Benjamin Bernheim / PKF - Prague Philharmonia / Emmanuel Villaume BENJAMIN BERNHEIM

“Working in partnership with Deutsche Grammophon, a label with such a long and illustrious history, is both an enormous honour and a huge responsibility,” says Bernheim, for whom the world’s most prestigious opera houses are already homes from home. “It’s given me an even greater incentive to perform at the very highest level.” Born in Paris in 1985, Bernheim studied in Lausanne then became a member of Zurich Opera’s renowned International Opera Studio. Before long he was one of the most sought-after lyric tenors worldwide, and he is now regularly invited to appear at La Scala, Milan, the Berlin Staatsoper, the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, the Vienna Staatsoper and the Salzburg Festival, among many others. Wherever he goes, he captivates audiences with his mesmerising vocal and dramatic interpretations.

Accompanied by the Prague Philharmonia under the baton of Emmanuel Villaume, on his debut DG album Bernheim presents a varied programme drawn from the Italian, Russian and French operatic repertoire. His vocal and expressive versatility can be heard, for example, in Lensky’s aria from Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin, an opera in which he enjoyed huge success at the Deutsche Oper in Berlin, and in Edgardo’s “Tombe degli avi miei” from Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor. Another of the characters featured here is Puccini’s Rodolfo (La bohème), a role he sees as “steeped in tradition”, and therefore one for which he needed to find his own personal interpretation – “a challenging but hugely rewarding experience”. The music of his birthplace is particularly close to his heart, and is represented on the album by arias such as “En fermant les yeux” from Massenet’s Manon, “L’Amour! Oui, son ardeur” from Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette and “Salut! demeure chaste et pure” from the same composer’s Faust. “The French repertoire requires perfect diction and the ability to convey the meaning behind the text as well”, observes Bernheim. “There is so much poetry in these pieces and there are so many details to discover in them. My aim is to bring all of this out in my performances. These are works in which I can give 150% and use every different facet of my voice.”

Angela Gheorghiu ETERNAMENTE

For Eternamente, her first studio recording in six years, soprano Angela Gheorghiu focuses on Italian composers of the generation that followed Verdi and predominantly on repertoire she has not sung before – including some fascinating rarities. Joining her for duets from Mascagni’s Cavalleria rusticana and Giordano’s Andrea Chénier is another star of today’s opera stage, tenor Joseph Calleja.

Eternamente is described as a collection of verismo – the term used generically for Italian opera of the immediate post-Verdi era. No matter when they were composed, and no matter what their subject matter, all these operas demand great passion and commitment from their performers – and they get it from Angela Gheorghiu. “It is like my soul, it is something different, it is not the voice,” she explained in an interview with Opera magazine. “The voice is also there, it has to be there, and it has had to be prepared – but at that moment of the performance, there is more. The response is never a conscious exaggeration – it is a natural expression. I am never pretending. It is just how I am at that moment.” The character and impact of her voice was summarised thus in Gramophone: “With her smooth and dark-toned soprano, a voice at once powerfully firm and vulnerable, Gheorghiu stands out from an entire generation of talented singers. Her sound is convincingly Italianate in the great tradition; her voice, once heard, is never forgotten.”

Diana Damrau MEYERBEER Grand Opera

There’s a great deal to admire in this release, the realisation of a long cherished idea for Diana Damrau. It’s meticulously sung, well researched and beautifully presented. And don’t be fooled by the ‘grand opera’ title: it’s not just a matter of works in the spectacular genre with which Meyerbeer is most closely associated. There’s repertoire in German and Italian as well as from French opéras both grands and comiques, plus plenty of music from before the composer conquered Paris, going back as far as the singspiel Alimelek, oder Die beiden Kalifen (1814).

Damrau’s own enthusiastic note in the booklet emphasises the variety that the programme demonstrates. And, to a certain extent, we hear that as we run the gamut from charming simplicity in the German works, Rossinian fireworks in the Italian ones to, well, Meyerbeerian fireworks in the French.

But having a whole disc of soprano arias by a composer whose major concern never seems to have been three-dimensional characterisation also seems to undermine the very point Damrau is trying to make. A third of the arias feature extensive flute obliggato, for example, others clarinet – or both. Perky coloratura, dispatched with cool aplomb by Damrau, is a standard device. Meyerbeer could certainly string notes (and lots of them) together fluently, but he struggled to hit upon truly memorable melodies.

There’s still plenty of originality, though. Take the mournful, heartfelt cor anglais solo in Isabelle’s ‘Robert, toi que j’aime’, which looks forward to Berlioz’s ‘D’amour l’ardente flamme’ (while also bearing a less fortunate melodic similarity to Monsieur Triquet’s ditty in Eugene Onegin) – and Damrau rises to some exciting drama in its final moments. She’s also outstanding in Palmide’s ‘Con qual gioia’ (from Il crociato), which feels like three virtuoso arias for the price of one, and the extensive vocal fluff of Marguerite’s ‘Ô beau pays de la Touraine’ (Les Huguenots).

The soprano’s technique remains unruffled regardless of what challenges are thrown her way, a tendency to sag on trills notwithstanding. But the voice is not big on colouristic variety and only hints at steely determination rarely, emphasising the somewhat passive, generic nature of many of the women represented here. Sample someone like Natalie Dessay in the ubiquitous ‘Ombre légère’ to hear what more can be done. The scholarly and detailed booklet essay might have helped, too, had it furnished us with dramatic as well as musicological context for the music.

The Lyon Opera forces under Emmanuel Villaume offer fluent, lively support (I hope the flautist got paid overtime), as do the other singers making cameos. This is certainly a useful, generously filled and well-recorded compendium, better for dipping into rather than consuming in one sitting. Whether it will do anything to change your mind on Meyerbeer himself is another matter. (Hugo Shirley / Gramophone)

Andrew von Oeyen SAINT-SAËNS - RAVEL - GERSHWIN Piano Concertos

Warner Classics renews its collaboration with the PKF-Prague Philharmonia and the orchestra’s music director and chief conductor Emmanuel Villaume, with a new album to be released in January 2017.

Critically acclaimed pianist Andrew von Oeyen makes his label debut with the PKF-Prague Philharmonia and Villaume for a high-energy album of music by Saint-Saëns, Ravel, and Gershwin.

As with the orchestra's 2014 label debut Héroïque, with New Orleans-born tenor Bryan Hymel singing grand opéra rarities, the forthcoming release brings French and American connections to the fore.

Von Oeyen says that the choice of repertoire has been influenced by his own travels and the two centers of his international career. “I have been living between France and the US since 2002. Both Ravel and Gershwin appeal to me, as do croissants and bagels!” he explains.

“Perhaps, then, it is no coincidence that my first album for Warner Classics presents a Franco-American theme and explores the interplay between the two cultures. The unifying thread is Maurice Ravel, who knew both Camille Saint-Saëns and George Gershwin.”

A pianist of “indisputable gifts [with] an extravagantly thorough and effortless technique,” (Los Angeles Times), von Oeyen makes his Warner Classics debut with Ravel’s jazz-tinged Concerto in G and Saint-Saëns’s Piano Concerto No.2 in G Minor, written 60 years earlier. Alongside these two French masterpieces, von Oeyen has opted for a rarely-performed work by the composer of An American in Paris: not the sparkling Rhapsody in Blue for which Gershwin is most famous, but his Second Rhapsody (1931).

“It bears all the hallmarks of Gershwin’s genius and, in my estimation, at times even surpasses its prototype. Certainly it deserves to be played more often, particularly in the orchestration heard on this album,” von Oeyen affirms. “Probably no American composer was more influenced by the music of Ravel than Gershwin and no French composer more influenced by the music of Gershwin than Ravel,” he adds.

Having made his debut at the age of 16 with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Esa-Pekka Salonen, von Oeyen went on to study at the prestigious Juilliard School and Columbia University in New York. He now divides much of his time between Los Angeles and Paris.

Strasbourg-born Emmanuel Villaume was appointed Music Director and Chief Conductor of the PKF-Prague Philharmonia in September 2015. In February of that year, they made their Warner Classics debut in American tenor Bryan Hymel’s album Héroïque: Opera News praised “Emmanuel Villaume’s stunning work with the Prague Philharmonia throughout the disc”. (Warner Classics)

Anna Netrebko / Slovenian Philharmonic Orchestra / Emmanuel Villaume TCHAIKOVSKY Iolanta

Tchaikovsky’s last opera, written in 1891, is a work you can love deeply while knowing it really isn’t the greatest piece. Even the composer felt it was basically a rehash of earlier work, but it has an atmosphere all its own, and though not a great deal happens, the heroine is treasurable and there is much really gorgeous writing. 

Anna Netrebko wants to make it better known in the West and the result is this record of a concert tour made with Emmanuel Villaume and the Slovenian Philharmonic. It starts well, the rather constipated wind intro melting into lilting Schubertian strings that fix the score’s sweet longing. Netrebko starts beautifully too, low down with the softest grain to the voice, and this intimate mode works well. It’s when something more passionate is wanted that things fall short, with even Netrebko herself sounding strained at times. The other singers are pretty good – the lyrical Vitalij Kowalyow as René, Lucas Meachem a velvety Ibn Hakia, Sergey Skorokhodov’s beautifully smooth, masculine tenor Vaudémont full of romantic ardour – but the ensemble tends to get soupy and Villaume, for all the nice textures, cannot heat up his orchestra enough for the indulgent passion this work demands.