Felix MENDELSSOHN (1809-1847)
A Midsummer Night's Dream, Op. 21, Op.61 (1826/1842)
Complete Incidental Music sung in English
see end of review for track listing
Jenny Wollerman* (soprano) Pepe Becker † (soprano)
Narrators: Tom Mison (Oberon, Snout, Moth) Adrian Grove (Puck, Philostrate)
Emily Raymond (Titania, Hermia) Anne-Marie Piazza (Helena, Fairy, Hippolyta,
Peaseblossom) Gunnar Cauthery (Demetrius, Quince, Mustard Seed) Peter Kenny
(Lysander, Flute, Cobweb) David Timson (Theseus, Bottom)
Varsity Voices Nota Bene Choir
New Zealand Symphony Orchestra/Judd
rec. 8-10 September 2003 (orchestral music) & 14 August 2007 (vocal items),
Wellington Town Hall, New Zealand. Speech recorded 14 September 2009, Motivation
Sound Studios, Swiss Cottage, London.
NAXOS 8.570794 [76.44]
In a very crowded field, a recording of this Mendelssohnian
tour de force has to be special to head the list. I don’t think this
Naxos issue is the one to rise to the top but it has a unique advantage in
that it gives us more of the play than any other recording; not just mere
excerpts but all the melodramas - the musical accompaniments which punctuate
the spoken verse. At 77 minutes, it is the most complete version available.
It is this inclusion which constitutes the disc’s greatest strength
but which also admits of some weaknesses. An assembly of young British actors,
directed by David Timson (who also very ably plays both Bottom and Theseus),
provides variety and characterisation rather than relying upon the talents
of one Big Name actor. Unfortunately, I came to listen to them just after
having heard the solo contribution of Dame Judi Dench in the Ozawa/DG account.
There might be only one of her, but she contains multitudes, and the warmth
and versatility of her interpretations of all the characters overshadow the
efforts of the youthful Naxos actors. Certain aspects of their performance
are very attractive, but some members of their company needed a more acute
supervisory ear to guide them in their delivery of Shakespeare’s text.
Sometimes their diction is flawed; the odd Estuary vowel (“ee-ow”
in “flower”, “wahld” for “wild”) creeps
in, and their ability to inflect the verse with nuance and subtlety has its
limitations, especially when it comes to the proper treatment of enjambment:
there is too much end-stopping, which can create a choppy effect. First impressions
are compromised by the fact that the actors who open proceedings as Puck and
a Fairy think that the way to suggest “faeriness” is to affect
a constricted, nasal tone that is almost immediately grating. It is a form
of emphasis that singers sometimes affect and is vocal production of the kind
my old voice teacher used to call “on the grab.” Matters pick
up after that: Emily Raymond is a gracious, sensuous Titania, even if she
does mispronounce “reremice” (an archaic word for “bats”)
as “rarer-mice” instead of the correct “rearmice”.
Tom Mison makes a competent job of Oberon but “I know a bank where the
wild thyme blows” goes for nothing. The Mechanicals are a jolly bunch
and as I mentioned above, David Timson shows his skill and versatility by
playing two totally different characters very convincingly. If you want to
get a much fuller experience of the music integrated into the play as literature
as the composer intended rather than just listen to bleeding chunks, this
disc fits the bill.
In his biography of the composer, Heinrich Eduard Jacob says that Mendelssohn
scribbled the evocative rising sequence of four chords which open the overture
after hearing an evening breeze rustle the leaves in the garden of the family's
home. The scurrying staccato strings which answer need to be as gossamer-light
as fairies' wings.
The New Zealand Symphony Orchestra play well enough under James Judd, but
they are no match for the sheer, silky beauty of the Boston Symphony Orchestra
with Ozawa. There is no real sense of the “otherworldly” in the
overture here - though to be fair even the Boston Symphony Orchestra for Ozawa
does not achieve the ethereal delicacy of John Nelson with the Ensemble Orchestral
de Paris on a rival Virgin Classics version; their fairy feet really scamper
pianissimo. On several occasions the New Zealand strings make a slightly creaky
start, wavering particularly at the opening of the Melodrama on Band 6 and
the Nocturne. Horns and flutes, however, are especially fine, and they are
so important in this music to evoke the mystery of the magic wood.
The two local sopranos here are utterly outclassed by the shimmering purity
of Kathleen Battle's fluting soprano paired with the slightly warmer and equally
lovely mezzo of Frederica von Stade in their "Spotted Snakes" song. Nor do
they match well; Jenny Wollerman employs ripe vibrato while her partner, Pepe
Becker, has a much more boyish sound with an incipient tremolo; they do not
really integrate and the effect is incongruous.
Both this Naxos and the Virgin recordings give us a lot more text delivered
by a small company of actors and thus offers a slightly more complete theatrical
experience, but despite the fact that Nelson gives us the best Overture and
Judd the most complete performance, neither is quite as satisfying, musically
speaking, as the superbly recorded 1992 version on DG by Ozawa, which still
leads the field. If you want the songs in German, Claus Peter Flor’s
account with Lucia Popp singing very prettily is a good option, but the translation
is, unsurprisingly, not as magical as the original Shakespearian English,
and Flor is rather sedate and measured in the Previn manner; I prefer a more
vivacious and mercurial touch such Ozawa and Nelson provide. However, Judd
and his New Zealanders perform the Big Tune numbers with wit, warmth and brio;
the Wedding March is ebullient, the donkey’s braying in the Bergomasque
suitably raucous, the timpani in the Fairies’ March charmingly piquant.
One oddity: the production of this disc extended over seven years: the orchestral
music was recorded in Wellington Town Hall as long ago as 2003, the vocal
items were made in 2007 at the same venue, then it was not before 2009 that
the spoken contributions were recorded in England - and now the disc has finally
appeared. At least the interval between the inception and issue of this disc
was not as drawn out as that between the seventeen-year-old Mendelssohn’s
composition of the overture and his addition of the fourteen incidental numbers
sixteen years later in 1842. As has often been remarked, the manner in which
he picked up the themes and threads is extraordinarily felicitous. This was
obviously a sustained, long-term enterprise by Naxos and as super-bargain
issues go, it is very good, but I see little reason to prefer it when the
market abounds in bargain versions of even better musical quality - unless
you specifically want the completeness and authenticity of a performance as
Mendelssohn conceived of it - but for that the Virgin Classics issue is superior.
Ralph Moore
Track listing
1. Overture [12:36]
2. Act I: Scherzo [4:24]
3. Act II Scene 1: How now, spirit! [2:22]
4. Act II Scene 1: Fairies' March - Ill met by moonlight [4:19]
5. Act II Scene 2: Come, now a roundel and a fairy song - Song with Chorus:
Ye spotted snakes * † [4:09]
6. Act II Scene 2: What thou seest, when thou dost wake [1:38]
7. Act II: Intermezzo [3:34]
8. Act III Scene 1: Come, sit down, every mother's son [6:57]
9. Act III Scene 2: I wonder if Titania be awaked [7:04]
10. Act III: Nocturne [6:03]
11. Act IV Scene 1: Her dotage now I do begin to pity… [5:00]
12. Act IV Scene 1: Wedding March [4:44]
13. Act V Scene 1: So please your grace, the Prologue is address'd [2:53]
14. Act V Scene 1: Funeral March: How chance Moonshine is gone [1:35]
15. Act V Scene 1: A Dance of Clowns: The iron tongue of midnight hath told
twelve [3:41]
16. Act V Scene 1: Through the house give glimmering light [0:29]
17. Act V Scene 1: Song: Through this house give glimmering light*
Now until the break of day… [5:11]
The following Comments have been submitted by David Timson
The speaking of Shakespeare is a mine-field, there are so many theories and practices that in the end which school you subscribe to, can only be matter of personal taste. Peter Hall for instance believes that the lines should be end-stopped to preserve the metre, this can at times disrupt the sense in my opinion, and modern performance of Shakespeare as taught largely in drama schools is for length of line to preserve the sense (sometimes extended over 3 ½ lines by Shakespeare) rather than slavishly follow the metre (the iambic pentameter). Shakespeare himself breaks his own rules continuously in this respect and instead of keeping a regular beat of 5 stressed syllables per line will add a sixth or break the line after 2 beats to indicate a significant pause required for the emotional journey of the character – and this is the point, Shakespeare is writing a dramatic play with characters not a sequence of poetry. Of course, an actor must do the poetic construction justice but Shakespeare (in my opinion) was a dramatist first and a poet second. Therefore I thought it essential that in the recording we gave a sense of the play and not poetic chunks. Criticism of characterisation etc. again is a matter of taste, but the actors were chosen for their ability to vocally characterise, so that a sense of the play was maintained in the extracts that were backed by Mendelssohn’s melodramas. I think the words and music should complement each other here, not compete, though it was necessary sometimes to serve Mendelssohn’s music at the expense of the flow of the verse, his cues sometimes timing differently, no doubt because he was originally using the German text. I say ‘serve M’s music’ because I was aware that this was a disc produced primarily for the music-lover perhaps rather than the theatre-goer.
Comparisons are odious, but with regard to the recording made by Ozawa, with Judi Dench. Judi Dench is of course excellent, but it is obvious that she has been directed to read the excerpts (heavily cut) as poetry. There is little attempt at characterisation, which might over-shadow the poetry, (a touch of rustic for the mechanicals, whose text is mainly cut out of the recording), and the pieces are read without any sense of their context in the play. This style of presentation means that despite having the leading British actress of her generation on the disc, she doesn’t upstage the music. We chose the opposite approach of giving listeners the opportunity to hear the play and Mendelssohn’s response to it as an integrated experience.