While not a die-hard fan of the greater
excesses of high-romantic repertoire, I have enjoyed this
disc immensely. Donald Runnicles is building quite a discography
of mainstream work for Telarc, and the results prove that
the triangular relationship between him, the Atlanta Symphony
and this fine record label works just fine, thank you very
much. What I like about all concerned here is the depth of
expression, managed without histrionics or saddlebagged with
sentimentality.
The recording begins with Wagner’s Prelude and Liebestod
from Tristan und Isolde. Wagner combined these two
pieces as a concert work which was first performed in 1863,
two years before the complete opera received its premiere.
Christine Brewer, a recognised Wagnerian soprano having sung
the complete Isolde in concert performances at the
Edinburgh International Festival with the Bamberg Symphony
Orchestra, is as powerful and operatic as one might expect.
Her voice has a deep, rich quality which adds colour and visceral
muscularity to a silvery top, giving the whole an attractive
durability. I admire her restraint in much of the music, saving
up for the true climaxes and never going ‘over the top’: this
is Wagner to savour and revisit, often.
Richard Strauss
wrote Tod und Verklärung (Death and Transfiguration)
in 1888, when he was a 25-year-old assistant conductor of
the court opera at Weimar. The work is a tone poem depicting
the final hours of a dying man. Strauss himself conducted
the premiere in 1890, and for many years it was his most popular
work among concertgoers, having, like Berlioz’s Symphonie
fantastique, a clear and unambiguous programme. Strauss’s
musical depictions of illness and death were so vivid that
many erroneously believed that the composer must have been
deathly ill when he wrote it. The Atlanta orchestra create
a grand spectacle with this work, and hi-fi buffs can enjoy
magnificent swings of dynamic, rumbling bass brass and winds,
and sometimes startling timps. Runnicles has the perfect ear
for detail, always ensuring that inner voices are clear even
when the orchestra is in full cry.
In 1947, in his
eighties and probably contemplating his own death, Strauss
set an orchestral song to Im Abendrot (At Sunset),
a poem reflecting on final rest written by Joseph von Eichendorff.
Soon after, Strauss identified four poems of a similar nature
by Hermann Hesse and began a cycle of four songs. He lived
long enough to complete only three of these, but the set as
it stands seems inseparable, even though they amount to something
less than a ‘cycle’ as such. Again, Christine Brewer’s voice
draws you in, avoiding any of the foibles which singer colleagues
of mine have so colourfully described to me in the past. The
unavoidable comparison is that of Jessye Norman, recorded
in 1982 with Kurt Masur in Leipzig and still one of Philips’
evergreen titles. For many, this will be unequalled, and I
suspect that this new recording will do little to dissuade
Norman fans that hers is the best. Personally I find little
to choose between each singer’s approach to these works, both
being equally sensitive to the non-operatic nature of the
orchestral song. It will depend very much on your taste in
vocal colour, and it just so happens that I find Brewer’s
sound more appealing, most notably in the climax moments,
where Norman’s voice has a certain hardness which has turned
me off in the past. In any case, her diction is excellent,
her vibrato expressive and most certainly not excessive, her
interpretations of the texts moving and poignant. In possession
of this alternative I have found myself re-experiencing these
glowingly expressive works with refreshed and grateful ears.
With a recording
of well-nigh demonstration quality and singing to match, this
is an irresistible ‘must-have’ for connoisseurs of these fine
works. Having them all together on one disc is something of
a desert-island luxury, and I shall treasure this addition
to my library for years to come.
Dominy Clements
for
details
Christine Brewer(soprano)
