liability company require that “some seven men form an association,” so the six are added to King Paramount of Utopia to transform the king’s land into a thoroughly British one. Then there are the king’s three daughters, their imported British chaperone and tutor, and the rather peculiar triumvirate of “bad guys” in the form of two venal “wise men” who control the king and a “royal exploder” who will blow him up and assume the throne if he fails to toe the line. 

     It is all a bit much, and it was a bit much for Gilbert, who did not quite tie up a variety of Act I loose ends by the end of Act II. Add to that a touch of modern-day Scottish Opera prissiness in the name of political correctness – which involves changing some supposedly “offensive” Gilbert words while inexplicably leaving “worse” matters entirely alone – and you have what you would be justified in expecting to be a recipe for a less-than-enjoyable recording. 

     Yet it all works, and indeed works wondrously well. Not perfectly well – the Scottish Opera emendations would have provided considerable fodder for Gilbert, a master of giving short shrift to pretentious, self-important nonsense. But the libretto’s top-heaviness is more than overcome by the many, many excellences of Sullivan’s music: several events in Act II occur entirely wordlessly and to very fine effect, and the unaccompanied chorus Eagle High on Cloudland Soaring is a top-notch exploration of Sullivan’s late, and rather serious, style. Not that Sullivan’s skill in lighter music is missing: the aria A Tenor, All Singers Above is hilarious, and the Act II celebration of the now-accomplished “Englishness” of Utopia – sung by the king and the six Flowers of Progress, all wielding tambourines – is simply marvelous on all levels except, maybe, one. 

     About that “one”: the stage directions require the members of the septet to “range their chairs across stage like Christy Minstrels,” referring to the extremely popular, now-notorious blackface musical troupe founded by Edwin Pearce Christy in 1843. Aha! Surely the implicit racism underlying this number is what troubles Scottish Opera? Well, no. That issue is ignored; and since this release includes no libretto (not even a link to one) and Scottish Opera records only the music, the idea may be to avoid acknowledging that particular circumstance entirely. Not so elsewhere, however: conductor Derek Clark explains that some of Gilbert’s words in the finale of Act I have been rewritten because they “seem derogatory.” And what might those words be? Be sure to skitter to your safe space if your delicate ears and refined sensibility cannot handle them! One terrifying half line has the Utopians worried that they might seem to be “little better than half-clothed barbarians!” Oh no! That has to be changed to a worry that they might be “sadly lacking as good humanitarians.” And elsewhere the Utopians ask the Flowers of Progress “how to work off their social and political arrears.” Oh horrible, horrible, most horrible! It must be altered to a request to pour advice “in our attentive ears.” 

     Expert as he was at skewering the self-important, pricking their pretentiousness and pomposity, Gilbert would surely have incorporated suitable barbs about these ridiculous alterations into a libretto that could be called Scottish Opera, Needlessly Limited. The manifest peculiarities of the changes are all the more evident because the opera company has no trouble leaving in such characterizations as “simple Gauls” and “foreign-born rapscallions.” Not to mention “poppydom,” a very definite drug reference. Maybe contemporary censors don’t know those words? 

     Well, be all this as it may, the musical matters here are so good that they make the two-CD Opus Arte release a pleasure to hear so long as one does not listen too closely to the verbiage at inopportune moments. But by all means do listen to some of Gilbert’s topical references and “in-jokes.” As he did with the telephone in HMS Pinafore, he refers to a new technology here: the Kodak camera, whose slogan (“You press the button, we do the rest”) he appropriates at just the right time. And speaking of that earlier nautical opera, one of the Flowers of Progress is none other than Captain Corcoran, clearly fully recovered from his demotion in the earlier work and now identified as “Captain Sir Edward Corcoran, K.C.B., of the Royal Navy” – and quite willing to reprise, to excellent effect and in a new context, the famous lyrics: “What, never? Well, hardly ever.” 

     Utopia, Limited is a flawed work in many ways, but not the verbal ones that bother Scottish Opera. Totally Anglocentric, it does not travel well outside Great Britain, and its overlapping and imperfectly resolved plot elements make it harder to follow and less appealing from a storytelling perspective than other Gilbert and Sullivan works. But there is a great deal of marvelous music in it, and Scottish Opera, when it avoids overthinking itself into a corner and lets the music develop and flow, does a superb job with the presentation. This work is unlikely ever to curry as much favor as earlier Gilbert and Sullivan entertainments, but it has so much to recommend it – almost in spite of its own intricacy – that it is very much worth hearing and re-hearing, perhaps especially for audiences who know Gilbert and Sullivan only from The Mikado. Come to think of it, what would Scottish Opera do with that piece of what would now be called cultural appropriation? Quick, to the safe room! 

     Oh – while hunkered down therein, feel free to listen to the bonus elements of this recording: five choruses that Sullivan wrote even later than Utopia, Limited, for the 1895 stage play King Arthur by J. R. Comyns Carr. Sullivan reused some of his earlier music for the play’s introductions and entr’actes, but he created five significant and serious pieces of choral music for use at various times during the play. They are all sung by Scottish Opera’s chorus with strength and forcefulness befitting the seriousness of Carr’s drama – although it is actually the fourth and lightest chorus, The May Song, that is most appealing by virtue of being less heavy-handed and insistent than the others. Taken together with Utopia, Limited, which dates to 1893, the rarely heard King Arthur choruses provide a clear and welcome portrait of Sullivan’s musical accomplishments during his final decade of life. Except for its self-inflicted wounds, this recording is an exceptionally fine one that is well worth repeated hearings for the sake of gaining familiarity with some worthy and still largely neglected works.

(++++) WORDS SPREAD WIDE

Songs from Shakespeare’s Plays. Theatro (Brian Kay, Ashlee Foreman, Anna O’Connell, Peter Walker, Tina Bergmann, Ryan Tyndall, René Schiffer) with guest artists Damian Wilson, Joseph Trapanese, Daphna Mor, Tina Chancey, David McCormick, Gesine Bänfer, Robert Eisenstein, Jeffrey Grabelle, John Romey, Mark Cudek, Ronn McFarlane, and Brandon Acker). AVIE. $19.99. 

Cantus: Fields of Wonder—song cycles by Jean Cras, Gavin Bryars, Melissa Dunphy, Griffin Candey, and Margaret Bonds. Cantus (Jacob Christopher, Alexander Nishibun, Paul Scholtz, and Matthew Shorten, tenors; Rod Kelly Hines and Jeremy Wong, baritones; Samuel Bohlander-Green and Chris Foss, basses). Signum Classics. $20.99. 

Allen Sapp: Songs. Chelsea Hart Melcher, soprano; Paul Melcher, piano. Navona. $16.99. 

     It is easy to forget, or never to have known, that Shakespeare’s plays were what we would today call multimedia extravaganzas; and that, far from being rarefied intellectual expressions aimed at audiences’ highest mental faculties, they were the epitome of popular entertainment – not just because of their mixture of some characters (usually noble) speaking in verse while others (usually “low”) speaking in prose; and not just because their deep philosophical musings, even in the tragedies, were invariably paired with overtly lowbrow and often highly sexualized humor. Like other plays of their time, Shakespeare’s stage works combined verbiage with costumes, special effects, and music – lots of music. The players were expected to do more than declaim: they had to sing, dance, and perform on various instruments. The mixture of “high” and sometimes embarrassingly “low” (by modern standards) elements in Shakespeare’s plays remains difficult for many scholars to accept, and the mixture of prosody and music even more so, to such an extent that genuine historically informed performances of Shakespeare are virtually nonexistent – a fact attributable to modern notions of specialization for performers rather than the jack-of-all-trades concept of Elizabethan times. There are, however, a few theatrically oriented musicians who are interested in acknowledging the importance of the songs and instrumental elements of Shakespeare’s plays, and Brian Kay, director of the ensemble Theatro, is certainly among them. On a new AVIE disc featuring 33 songs and other musical material from Shakespeare, Kay not only directs a highly accomplished ensemble but also himself performs as tenor and, in addition, plays lutes, guitars, pipe & tabor, percussion, and orpharion (one of several ancestors of the guitar heard on this CD). This is a fascinating compendium of music – authentic when possible, otherwise arranged – from 14 plays: All’s Well That Ends Well, Twelfth Night, Henry VIII, Taming of the Shrew, Hamlet, Two Gentlemen of Verona, Much Ado about Nothing, As You Like It, Two Noble Kinsmen, The Merry Wives of Windsor, The Tempest, Henry IV Part 2, Othello, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The sheer variety of plays represented gives some indication of how pervasive music was in Shakespearean stage productions, and the uniformly excellent performances – singing and reading, solo and ensemble, vocal and instrumental – showcase the strong commitment to this project by all participants. John Dowland’s music is heard often here, both in instrumental form and underlying vocal material, and the arrangements of his and others’ works are varied and exceptionally effectively throughout, heard on solo lute, two lutes, Renaissance violin, viola da gamba, hammered dulcimer and more. Indeed, one pleasure of this disc is the chance to listen to instruments that even aficionados of Renaissance music may not know, including the colascione (a kind of long-necked lute), cittern (another lutelike instrument), cello da spalla (a small five-string cello held like a viola), and woodwind shawms and crumhorns. The music is presented in no particular order, but the scattershot arrangement makes little difference on a disc whose main effect is to show that music was everywhere in Shakespeare’s plays. Some songs’ words are familiar, others not; and again, this matters little in the context of this CD. True, the last of the 33 tracks, “You Spotted Snakes” from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, will put listeners in mind of the far more polished Mendelssohn setting of the words; but the point of this recording is authenticity to the extent possible, and Kay (who, on top of everything else, is also the arranger of some tracks) certainly delivers on that basis. Listeners familiar with the specific Shakespeare plays from which these pieces are drawn will get an added level of depth to go with the entertainment value of the CD, since Shakespeare himself used the material – which was the popular music of his time – to provide a gloss on the characters and their actions at specific points in the performances. But even audiences not as well-versed in Shakespeare will find a great deal to enjoy in these sensitively arranged, beautifully played and very well-sung – if under-appreciated – Shakespearean gems. 

     The singers are equally, if differently, skilled, but the music is less appealing on a new (+++) Signum Classics CD featuring the vocal ensemble Cantus. The five song cycles here – four of them world première recordings – are all about journeys of various sorts, and most share the sort of earnestness and insistence on meaning that reflect some composers’ determination to have their music come across with real-world (not just music-world) significance and importance. The singers of Cantus give every work their all – this is a group that would strive to bring clarity and meaningfulness to an arbitrary series of dictionary entries – and the CD will certainly appeal to listeners who are already fans of the quality of Cantus’ individual and blended voices. But anyone seeking an experience where the music itself is thoroughly engaging will be somewhat disappointed. Dans la montagne, a five-song cycle by Jean Cras (1879-1932) and the only work here that is not a world première, is a high point of the disc, its attractively expressive settings of words by Maurice Boucher (1882-1964) giving the singers many opportunities to explore emotions of beauty and quietude. Edwin Morgan Sonnets, Vol. 2, by Gavin Bryars (born 1943), consisting of three songs to words by Morgan (1920-2010), is well-written for vocal ensemble but tries a bit too hard to be meaningful through a mixture of environmental commentary and intended introspection (“There is a mirror only we can see”). N-400 Erasure Songs by Melissa Dunphy (born 1980), a three-movement work using words by Niina Pollari, Laura Chen, and Dunphy herself, inserts itself strongly into sociopolitical matters, requiring listeners to know that the “N-400” of the title is a U.S. government application for naturalization, and then commenting on the immigration process in poems that drift all over the page – a modernistic effect that cannot, of course, be seen within the music. The actual settings of the words are not always in accord with the texts: on the one hand, the word “reschedule” appears four times (and is sung more than that), while on the other hand, the word “process” is deliberately used only once but is sung multiple times. Whatever its merits as an advocacy piece, this is not a particularly appealing work in musical terms. Protocol by Griffin Candey (born 1988), whose three-movement cycle uses words by Aiden Feltkamp, Kaveh Akbar, and Hieu Minh Nguyen, features some interesting vocal elements, such as a sustained chord in some voices above which others weave the musical and textual line. The three sets of words are mostly complaints (“This is the man I’m not sure I want to be,” “The men could only see themselves,” “Sometimes men will touch a thing as if they’re doing it a favor”), and come across as more hectoring than does the music. Much more interesting is Fields of Wonder by Margaret Bonds (1913-1972), with seven short movements using texts from the fifth book of poetry by Langston Hughes (1901-1967). Bonds sets the words with sensitivity, carefully choosing which ones to repeat in order to emphasize their importance. Unlike the texts for all the other cycles heard here, those for this one are not provided with the disc (“copyright restrictions” are cited); but by and large, the settings are well-balanced enough so the words come through clearly. The subtle tone-painting of the morally ambiguous “Snake” and the multiple verbal repetitions of words in “Birth” are high points in a grouping that gives Cantus plenty of chances to show its strengths as a unison ensemble. Indeed, the sheer quality of the singing throughout this CD is a major plus; but despite the fine quality of the works by Cras and Bonds, even all the skill of Cantus cannot bring the other song cycles here up to an equally high level of meaningful expressiveness. 

     Matters are somewhat less ambitious and, perhaps as a result, sometimes more pleasant on a new Navona CD featuring songs and song cycles by Allen Sapp (1922-1999). Using a traditional “art song” structure of single voice plus piano, Sapp creates two extended song cycles from the works of poets long popular with composers: Robert Herrick (1591-1674) and George Herbert (1593-1633). The Herrick cycle, The Lady and the Lute, dates to 1952 and contains eight songs set in a mid-20^th-century fashion that now seems rather dated: there is considerable dissonance in the piano, and the vocal line leaps and jumps about in ways that are often at odds with the meaning of the words. Herrick was extremely prolific, writing more than 2,500 poems, but is best known for a comparative handful of earlier works that often celebrate the female body; and it is primarily those works from which Sapp selects. Although Herrick’s best-known line, “Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,” does not appear in Sapp’s cycle, similar sentiments abound in poems such as “Clear Are Her Eyes” and “Her Pretty Feet,” and Herrick’s appreciation of the female form comes through in “Whenas in Silks My Julia Goes” and “A Sweet Disorder in the Dress.” Sapp does not really take the words at face value, however, writing music that is both more complex and less straightforwardly appreciative than the poetry. Chelsea Hart Melcher and Paul Melcher present the cycle effectively enough, but there is discordance, literal as well as figurative, between Herrick’s words and Sapp’s settings of them. The Herbert cycle is even longer: it is called Affliction, contains 11 songs, and dates to 1983. Herbert’s poetry is considerably more metaphysical and sacred in orientation than Herrick’s, which makes the stridency of Sapp’s settings stand out even more strongly in contrast to many of the words. “What Pleasures Could I Want,” for example, has a first line set with deliberate syllabification that creates a feeling of discomfort immediately, while the skittering piano opening of “My Flesh Began unto My Soul in Pain” is soon joined by a vocal line that, if not painful, is certainly less than comforting. In both of these cycles, Sapp’s main concern seems to be not to elucidate the poetry, or underline the words’ meaning, but to contrast what the text says with music that moves in a very different direction. If this is an attempt at profundity or learned commentary, it falls rather flat, no matter how well the performers put across the cycles’ structures and approaches. Interestingly, this CD also includes two much smaller and rather more successful song groupings. Nursery Rhymes (1952) spins through four rhymes in four-and-a-half minutes, giving listeners a touch of tone painting (galloping piano sounds in “Ride a Cock-Horse”), a bit of amusingly offbeat waltz rhythm (“Old Mother Hubbard”), a snippet of surprising lyricism (“Little Jack Horner”), and a touch of overt cuteness (“Hickory Dickory Dock”). Sapp seems to have nothing to prove here, to himself or the audience, and the result is a kind of straightforward freshness that is more enjoyable than the portentous expressions of the more-extended song cycles. The other work on this CD, which dates to 1988, is simply called 2 Songs – and these are by far the longest settings on the disc. The first, “Anonymous Eponymous,” lasts five minutes; the second, “Riley Set Wryly,” goes on for six-and-a-half. The titles refer to the sources of the words: the first song’s lyrics are anonymous and the second one’s are by James Whitcomb Riley (1849-1916). The hymnlike chordal elements of the first song contrast neatly with the words about mischief-making, while the up-and-down bounciness of the second song is amusingly and insistently folklike and, yes, wry. This is a (+++) CD whose two short cycles are more interesting to hear and more successful in communicating the chosen texts than are the longer and more overtly serious groupings. The fine performances do a good job both of setting forth Sapp’s strengths and, intentionally or not, of highlighting some of his communicative weaknesses.

(++++) PIANISTIC ELEGANCE

Shostakovich: 24 Preludes and Fugues, Op. 87. Yulianna Avdeeva, piano. Pentatone. $26.99 (2 CDs). 

Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 3; Brahms: Piano Concerto No. 1. Joshua Pierce, piano; Slovak State Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Bystrik Rezucha (Beethoven); Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Paul Freeman (Brahms). MSR Classics. $14.95. 

     Shostakovich’s 24 Preludes and Fugues, Op. 87 were scarcely the first pieces composed to explore the major and minor keys of the chromatic scale. Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier did it twice (1722 and 1742); Chopin produced 24 Preludes, Op. 28 in the 1830s; Alkan wrote his Op. 35 and Op. 39 sets – which go well beyond the scope of other works of the type – in 1848 and 1857; and Shostakovich himself produced a work called 24 Preludes, Op. 34 in 1933, almost 20 years before writing his Op. 87 music. Shostakovich’s Op. 87, although clearly inspired by Bach, proceeds differently through the keys: Bach’s paired preludes and fugues move up the chromatic scale in major/minor pairs, while Shostakovich organizes his pieces around the circle of fifths, from zero accidentals for Nos. 1 and 2 to one sharp for Nos. 3 and 4, two sharps for Nos. 5 and 6, and so forth. Beyond this, the harmonic language and keyboard approach of Shostakovich’s Op. 87 differ in many ways from those of Bach, who of course was not writing for the piano. Still, knowledge and understanding of Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier is very helpful for performers and listeners to have in the back of their minds (or the back of their ears) while listening to the Shostakovich work. And it is evident from Yulianna Avdeeva’s careful, controlled, poised and elegant performance on Pentatone that she has studied both Bach and Shostakovich with considerable attentiveness and emerged with a thorough understanding of what Shostakovich sought in his Op. 87. It takes two-and-a-half hours to perform these 24 Preludes and Fugues, and it is to Avdeeva’s credit that her readings never seem to drag or become impatient: she explores each prelude-and-fugue pair knowledgeably and on its own terms, allowing each its individual pacing, flow and perspective. This is clear from the very start, when Shostakovich begins his C major prelude with the identical notes chosen by Bach for his prelude in the same key: on the one hand, Avdeeva explores the similarities, but on the other, she shows herself well aware of the differences – notably in the Shostakovich prelude’s harmonic complexity. Throughout the Shostakovich cycle, Avdeeva remains on firm footing, picking up the many individual touches of the components of Op. 87, with some highlights being the staccato notes underlying Fugue No. 5 (D major), the difficult scurrying of Fugue No. 9 (E major), the Bachian chorale opening Prelude No. 10 (C-sharp minor), the waltz form of Prelude No. 15 (D-flat major), the moto perpetuo Prelude No. 21 (B-flat major), and the sheer complexity of the extended (and Bach-referencing) concluding Fugue No. 24 (D minor). Like fine recordings of Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier, Avdeeva’s reading of Shostakovich’s Op. 87 reveals new details and new depth on each rehearing: she is not only technically proficient but also musically thoughtful about the structure of individual pieces and the way the parts of this work fit into its totality. And there is a small but interesting supplement to Op. 87 offered by Avdeeva as an encore: a separate Prelude and Fugue in C-sharp Minor that Shostakovich sketched but abandoned – which Polish composer Krzysztof Meyer (born 1943), who knew and was a friend of Shostakovich, completed, and which here receives its world première recording. It is scarcely a substantial work, lasting less than three-and-a-half minutes, but it is interesting to hear in a what-might-have-been way and as a chance to experience a bit more of Shostakovich’s thinking regarding what would become his monumental Op. 87. 

     First-rate pianism is at the service of much-more-familiar material on an MSR Classics CD featuring Joshua Pierce performing two standard-repertoire concertos with his usual élan. The disc includes a 1998 studio recording of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3, paired with a 1993 live performance of Brahms’ Piano Concerto No. 1, with both performances remastered and generally sounding fine. Pierce takes a somewhat speedy, if not actually over-fast, view of both concertos, more strongly so in the Brahms, which could use a bit more heft. The finale, in particular, is somewhat lacking in gravitas: it is, after all, marked Allegro non troppo, but the non troppo gets short shrift here. The overall aural ambience of the Brahms is also somewhat on the echo-y side, likely the result of the acoustics at The Reduta in Bratislava, where this performance took place. The two orchestras are comparable in sound: the Slovak Philharmonic, based in Bratislava, was founded in 1949 and is generally considered the region’s top ensemble, but the Košice-based Slovak State Philharmonic, founded in 1968, is equally effective in this frequently performed material. Both conductors are workmanlike in their handling of the music: sections-within-orchestra and orchestra-against-solo balance are fine, and if there are no particular insights into the concertos or enlightening emphases in the orchestral portions, there are certainly no unpleasant surprises either. In fact, there is really nothing wrong with these performances, and the minor critiques of them can justifiably be thought of as nitpicking. But the reality is that when music is as hyper-familiar and as frequently played and recorded as these two concertos, tiny differences of approach and sound loom larger than they would in less-commonly-heard material. It is, in fact, difficult to determine the potential audience for this disc. Neither reading is so innovative or technically outstanding as to be a must-have supplement to the complete sets of Beethoven and Brahms concertos that at-home listeners are extremely likely to have. The remastered sound is fine, but it is not exceptionally good, and the live 1993 reading of the Brahms, no matter how carefully adjusted and tweaked, is not quite at the quality level that listeners are likely to expect 30+ years after the recording was made. Pierce’s playing is the main attraction here: even if there is a certain sense of once-over-lightly in these readings, especially that of the Brahms, there is undeniable beauty, warmth and thoughtfulness in his interpretations to go with his undoubted technical ability. So the CD would seem most likely to appeal to listeners who are already fans of Pierce and would like to hear how he handles thrice-familiar works – or how he did handle them in the 1990s. That audience limitation, and the slight but noticeable less-than-stellar elements of these performances, make this a (+++) CD that is more a chance to experience one first-rate pianist’s handling of well-known material than it is an opportunity to gain any new insights into the music itself.

(+++) ILLUMINATING LESSER LIGHTS

Heinrich Marschner: Overtures and Stage Music, Volume 3. Janáček Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Dario Salvi. Naxos. $19.99. 

Carl Teike: Marches, Volume 2. The Royal Swedish Navy Band conducted by Alexander Hanson. Naxos. $19.99. 

     The byways of music history are packed – it would be cruel to say “littered” – with composers and compositions that are admirable in many ways, that may even have enjoyed considerable success for a time or under specific circumstances, but that are considerably less than compelling when rediscovered. That does not make the rediscovery itself any less worthy – there are some little-known musical jewels out there, after all, and even semi-precious gems can glow with beauty of their own. So it is admirable when conductors and producers go beyond the obvious from time to time and seek out material whose composers may now be little-known, whose reputation may be small or time-bound, but whose overall effect can be more than pleasant – especially for listeners seeking a divergence from the works of music’s acknowledged masters. Thus, Naxos is providing a genuine if somewhat limited-interest service in its ongoing recorded explorations of the music of Heinrich August Marschner (1795-1861) and Carl Teike (1864-1922). 

     Marschner is more significant for his place in music history than for his actual music. He was the most important German opera composer between Weber and Wagner, and in fact Wagner’s first opera, Die Feen, is essentially his “take” on the Marschner operatic world (as his second, Das Liebesverbot, is more-or-less a Wagnerian encapsulation of Rossini, a circumstance that was not as weird at the time as it appears to be retrospectively). Wagner was influenced to a considerable degree by Marschner’s use of melodrama centered on powerful antiheroic central characters, his expanded use of the lower range of the orchestra, and his development of supernatural protagonists with mortal failings. And on their own, two Marschner operas – Der Vampyr and Hans Heiling – remain impressive. But the conductor who is largely responsible for the ongoing Naxos releases of Marschner’s music, Dario Salvi, focuses primarily on the composer’s many less-known (and generally less successful) stage works, offering orchestral excerpts thrown more or less willy-nilly together. The result is a scattershot presentation of Marschner’s music that never really shows his skill at evoking atmospheric drama: there are plenty of pleasantries but no great sense of organizational skill in presenting them. Nevertheless, there is a lot to enjoy in Salvi’s Marschner recordings, the third of which includes the overture to a work whose very form is long since obsolete: a so-called “vaudeville,” Der Verlobung von der Trommel, which is a mashup of music by three other composers (Adolphe Adam, Karl August Krebs, and Adolf Müller) – with the overture itself being Marschner’s adaptation of Adam’s overture to Le Roi d’Yvetot, and the original stage production as a whole being designed to cash in on the popularity of Donizetti’s La Fille du regiment. The complexities of its provenance notwithstanding, the music itself is an effective curtain-raiser whose brightly upbeat conclusion nicely sets the scene for the now-forgotten entertainment it was designed to introduce. The remaining works offered by Salvi and the Janáček Philharmonic Orchestra are from Marschner operas of various times and types. From Das Schloss am Aetna, a three-act “grand romantic opera” premièred in 1836, there is an extended and effectively orchestrated overture plus five brief bits of disconnected musical excerpts that are only intermittently expressive when out of context, as they are here. Lukretia, a two-act work first heard in 1827, is here represented by an entr’acte and a suitably grand march. From Der Bäbu, a two-act comic opera first presented in 1838, there are three short pieces consisting primarily of cleverly orchestrated music representing the antics of a group of dwarfs. And from Marschner’s final opera, Sangeskönig Hiarne, a four-act work not produced until 1863, two years after the composer’s death, Salvi offers the overture, which effectively mixes mystery with solemnity and shows the composer’s skill at brass writing, plus three excerpts – also with important material for the brass section – that delineate specific scenes in the first, second and final act. Marschner was above all a composer for the stage, although he did write effectively in other forms, notably that of the piano trio. Hearing highlights from his operas and other stage works is considerably more meaningful in context than in the rather arbitrary presentation of Salvi’s series. Still, any chance to explore a bit of Marschner, and find out through direct experience of his music why he was for a time quite influential, is welcome.

     Teike, unlike Marschner, was not particularly influential on anyone, and the second release in a planned three-volume series of his marches confirms that these pieces do not really bear comparison with works by Sousa, the Strauss family, or Tchaikovsky. Yet Teike’s marches, structurally well-made and well-orchestrated for military band, are of considerable interest to listeners intrigued by the march form in the 19^th century – a time when German marches were strictly separated into concert, street and explicitly military types (those last being “parade marches” and not necessarily aggressive). Teike’s works are self-limited to the street and parade ground: they are generally foursquare pieces, scored with care and skill (Teike himself served in a military band) but without any particular inclination for out-of-the-ordinary use of instruments or for any expansion of the traditional complement of military ensembles. What Teike’s marches require to overcome their self-imposed limitations is strong, sensitive and elegant playing, and that is exactly what they receive from the Royal Swedish Navy Band conducted  by Alexander Hanson – resulting in a whole disc that is greater than the sum of its parts. Of the 18 works on this CD, fully half have been arranged, or at least tweaked, by hands other than the composer’s; but in all cases the music come across to equally good effect, indicating that the arrangers (Hans Ahrens for five marches, Anders Karlsson for two, and Erich Gutzeit for two) were sensitive to Teike’s writing and understood as well the exigencies of military-band performance. Little is known of the background of most of Teike’s marches or even of the reasons for their titles, which are often patriotic (Für Thron und Reich), sometimes evocative (Die Welt in Waffen), occasionally expressive (Treue um Treue), at times a bit puzzling (Frisch auf, one of the best here, with an unexpectedly warm introductory section), and frequently geographical (Hoch Braunschweig and Heil Potsdam). In the absence of “backstories” for the works (details of Teike’s life are themselves scarce), the music must stand on its own, and it certainly does – at attention. And if there is nothing in this Teike series that is likely to supplant marches that are already well-known and popular for both concert and military purposes, there is also nothing here to diminish Teike’s rediscovered reputation as a march composer of considerable ability within a comparatively straitened set of circumstances. All these pieces are forceful and forthright, not particularly innovative but undeniably effective in putting across a specific set of martial feelings through the skillful deployment of the forces of the military band.