Klassische Philharmonie Stuttgart / Frieder Bernius LUIGI CHERUBINI Messe solennelle in d

MESSE SOLENNELLE IN D

 

Kammerorchester Basel / Giovanni Antonini BEETHOVEN The 9 Symphonies

THE 9 SYMPHONIES

Kammerorchester Basel / Giovanni Antonini BEETHOVEN Symphony 9

It was astonishing, Debussy wrote in La Revue blanche on 1 May 1901, that Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony had not been buried beneath the mass of prose that it had provoked: Debussy’s comment on Beethoven’s symphony is almost as famous as the work with which it deals. The tumultuous applause at the end of the first performance had barely died away before critics were already laying into the composer and his music. 

The final movement in particular gave rise to a debate that continues to reverberate to the present day. Is the deployment of the human voice a liberating blow struck in the name of the purely instrumental symphony? Is this final movement brilliantly inspired? Or was it a “blunder”, as the bold composer himself is reported to have said about this fourth and final movement?

Bachchor Mainz / Bachorchester Mainz / Ralf Otto JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH Christmas Oratorio

J.S. Bach’s Christmas Oratorio was written for the Christmas season of 1734, and although it incorporates music from earlier works it belongs firmly among his timeless large-scale compositions. The development of the oratorio, which was to become a new musical form in Protestant church services at that time, was stimulated by Bach’s compositions, particularly by the unusual form of his six-part Christmas Oratorio. From its famously joyful opening ‘Jauchzet frohlocket’ to the arrival of the Wise Men from the East, this work’s enduring popularity has long proven its status as a choral ‘evergreen’.

Kent Nagano / Philharmonisches Staatsorchester Hamburg JÖRG WIDMANN Arche

Commissioned to write new music to inaugurate the Elbphilharmonie concert hall in Hamburg, composer Jörg Widmann drew inspiration from the shape of the building itself: “From the outside it resembles a ship. To me, the interior looked like the hold of a ship, an ark…Re-emerging into the daylight, the ark idea would not leave me alone. The inflection of the music I had to compose was clear….”  Arche, an Oratorio for soloists, choirs, organ and orchestra is a compendious work embracing the course of history in the west with a collaged libretto drawing upon a range of writers: from the unknown authors of the Old Testament to Nietzsche and Sloterdijk via Francis of Assisi, Michelangelo and Schiller. Arche looks at the tradition of the oratorio and transforms it. Dieter Rexroth in the liner notes: “What immediately stands out is above all the impression of paradox and the vast diversity of forms and musical resources. Everything happens at once, everything interlocks. Every moment transports us into another world.” Kent Nagano directs the massed musical forces with aplomb in this concert recording from the premiere performance in January 2017. (ECM Records)

Roberta Invernizzi / Thomas E. Bauer / Furio Zanasi / La Risonanza / Fabio Bonizzoni HANDEL Apollo e Dafne

For the final volume in Fabio Bonizzoni’s survey of cantatas written by Georg Friedrich Handel during his stay in Italy, the background scenery moves – like a reflection of the Grand Tour – from Rome to Naples; probably the troubled times in a Rome besieged by Imperial troops during the War of the Spanish Succession may have encouraged the young, itinerant Saxon musician to consider that heading down south was safer and more conducive for his overall career prospects.

It was a time when Handel was conceiving the three highly-charged cantatas to be heard on this disc and he would have been aware that Naples was blest with a bass singer, Domenico Antonio Manna, possessed of a prodigious vocal range, encompassing two octaves and a fifth. And maybe, Handel wrote two of the pieces performed on this disc – Apollo e Dafne and Cuopre tal volta il cielo – with Manna in mind, even if the former cantata was perhaps completed once Handel later had reached Hannover.

Carlo Vitali’s engaging booklet essay colourfully helps to summon up early 18th century Neapolitan culture and Handel’s potential place within it.

Joining Fabio Bonizzoni and La Risonanza for these modern-day realizations of the Baroque Italian musical world experienced by Handel are Furio Zanasi and Thomas Bauer for the bass roles, as well as soprano Roberta Invernizzi, an integral feature of this revelatory and much-praised Handel series since its inception. (GLOSSA)