MusicWeb International One of the most grown-up review sites around 2024
60,000 reviews
... and still writing ...

Search MusicWeb Here Acte Prealable Polish CDs
 

Presto Music CD retailer
 
Founder: Len Mullenger                                    Editor in Chief:John Quinn             


CD REVIEW

Some items
to consider

new MWI
Current reviews

old MWI
pre-2023 reviews

paid for
advertisements

Acte Prealable Polish recordings

Forgotten Recordings
Forgotten Recordings
All Forgotten Records Reviews

TROUBADISC
Troubadisc Weinberg- TROCD01450

All Troubadisc reviews


FOGHORN Classics

Alexandra-Quartet
Brahms String Quartets

All Foghorn Reviews


All HDTT reviews


Songs to Harp from
the Old and New World


all Nimbus reviews



all tudor reviews


Follow us on Twitter


Editorial Board
MusicWeb International
Founding Editor
   
Rob Barnett
Editor in Chief
John Quinn
Contributing Editor
Ralph Moore
Webmaster
   David Barker
Postmaster
Jonathan Woolf
MusicWeb Founder
   Len Mullenger

alternatively
CD: AmazonUK AmazonUS
Download: Classicsonline

 

Royal Mezzo
Samuel BARBER
(1910–1981)
Andromache’s Farewell, Op. 39 (1962) [13.10]
Hector BERLIOZ (1803–1869)
La mort de Cléopâtre (1829) [21.32]
Maurice RAVEL (1875–1937)
Shéherazade (1903) [17.23]
Benjamin BRITTEN (1913–1976)
Phaedra, Op. 93 (1976) [14.43]
Jennifer Larmore (mezzo)
Grant Park Orchestra/Carlos Kalmar
rec. Orchestra Hall, Chicago, 4-5 August 2006 (Barber and Berlioz); Harris Theater for Music and Dance, Millenium Park, Chicago, 29-30 June 2007 (Ravel and Britten)
CEDILLE RECORDS CDR90000 104 [67.15]
Experience Classicsonline

Jennifer Larmore’s latest recital record moves away from the territory for which she is best known in the UK, namely Handel and Rossini. Instead she gives us three cantatas all loosely linked by the theme of tragic Queens. The cantatas range from Berlioz’s Death of Cleopatra to Barber’s Andromache’s Farewell and Britten’s Phaedra. Along the way she also includes Ravel’s Shéherezade, neither Royal nor a cantata but nonetheless welcome.
 
The problem with this programme is that the pieces are all rather intimately linked to other notable singers. It is difficult to think of Britten’s Phaedra without calling up the voice of Janet Baker for whom the work was written. Baker also made a very fine recording of the Berlioz cantata. Similarly Shéherezade is rather dominated in the catalogues by the inimitable recording of Régine Crespin. And Andromache’s Farewell was written for Martina Arroyo. But we must try to forget all this and concentrate on the present recital.
 
Barber’s Andromache’s Farewell was written for the New York Philharmonic’s first season in the Lincoln Center. The text, translated by John Patrick Creagh, comes from Euripides’s The Trojan Women and deals with Andromache’s harrowing farewell to her young son as she goes into slavery. The piece could almost be seen as a dummy run for Antony and Cleopatra, which he wrote shortly afterwards. Barber consciously tried to modernise his language for the piece. Though it probably sounded a little old-fashioned in some circles in the 1960s it now comes over as a powerful slice of music-making. The form is quite traditional, a cantata as understood by Berlioz. Barber’s skill is in the direct way he addresses the emotions of the piece.
 
Larmore does not have a grand Romantic voice. Hers is a very warm but direct instrument perhaps shaped by her skill in bel canto and Baroque music. This is certainly no bad thing and she creates a direct and powerful impression as Andromache. But there were moments when I wanted more, something of a searing intensity rather than the powerful control which Larmore gives us.
 
She follows this with the Berlioz cantata, which was written in 1829 as Berlioz’s entry for the Prix de Rome. On this occasion Berlioz failed to win the prize. Cleopatra was too dramatic and too new in style, though he would go on to win it another year. Larmore’s voice with, its good line and classical overtones, is a good match for Berlioz’s neo-classical yet dramatic piece. But we still come back to comparisons. Larmore, good though she is, does not eclipse memories of Janet Baker, especially as their voices have elements of timbre in common. Larmore never seems to be able to quite let go the way Baker does in this music.
 
Larmore seems more at home in the Britten cantata, perhaps because she is less called upon to use pure bel canto techniques. The cantata was written at the end of Britten’s life for Janet Baker. Britten had it in mind to write an opera based on Phaedra but was too ill to contemplate such an exercise. Instead he wrote this brilliant opera in miniature, based on lines taken from Robert Lowell’s translation of Racine’s Phèdre. He modelled the piece on Handel’s cantatas, partly as a tribute to Janet Baker who was a fine Handel interpreter. Larmore does not quite capture the feeling of the crazed middle-aged woman that other interpreters have. If you are really looking for a recording of this cantata, then I would advise you to consider Lorraine Hunt Lieberson (Elatus).
 
Instead of a fourth Queenly cantata, Larmore has opted for a performance of Ravel’s Shéherezade. Here again, it is difficult to listen to her fine line and perfectly reasonable French without remembering the gorgeous tone and verbal subtleties of Régine Crespin. I know that it is notoriously unfair to complain that one performer’s work is not like another. But here I find that, for me, Larmore fails to eclipse the earlier recording. She is not Crespin and, competent though the recording is, she does not quite give us anything new and different.
 
I would have preferred to like this recording more, but instead I found that none of the tracks quite moved me the way I wanted. Larmore always seems a little too in control. She is well supported by Carlos Kalmar and the Grant Park Orchestra. The orchestra is the resident one for the Grant Park Music Festival in Chicago; the Festival was founded in 1935 and the orchestra in 1943. The accompaniment is not quite as luxuriant as some of the other recordings that I have mentioned but the players are confident in the various styles of music that Larmore has chosen.
 
The CD booklet includes and informative article about the four pieces and full texts and translations. It states in the booklet that the pieces were recorded in concert, but there is no evidence of a live audience.
 
If you like the particular combination of pieces on this disc then look no further. These performances will certainly not disappoint even if they don’t quite inspire.
 
Robert Hugill
 

 


Advertising on
Musicweb


Donate and keep us afloat

 

New Releases

Naxos Classical
All Naxos reviews

Chandos recordings
All Chandos reviews

Hyperion recordings
All Hyperion reviews

Foghorn recordings
All Foghorn reviews

Troubadisc recordings
All Troubadisc reviews



all Bridge reviews


all cpo reviews

Divine Art recordings
Click to see New Releases
Get 10% off using code musicweb10
All Divine Art reviews


All Eloquence reviews

Lyrita recordings
All Lyrita Reviews

 

Wyastone New Releases
Obtain 10% discount

Subscribe to our free weekly review listing

 

 


EXPLORE MUSICWEB INTERNATIONAL

Making a Donation to MusicWeb

Writing CD reviews for MWI

About MWI
Who we are, where we have come from and how we do it.

Site Map

How to find a review

How to find articles on MusicWeb
Listed in date order

Review Indexes
   By Label
      Select a label and all reviews are listed in Catalogue order
   By Masterwork
            Links from composer names (eg Sibelius) are to resource pages with links to the review indexes for the individual works as well as other resources.

Themed Review pages

Jazz reviews

 

Discographies
   Composer
      Composer surveys
   National
      Unique to MusicWeb -
a comprehensive listing of all LP and CD recordings of given works
.
Prepared by Michael Herman

The Collector’s Guide to Gramophone Company Record Labels 1898 - 1925
Howard Friedman

Book Reviews

Complete Books
We have a number of out of print complete books on-line

Interviews
With Composers, Conductors, Singers, Instumentalists and others
Includes those on the Seen and Heard site

Nostalgia

Nostalgia CD reviews

Records Of The Year
Each reviewer is given the opportunity to select the best of the releases

Monthly Best Buys
Recordings of the Month and Bargains of the Month

Comment
Arthur Butterworth Writes

An occasional column

Phil Scowcroft's Garlands
British Light Music articles

Classical blogs
A listing of Classical Music Blogs external to MusicWeb International

Reviewers Logs
What they have been listening to for pleasure

Announcements

 

Community
Bulletin Board

Give your opinions or seek answers

Reviewers
Past and present

Helpers invited!

Resources
How Did I Miss That?

Currently suspended but there are a lot there with sound clips


Composer Resources

British Composers

British Light Music Composers

Other composers

Film Music (Archive)
Film Music on the Web (Closed in December 2006)

Programme Notes
For concert organizers

External sites
British Music Society
The BBC Proms
Orchestra Sites
Recording Companies & Retailers
Online Music
Agents & Marketing
Publishers
Other links
Newsgroups
Web News sites etc

PotPourri
A pot-pourri of articles

MW Listening Room
MW Office

Advice to Windows Vista users  
Questionnaire    
Site History  
What they say about us
What we say about us!
Where to get help on the Internet
CD orders By Special Request
Graphics archive
Currency Converter
Dictionary
Magazines
Newsfeed  
Web Ring
Translation Service

Rules for potential reviewers :-)
Do Not Go Here!
April Fools




Return to Review Index

Untitled Document


Reviews from previous months
Join the mailing list and receive a hyperlinked weekly update on the discs reviewed. details
We welcome feedback on our reviews. Please use the Bulletin Board
Please paste in the first line of your comments the URL of the review to which you refer.