RECORDING OF THE MONTH
Franz Joseph HAYDN (1732-1809)
The Seasons (sung in English)
Carolyn Sampson (sop)
Jeremy Ovenden (tenor)
Andrew Foster-Williams (bar)
National Forum of Music Choir
Wrocław Baroque Orchestra
Gabrieli Consort and Players
rec. Witold Lutoslawski National Forum of Music, Wrocław, Poland, 20-23 June 2016
SIGNUM CLASSICS SIGCD480 [67:42 + 65:26]
So magnificent has been their pedigree so far that I now get
really excited about a new one of Paul McCreesh’s Wrocław recordings
on Signum. As with his earlier recording of Elijah (review),
McCreesh presents Haydn’s great, final oratorio on the grandest of scales,
with a huge orchestra and chorus. If this might appear to go against
period orthodoxy then McCreesh is quick to point out that similarly largescale
performances were not uncommon in Haydn’s Vienna, and that we lose something
if we exclude them from our contemporary aural perspective. So he serves up
something unashamedly largescale, which gives you a whole new kind of authenticity
and which I think works extremely well. It’s a sign of his musical
(and historical) intelligence, however, that he doesn't adopt a one-size-fits-all
approach, but instead divides his forces into different sized concertino
and ripieno forces which he deploys as the scale of the music requires.
The scale itself is, in fact, a major benefit because the many instrumentalists
play on period instruments, but do so with such assuredness and skill that
there is never a hint of danger anything being swamped or lost. In fact,
the first thing that strikes you in the orchestral introduction is the beautifully
juicy sound as the strings burst into vigorous life. You can sense that
it’s a big band, but there's still great energy, transparency
and bounce to it. The Winter storms that open the work sound genuinely
destructive with well-placed lightning flashes, and instrumental details such
as the transverse flutes and the (utterly marvellous) trombones make a huge
difference. That instrumental colour also add real spice to the sultry
atmosphere that opens Summer, with a very characterful solo oboe and a gloriously
uplifting solo horn, and the contrabassoon in that section’s concluding
movement has to be heard to be believed! The huge horn section revel
in being let off the leash in the hunt scene of Autumn, as do the percussion
at the end of the drinking song.
The cumulative effect is most powerfully felt in the chorus’ line “Wonderful,
bountiful, infinite God” in the final number of Spring. It’s
a thrilling climax that really hits home magnificently, and the sunrise chorus
of Summer has a similar effect as, predictably, does the same section’s
storm which seems to carry real threat with its braying brass and raucous
winds, together with the perpetually scurrying strings. The final hymn,
for once, feels like a proper culmination rather than something tacked on
for some tokenistic theology, and that’s every bit as much down to McCreesh’s
overall vision for the work.
The chorus sound excellent throughout. They are just the right size
for what McCreesh is trying to do, and their beautifully rounded tone is a
perpetual treat. As a bonus, their diction is consistently marvellous,
and you would never guess that such a large proportion of them aren’t
native English speakers.
The soloists are strong too, though Andrew Foster-Williams sounds unusually
declamatory in this context, almost craggy in places so that the hunt scene
of Autumn sounds really rather serious. That suits the “moral”
of the ending very well, though it makes some of the earlier numbers a little
humourless.
Jeremy Ovenden makes a warmer, more honeyed contrast, sounding utterly beguiling
in his languish cavatina “Exhausted Nature” in Summer. He
also evokes pleasing jocularity in Autumn’s “Fine ladies of the
town” and he depicts the lost Winter traveller with brilliant narrative
skill. Carolyn Sampson sings with her typical angelic radiance, and she brings
great beauty and purity to her line, most obviously in “How refreshing
to the senses” in Summer, while letting her hair down a little for Winter’s
spinning song.
These projects are clearly labours of love for Paul McCreesh. He pours
his time, energy and affection into them, and the results are always worth
hearing. His vision for this piece is perfectly developed and beautifully
judged, sensing the ebb and flow of the work very well, and showing just the
right sense of when to relax and when to throw on a few extra volts.
It feels almost secondary to remark that for an Anglophone audience there
is a special pleasure in hearing The Seasons sung in English, something
that is relatively common for its sister oratorio, The Creation,
but much rarer for this one, in my experience. In fact, they sing a
text that McCreesh himself has prepared so as to improve the problems that
arrived in the nineteenth century with the back-translation of the original
German. So excellent are this recording’s virtues that,
to my mind, it jumps to the top if you want an English language performance,
and it even runs close the great German language recordings, most notably
the wonderful version by Rene Jacobs (review).
Put his small scale German performance next to McCreesh’s large scale
English one, and you’ll get a pretty much perfect pairing of insights
into Haydn’s last expansive masterpiece.
Simon Thompson
Previous review:
John Quinn (Recording of the Month)
|
Support us financially by purchasing
this from
|
|
 |
 |
 |
|