Anna Prohaska / Lautten Compagney / Wolfgang Katschner BACH Redemption

BACH REDEMPTION

Anna Prohaska / Julius Drake PARADISE LOST

                                                                PARADISE LOST

Xenia Löffler / Anna Prohaska / Collegium 1704 / Václav Luks JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH Oboe Concertos & Cantatas

After the very successful album with the B minor Mass according to the Rheinische Post, the most beautiful recording of this work currently in existence Vaclav Luks and his Collegium 1704 ensemble return to Johann Sebastian Bach. Joined by Xenia Loffler, the solo oboist of AKAMUS Berlin, and the renowned soprano Anna Prohaska, Luks presents a deluxe setup for a programme of concertos and cantatas in which the oboe plays a prominent role. As a soloist, chamber musician, and orchestral musician, Xenia Loffler has gained an outstanding reputation as a baroque oboist over the past several years. Working with ensembles such as the Akademie fur Alte Musik Berlin, where she has been active as a member and soloist since 2001, she has toured throughout the world and has performed at some of the most important music festivals and concert halls.

Anna Prohaska / Il Giardino Armonico / Giovanni Antonini SERPENT & FIRE

The German soprano Anna Prohaska joins Alpha Classics for several recording projects. Her first recital brings together two superb African queens - Dido and Cleopatra - and follows them all over Europe during the first century of opera, from the 1640s to 1740. A firework display of arias, virtuosic and tragic by turns, written by the leading personalities of Baroque music ( Cavalli, Handel, Purcell, Hasse) and composers still awaiting rediscovery such as Sartorio, Graupner and the Venetian Castrovillari. For this programme built like a tragedy around the queens of Egypt anda Carthage, whom she interprets with the passion and fervour that have made her reputation, Anna Prohaska is accompanied by one of today's finest Baroque ensembles, Il Giardino Armonico; under the inspired guidance of their director Giovanni Antonini (who is also a dazzling recorder soloist in some of the arias), they keep us on the edge of our seats from start to finish.

A top star in Germany, Anna Prohaska also sings on the world's leading opratic stages, from La Scala to Covent Garden by way of Aix-en-Provence and Salzburg.

RUFUS WAINWRIGHT Take All My Loves 9 Shakespeare Sonnets

"If music be the food of love, play on,/ Give me excess of it,” commands Duke Orsino in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. And to celebrate today’s 400th anniversary of the Bard’s death, Rufus Wainwright has obliged, decking out a selection of sonnets in a dazzling array of musical genres from high opera, through grungey rock, sweet Seventies pop, minimalist piano ballads, world trance and Berlin cabaret.

Those who have always found the Canadian singer-songwriter’s baroque pop over-egged and theatrical must suspect this is the album which will clinch their argument. Even as a fan, I read the list of contributors with a mixture of excitement and concern: Siân Phillips, Florence Welch, Carrie Fisher, Helena Bonham Carter, Peter Eyre and – yikes! – William Shatner? Had Wainwright boldly gone too far this time?

Not at all. All My Loves turns out to be a box of delights: an album whose constantly shifting moods, romantic melodies and sly twists of musical wit are a perfect fit for the swoons, spite and slick conceits of the poems. The fluidity of gender, age and nationality of the voices delivering the spoken word sections give texture to the sound and universality to the emotions. There’s always something surprising around the corner: at the end, Sonnet 87 is delivered by the 92-year-old East German actress Inge Keller.

Wainwright’s interest in the sonnets dates back more than a decade, when the late composer Michael Kamen commissioned him to score Sonnet 29 (When in Disgrace with Fortune and Men’s Eyes). Director Robert Wilson asked for more music for a 2009 theatre piece, then the San Francisco Symphony called on him to orchestrate five more sonnets, three of which appeared on Wainwright’s 2010 album All Days are Nights: Songs for Lulu. The gorgeous resignation of his take on A Woman’s Face was a stand-out track. As a gay man who once told me he always goes “for straight drug addicts”, he inhabited every line of Sonnet 20, in which the poet laments that since Nature has “prick’d out” a beautiful young man’s body for women’s pleasure, he must settle for friendship.

The song is given two treatments here: early on there’s an elegant, classical delivery by Austrian soprano Anna Prohaska, all that yearning corseted up by the lofty control of her courtly art. It’s then brought up to date in a sighed pop version by Wainwright. Producer Marius de Vries suspends the weary piano and pavement pounding drums in slightly psychedelic synth effects. Shatner’s part is also pretty trippy, while Welch turns in a surprisingly delicate performance on a sugar pop setting of When in Disgrace, which almost turns into ABBA’s Chiquitita towards the end.

De Vries has form with modernising Shakespeare: he worked as a composer and producer on the soundtrack to Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet. Here he does a great job splicing Wainwright’s restless style shifts into a coherent sonic adventure.

There are a few awkward moments when Wainwright struggles to shoehorn the Shakespeare into the tunes. And others when he over-clutters the music. But he’s so playful, inventive and heartfelt that even though this album clocks in at 55 minutes, he leaves you wanting him to play on and on. (Helen Brown)

Magdalena Kožená / La Cetra / Andrea Marcon MONTEVERDI

In 2000 Magdalena Kožená took over from an ailing Anne Sofie von Otter as Nero in the Vienna Festival production of L’incoronazione di Poppea, not only saving the day but also scoring a great personal success. And yet a deeper connection to Monteverdi and his music can be traced to a far earlier date, as the singer herself recalls: “I was sixteen when I met a lutenist with whom I formed an ensemble for Baroque and Renaissance music. It was a very important experience for me, for not only did I learn the Italian language through these pieces, but I discovered a great deal about the style of the music of this period and about the way in which it is ornamented.” Since then Magdalena Kožená has explored the world of opera in far greater depth. Not only has she sung Mozart, she has also appeared in productions of Carmen, Pelléas et Mélisande and Der Rosen- kavalier. “So it’s more of a romantic repertory,” the singer explains. “But this doesn’t mean that I have banished Monteverdi from my life. I return to him again and again and I feel at home with him.” In short, the present recording marks the singer’s return to her original repertory. She is accompanied here by Andrea Marcon, with whom she has already recorded Vivaldi and Handel recitals. For Magdalena Kožená this artistic partnership represents a great gain: “Andrea has a lot of experience in this repertory, and he is also a very spontaneous sort of person: his music-making is always highly charged and full of surprises. Of course we rehearse before a concert or in advance of a recording and agree on the basic interpretation. But we know each other so well that we can then allow ourselves the freedom to improvise. This works only with certain people and only in Baroque music – for me it’s a bit like jazz, where musicians react spontaneously to the spirit of the moment.”

Yannick Nézet-Séguin / Chamber Orchestra of Europe MOZART Die Entführung Aus Dem Serail

Deutsche Grammophon’s projected cycle of the mature Mozart operas, with Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducting the Chamber Orchestra of Europe is central to Rolando Villazón’s efforts to reinvent himself as a Mozart tenor. Villazón and Nézet-Séguin are the two constant factors in the seven recordings, which are to be based on concert performances given each summer at Baden-Baden. The first set, of Così fan Tutte, appeared two years ago; a Don Giovanni followed last autumn, and the fourth instalment, Le Nozze di Figaro, will be recorded next week.

If the Festspielhaus at Baden-Baden, the largest opera house in Germany, seems an odd place to choose for recording Mozart, then on the evidence of this Entführung neither Nézet-Séguin nor Villazón is an obvious point of reference for such a project, either.

The impression of the whole performance is of something old-fashioned which, the odd desultory vocal ornament apart, could have been recorded 40 or 50 years ago. There’s a bouncy enthusiasm to Nézet-Séguin’s approach, with its wide, dynamic contrasts, but not a great deal of subtlety, though the COE is its usual cultivated and alert self. The inclusion of a fortepiano continuo, which can only rarely be heard behind the weight of the modern strings and wind, seems tokenistic, especially with voices placed as far forward in the recording as they are, though the acoustic is consistent, and for once the spoken dialogue seems to belong in the same acoustic as the rest of the performance, with Thomas Quasthoff taking the purely speaking role of the Pasha Selim.

Villazón is Belmonte, but neither his sound nor his style is really plausible. It’s all very generalised, and often he could be singing Verdi rather than Mozart, with coloratura that is laboured, and tone that seems alternately nasal and curdled. The sense of style that’s missing in Villazón’s singing is emphasised by the other tenor, Paul Schweinester as Pedrillo, and especially by Diana Damrau as Konstanze, but Anna Prohaska is a disappointingly anonymous Blonde, and Franz-Josef Selig a surprisingly lightweight, rather unmenacing Osmin. Alongside the best performances already in the catalogue, whether traditional (conducted by Karl Böhm, say, or Colin Davis) or historically aware (William Christie or John Eliot Gardiner), this new version doesn’t begin to compete. (The Guardian)

Anna Prohaska / Eric Schneider BEHIND THE LINES

Judging from the photos used to publicise Anna Prohaska’s new album – one of them is dancing merrily above this review – this gorgeously gifted soprano should have been singing this spin-off recital wearing an army great coat. She compromised with a severe black tunic and trousers with military references and a slight science-fiction cut: she could almost have been a futuristic soldier from the old Korda film Things to Come. In her case the things that came were the complete tracks of her Deutsche Grammophon CD Behind the Lines: songs from around Europe and America about war and the pity of war; songs of drummer boys, valiant grenadiers, mothers, ghosts. Joan of Arc made an appearance too, via Liszt’s dramatic scena Jeanne d’Arc au bûcher. As she launched her programme’s European tour I wondered if Prohaska’s voice – bright, lightweight and magically lyrical – would actually suit a repertoire marked with male bravado, bitter ironies and intense cries of pain. I need not have been bothered. Supported by Eric Schneider’s always conscientious piano accompaniment, she was magnificent, and very penetrating in her top register. When she sang Liszt’s repeated line about saving France I’m sure France heard her. Lower down, if the notes sped by fast, the sunshine of her voice did, it’s true, get a bit clouded over. Hugo Wolf’s Eichendorff setting "Der Soldat" certainly needed clearer projection for the words to carry their full zing. But, whatever the register traversed, Prohaska’s emotional identification and acting skills always helped fill out the song’s picture. No characterisation was better than the child thrilled with her mother going off to war in Eisler’s typically trenchant "Kriegslied eines Kindes". The grisly abandon of the child’s drum imitations; the relish when Kaiser Wilhelm’s name was intoned; the white calm that descended when the child visualised the mother wounded in hospital: every line of this wonderful song delivered a sharp sardonic kick. What joy, too, to find two artists creating a concept album and recital that actually makes musical and intellectual sense. The 25 songs about the dreams and realities of soldiering often involved big jumps in style: another of Eisler’s firecracker songs, from the Hollywood Liederbook, exploded right after one an exquisite meringue by Roger Quilter, "Fear No More the Heat o' the Sun". But in this year marking the anniversary of the First World War, every juxtaposition, sometimes bridged by songs sharing the same key, made the audience think and feel. Prohaska and Schneider’s most stunning coup was to follow the high romance of Schubert’s "Ellens Gesang", to flowery words by Sir Walter Scott, with the Expressionist screams of a poem by Georg Trakl, belligerently set by a young Wolfgang Rihm. I needed the interval to recover. Along the way, Prohaska suggested that she was impressively fluent in every language, not perhaps surprising given her own mixed family background (Austrian, English, Irish, Czech). In Rachmaninov I felt the Russian earth move. French vowels fluted impeccably in Poulenc’s "Le retour du sergent" and the peaceable encore from Fauré. American English bobbed up too in a button-holing trio of Charles Ives, including the marvellous "In Flanders Field", and the concluding duo, less musically satisfying, from Weill’s settings of Walt Whitman. But German remained her chief meat and drink, with the emotional peak probably reached in Mahler’s Wunderhorn song about the girl visited by her soldier sweetheart’s ghost: a song indeed heard many times before, but rarely with Prohaska’s degree of lyrical tenderness, or so much of the art that conceals art. Even if she’d sung this recital wearing bright pink, we’d still have been left heartbroken, lying at her feet. (Geoff Brown)

Miloš LATINO Gold

One of the hottest properties in classical music, MILOŠ came to international attention in 2011 with his debut album The Guitar/ Mediterráneo which, in the space of just a few months, topped classical charts around the world, sold over 150,000 copies and won him Gramophone’s Young Artist of the Year Award.

Miloš Karadaglić, an exclusive Deutsche Grammophon/Mercury Classics recording artist, released his second album Latino in 2012 and went on to receive both Classic Brit (UK) and Echo Klassik (Germany) awards. Reviewing the album Gramophone commented “Karadaglić is a guitarist of superior musical and technical gifts who allows his personality to sing through the music with taste and intelligence” and The Daily Telegraph added “this new Latin American programme is outstanding in its finesse, warm sensuality and sheer beauty.”

In March 2012 Deutsche Grammophon/Mercury Classics released Latino GOLD – a special CD/DVD edition that includes new recordings of works by Piazzola, Villa-Lobos and some of the most popular South American composers. HEARTSTRINGS, a one hour documentary film has been released simultaneously and will be aired on TV throughout the year.