RECORDING OF THE MONTH
Peggy GLANVILLE-HICKS (1912–1990)
Sappho - Opera in Three Acts to libretto from the play by
Lawrence Durrell and Bliss Carman’s 1907 100 Sappho Lyrics (1963) [128:07]
Deborah Polaski (soprano) - Sappho
Martin Homrich (tenor) - Phaon
Scott MacAllister (tenor) - Pittakos
Roman Trekel (baritone) - Diomedes
Wolfgang Koch (bass-baritone) - Minos
Sir John Tomlinson (bass) - Kreon
Jacquelyn Wagner (soprano) - Chloe/Priestess
Bettina Jensen (soprano) - Joy
Maria Markina (mezzo) - Doris
Laurence Meikle (baritone) - Alexandrian
Coro Gulbenkian
Orquestra Gulbenkian/Jennifer Condon
rec. Grande Auditório, Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon, 10-20 July 2012
first recording
full English text included
TOCCATA CLASSICS TOCC0154-55 [61:21 + 66:48]
Whatever your views on the music or the performance, that this recording exists
at all is an extraordinary story, and due congratulations must be offered
to the hard work and dedication of all involved, in particular of Jennifer
Condon. Her “normal” job is as a prompter at the Hamburg Opera, but she has
been responsible for editing this previously unpublished work, preparing it
for performance, persuading a large and distinguished cast to take part, in
some cases without any remuneration, as well as conducting the performance.
This shows a commitment to the work that may seem eccentric to the cynical
but heroic to others who have laboured in vain on behalf of other similarly
neglected works.
Peggy Glanville-Hicks was an Australian composer whose teachers included Vaughan
Williams, Egon Wellesz and Nadia Boulanger, who was married for a time to
Stanley Bate, another neglected composer, and who spent twenty years in New
York before moving to Greece and finally back to Australia. Her other works
include the opera The Transposed Heads, commissioned by the Louisville
Orchestra and recorded by them in the 1950s and in 1984 by the West Australian
Symphony Orchestra. I have listened many times to both recordings with increasing
pleasure so that I have been very eager to hear the present discs.
Sappho is a setting of an adaptation by the composer of a verse play
by Lawrence Durrell. It tells of the Lesbian (but not lesbian) poet Sappho
in her latter years when she was married to a wealthy local merchant, Kreon.
The various scenes show her with the twin brothers, Pittakos and Phaon, with
her tutor, Minos, and with Diomedes, a drunken poet. Towards the end she is
exiled to Corinth on a false charge of incest. Her final monologue, the only
part of the opera to have been publicly performed, is the clear climax of
the opera, with Sappho accepting the impermanence of personal relationships
as well as of her own life. It mirrors similar scenes at the end of operas
by Strauss and Janácek, albeit that it is very different in its musical style.
That style derives to a great degree from the composer’s attempt to reduce
the importance of harmony in music, and to throw the emphasis instead on texture
and tone, melody and heterophony. The result may seem a little bland at first
but the listener soon adjusts to the composer’s very individual style.
A quick glance at the cast list shows several distinguished Wagnerian singers.
Very surprisingly that appears to have been a necessity due to the weight
of some of the orchestration. The conductor’s note indicates that she believes
that with adjustment to dynamics and some of the orchestration it could be
performed on a smaller scale, and I have to say that this would be welcome.
In fact the ideal might be to retain the Wagner-sized voices but allow them
to sing at somewhat less than full power. That would permit a more nuanced
approach to performance and a more natural delivery of the, admittedly somewhat
flowery, text. I am full of admiration for the cast here, who have taken on
a major new work with obvious enthusiasm, but it has to be admitted that for
much of the time there is a lack of any attempt at light or shade in their
singing. The many singers for whom English is not their first language cope
well but it cannot be said that the result sounds idiomatic. Admittedly the
results in the case of the English-speaking artists are not all that much
better, and although I attempted to follow what was being sung without it
after a while I found myself wholly dependent on the printed libretto to understand
what was being said or even who was saying it.
Sappho is by no means as immediately attractive as is The Transposed
Heads, partly due to an apparent preponderance of slow or slowish music,
but enough is revealed through this very welcome issue to suggest that subject
to the preparation of a performance edition that would make it kinder to singers
and to a greater familiarity with the work it would certainly merit stage
performance. In the meantime we should once again thank Jennifer Condon for
her untiring efforts to make it possible to hear the work and all the singers
and players who helped her in this. Congratulations also to Toccata Classics
whose presentation of the issue, with essays on the work, the edition, Durrell
and Sappho, together with the full libretto, does all that could be done to
help the listener and encourage understanding of this important discovery.
John Sheppard
An important discovery in a very individual style with the emphasis on texture
and tone, melody and heterophony.
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