Johann Sebastian
BACH (1685-1750)
Kommt ihr angefochtnen Sünder
(from Cantata BWV 30)* (c 1738)
[8:46]
George Frideric
HANDEL (1685-1759)
Dejanira’s arias from Hercules HMW 60
** (1744-5) [41:20]:-
Recit. O Hercules! Why art thou absent
from me? (Act 1 Scene 1) [0:46]
Aria. The world when day’s career
is run (Act 1 Scene 1) [4:38]
Recit. Then I am lost! O dreadful
oracle! (Act 1 Scene 2) [0:54]
Aria. Then in myrtle shades reclined
(Act 1 Scene 2) [3:26]
Recit. Ye lying omens, hence! (Act
1 Scene 3) [0:10]
Aria Begone, my fears, fly, hence,
away (Act 1 Scene 3) [4:31]
Recit. It must be so! fame speaks
aloud my wrongs (Act 2 Scene 2)
[0:51]
Aria When beauty sorrow’s liv’ry
wears (Act 2 Scene 2) [4:46]
Recit. O glorious pattern of heroic
deeds! (Act 2 Scene 5) [[0:38]
Aria Resign thy club and lion’s spoils
(Act 2 Scene 5) [6:06]
Aria Cease, ruler of the day, to
rise (Act 2 Scene 6) [3:59]
Duet. Joys of freedom, joys of pow’r
(Act 2 Scene 8) [3:56] (with Joy
West (soprano))
Mad scene: Where shall I fly? Where
hide this guilty head? (Act 3 Scene
3) [6:39]
Johann Sebastian BACH
Wie fürchstamm wankten meine
Schritte (from Cantata BWV 33) ***
(c 1724) [10:43]
The early death of
Lorraine Hunt Lieberson deprived the
world of an exceptional artist and one,
moreover, who left all too few commercial
recordings. However, some archive recordings
are now beginning to emerge and this
new release, featuring previously unissued
live recordings is one such. The CD
also forms a tribute to one of her mentors,
Craig Smith, Music Director at Emmanuel
Church, Boston from 1970 until his death
in November 2007 at the age of sixty.
Smith founded Emmanuel
Music, which, besides fulfilling a liturgical
function at the church, evolved also
into a concert ensemble of no little
distinction. Perhaps Smith’s greatest
achievement was to inaugurate the practice
whereby each Sunday between October
and April, the main Sunday morning church
service includes a cantata by Bach appropriate
to the day. That tradition continues
to this day and later this year the
thirty-ninth consecutive season of liturgical
cantatas will commence.
It was through Emmanuel
Music that the then Lorraine Hunt took
some of the first steps on her solo
singing career and she maintained the
connection, I believe, for the rest
of her life, including appearances in
the Sunday cantata series. This disc,
therefore, takes us back to her singing
roots.
The disc begins and
ends with arias taken, I presume, from
complete Sunday service performances
of Bach cantatas. The aria ‘Kommt
ihr angefochtnen Sünder’ comes
from the cantata Freue dich, erlöste
schar, written for the feast of
St. John the Baptist. Alfred Dürr
writes thus of the cantata: "The
underlying mood is joyful, relaxed and
unproblematical, not only in the opening
chorus but in the four arias, where
a dance-like style is often clearly
evident." Unfortunately, to judge
by this aria at least, Craig Smith seems
to have a different conception. Presumably
with the agreement of his soloist, he
sets and extremely slow tempo and the
aria lasts 8:46.
This sent me scurrying
to my shelves for comparisons. John
Eliot Gardiner, in his Bach Cantata
Pilgrimage performance (see review)
takes a mere 5:27 but he is surely too
fleet – at his pace the aria sounds
like a gambol through the Elysian meadows.
So that might seem to suggest that Smith
is "simply" old fashioned
in his conception. But turn to Fritz
Werner’s 1971 performance (see review)
and you find a tempo that seems to me
to be just right – he takes 6:03. Beside
Werner I’m afraid Smith sounds laboured.
What saves the performance is the sheer
beauty and inwardness of Lorraine Hunt
Lieberson’s singing. On its own terms
the performance is quite lovely and
no admirer of the singer will be disappointed
but I just think the basic conception
is wrong.
Things are much more
satisfactory in the other Bach aria,
which is placed at the opposite end
of the programme. This aria is from
the cantata Allein zu dir, Herr Jesu
Christ, which is for the Thirteenth
Sunday after Trinity. Again, Miss Hunt
Lieberson’s singing is beautiful and
communicative and this time the pace
is much more sensible, I think. The
conductor here is the composer, John
Harbison, who has also had a long association
with Emmanuel Music and who, in fact,
is currently the Acting Artistic Director.
He adopts a slow pace, but this aria
can take it. Again comparisons were
instructive. Eliot Gardiner’s tempo
is almost identical (see review)
and he takes exactly as long as does
Harbison. Werner didn’t record this
cantata but another celebrated Bach
traditionalist, Karl Richter, did. In
his 1976/7 recording he takes 9:34 but
his soloist, Julia Hamari, sounds cool
besides either of her rivals and she
and Richter, whose direction is smooth
and relaxed, convey no real sense of
trepidation. Nathalie Stutzmann, for
Eliot Gardiner, is perhaps a touch more
inward than Hunt Lieberson but she’s
equally involving and it’s only by the
merest whisker that I come down in favour
of this present, excellent performance.
The remainder of the
disc is devoted to excerpts from Handel’s
oratorio, Hercules and these
excerpts contain all the music for Dejanira,
the wife of the eponymous hero. I presume,
though it’s not clear from the documentation,
that these extracts are taken from a
live account of the complete work.
The role of Dejanira
is an exceptionally demanding one, both
vocally and emotionally. She is, in
Craig Smith’s words, a "monumental
character". I can well imagine
that Lorraine Hunt Lieberson was a pretty
formidable presence in the performance
of the oratorio for these extracts show
us a vivid character portrayal.
In her first aria ‘The
world when day’s career is run’ she
is fully the grief-stricken wife, yet
she still retains dignity. Much of Dejanira’s
music is in moderate or slow tempo but
when swifter music arrives, in ‘Begone,
my fears, fly, hence, away’, Miss Hunt
Lieberson excels in the passagework.
As her jealousy of
the captive princess, Iole, begins to
take hold and her certainty that Hercules
has been unfaithful increases there’s
great sadness in the aria ‘When beauty
sorrow’s liv’ry wears’ and that is splendidly
conveyed here. Particularly outstanding
is the account of ‘Cease, ruler of the
day, to rise’, where the singing is
particularly expressive. Writing of
this disc elsewhere, but of another
aria in the programme, the critic Michael
Kennedy spoke of Miss Hunt Lieberson’s
"power to humanise every note and
bring the music to new life." How
I agree and I’d say that this comment
applies even more strongly to this deep
aria.
The final excerpt is
the Mad Scene. Here Miss Hunt Lieberson
is intensely dramatic without ever going
overboard. This is extremely demanding
music and she performs it vividly and,
once again, when the divisions arise
she displays fine vocal agility. Hers
is a tremendous performance of this
recitative and aria and, unsurprisingly,
it sparks an ovation from the audience
who, otherwise, are commendably silent
throughout.
These extracts contain
some superb Handel singing. Frequently
I was reminded of Dame Janet Baker’s
assumption of Handelian roles and I
can pay no higher compliment than that.
Despite my reservation
over the one Bach item – a reservation
that does not concern the singing per
se – this is a superb disc that
all admirers of this much-missed singer
will want to have. And if you’ve not
heard Lorraine Hunt Lieberson before,
buy this disc and discover for yourself
what all the fuss is about.
John Quinn
Lorraine Hunt Lieberson (mezzo) 
