Performances to Stream September 9-10, 2023
As the summer festival season comes to a close, we have performances from Milan, Amsterdam, Wroclaw, London, Tallinn, and Zilina.
Vincenzo Bellini’s Il Pirata from The Concertgebouw on NPO Radio 4 Klassiek
On the list of rarely heard operas one should look out for in a season are all sorts of gems from the bel canto era of the art form. Operas were written frequently with many composers retelling the same stories from different sources over and over again. Who cares if Donizetti’s grand idea had already essentially been staged a few years prior? Give it a slightly different title, and try it again! This is one reason a great many bel canto works fell out of favor in common repertoire. Another prohibition to their frequent performance lies in the change in performance practices from those days to the modern era. These changes in vocal production and the size of theatres around the world make these works more difficult to stage today. Singers in these casts often specialize in this repertoire, and finding the right tenors especially for these works is quite the feat all on its own. Because of these factors, Bellini’s Il Pirata does not enjoy quite as frequent an outing in opera seasons around the world as, say, La Sonnambula, so it is certainly an opera to enjoy live when you have the chance. The plot centers around a shipwrecked band of pirates after a skirmish with a nobleman named Ernesto and his forces. The pirates’ leader, Gualtiero, is in love with Imogene, who has married Ernesto after he threatened to kill her family if she refused him. Ernesto and Gualtiero eventually decide that only a fight for blood between them will settle their differences. To the surprise of everyone, Gualtiero emerges victorious and is sentenced to death by Ernesto’s court. Gualtiero begs Imogene for forgiveness of any wrongs he has done toward her as he is led to the execution site, and the opera ends with Imogene’s ladies in waiting leading her out of the courtyard where all of the violence has occurred.
The cast boasts the talents of Elena Mosuc as Imogene, Michael Spyres as Gualtiero, Franco Vassallo as Ernesto, Jasper Leever as Goffredo, Aylin Sezer as Adele, and Mark Omvlee as Itulbo. Giampaolo Bisanti conducts this live performance. This performance is scheduled to air on NPO Radio 4 Klassiek at 11:00 AM GMT on Saturday, September 9, 2023. It will be available for further listening following the initial airing.
Soprano Katarína Kurucová in Recital from Dom Umenia Fatra on Rádio Devín
As part of this year’s Allegretto Festival, soprano Katarína Kurucová gave a recital accompanied by pianist Xénia Šuler Maskalíková. Her program traversed centuries of music from Vivaldi to Verdi containing:
Giachino Rossini’s The Shepherdess of the Alps / Beltà crudele
Gaetano Donizetti’s Amor marinaro (Me voglio fà 'na casa) from Soirées d’automne à l'Infrascata
Vincenzo Bellini’s Vaga luna, che inargenti
Gioachino Rossini’s Canzonetta spagnuola / La regata veneziana / Anzoleta avanti la regata / Anzoleta co passa la regata / Anzoleta dopo la regata
Antonio Vivaldi’s Gelosia, tu già rendi l'alma mia from Ottone in Villa, RV 729 / Di due rai languir costante, RV 749
Gioachino Rossini’s Una voce poco fa from Il Barbiere di Siviglia
Vincenzo Bellini’s Casta diva from Norma
Giuseppe Verdi’s È strano! è strano! ... Sempre libera from La Traviata
This recital was recorded on April 25, 2023, and it will air on Saturday, September 9, 2023, at 1:30 PM GMT on Rádio Devín. I do not know if this recital will be available for future listening.
Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 8 in E-flat Major from Estonia Kontserdisaal on Klassika Raadio
The work for many modern audience members upon which Mahler’s status as a composer of brilliance and genius rests is this Symphony No. 8, the so-called Symphony of a Thousand for the numerous musicians it requires for performance. Mahler began composition in 1906 during a visit to his summer villa with his family, and this would be the final work he would compose that would see a premiere in his lifetime. He led that premiere four years later in 1910 with the Münchner Philharmoniker. Occasionally compared to Beethoven’s illustrious 9th, Mahler’s 8th celebrates redemption through love and is presented in two parts. Part 1 is based on the Latin hymn Veni, creator spiritus; part 2 looks to text from the closing scene of Goethe’s Faust. In addition to soloists from soprano to bass, two choirs and a children’s choir are involved in a performance of this work. When you start adding the numbers in the orchestra, there are easily 200 people onstage when this work is performed in halls capacious enough for it.
The soloists for this performance are sopranos Laura Aikin, Forooz Razavi, and Elina Nechayeva, mezzo-sopranos Marje Seidler and Kai Rüütel tenor Alec Carlson, baritone Mathias Hausmann, and bass Ain Anger. They are joined by the Estonian National Male Choir, the Estonian National Opera Boys’ Choir, the Tartu Boys Choir, the Voces Tallinn Chamber Choir, and the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra, which are all conducted by maestro Neeme Järvi. This live performance will air on Klasika Raadio at 4:00 PM GMT on Saturday, September 9, 2023. It may be available for future listening following the broadcast.
BBC Proms: The Last Night of the Proms from the Royal Albert Hall on BBC Radio 3
Closing the year’s largest and longest running summer classical music festival, we have the Last Night of the Proms. Conductor Marin Alsop leads the BBC Symphony Orchestra and the BBC Symphony Chorus in quite the varied program for the evening that signals the end of summer and the start of the fall performance seasons. After years of relative silence from this festival, it is a glorious feeling to have enjoyed 71 Proms this year! Soloists soprano Lise Davidsen and cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason join them for the following program:
Richard Strauss’s Don Juan
Max Bruch’s Kol nidrei, Op. 47
Roxanna Panufnik’s Coronation Sanctus
James B. Wilson’s 1922 (World Premiere)
William Walton’s Coronation Te Deum
Richard Wagner’s Dich, teure Halle from Tannhauser
Pietro Mascagni’s Easter Hymn from Cavalleria Rusticana / Intermezzo
Giuseppe Verdi’s Vieni! t’affretta! from Macbeth
Laura Karpman’s Higher. Further. Faster. Together. (Main Theme from The Marvels)
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s Deep River (arr. S. Parkin)
Emmerich Kálamán’s Heia, heia, in den Bergen ist mein Heimatland from The Gypsy Princess
Hietor Villa-Lobos’s Cantilena from Bachianas Brasileiras
Trad. Fantasia on British Sea Songs (arr. Wood)
Thomas Arne’s Rule, Britannia! (arr. Sargent)
Edward Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1 in D major, ‘Land of Hope and Glory’
Hubert Parry’s Jerusalem (orch. Elgar)
Anon. The National Anthem (arr. Britten)
Trad. Auld Lang Syne (arr. Paul Campbell)
Antonio Vivaldi Selections from the Kolegiata pw Świętego Krzyża i Świętego Bartłomieja on Dwójka
If you asked me to think of three composers to hear on any given Sunday, my three selections would probably be Johann Sebastian Bach, George Friedrich Handel, and Antonio Vivaldi. For aficionadi of works by “The Red Preist” as he came to be known, this cocnert should be quite the enticing gem to hear over the airwaves on Sunday. It features not merely one choral work as you might expect from a concert on the radio, but three choral works and two concerti! On the Sunday afternoon program leading us into evening, we find the Concerto in D Minor, 'Madrigalesco,' RV 129, 'Magnificat' in G Minor, RV 611, Beatus vir, RV 598, Concerto in D Minor, RV 127, and Gloria, RV 589.
The soloists are sopranos Carlotta Colombo and Jone Martinez and alto Margherita Maria Sala. They are joined by the European Union Baroque Orchestra and the Wroclaw National Forum of Music Girls’ Choir under the direction of Enrico Onofri. This concert is scheduled to air on Sunday, September 10, 2023, at 5:00 PM GMT on Dwójka Polskie Radio. I do not know if it will be available in the future.
Gustav Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde and Ludwig van Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 in C Minor from the Teatro alla Scala on RAI Radio 3
The BBC Proms are not the only summer festival coming to an end this weekend. The 2023 edition of the Milano Summer Festival also comes to a close with a performance at the Teatro alla Scala. Opera, however, is not on the program for this performance; instead, the Italians are in for some Austrian music in one of their trendiest cities. Beethoven’s 5th has the most well known opening in all of symphonic music. Conductors around the world invent new ideas for how to interpret this music every year, and it remains just as fresh to our ears today as it was when it premiered in 1808. Audiences were hardly enamored with the work at first due to the conditions under which they endured the first performance, but it eventually ascended to its realm compositional brilliance within a couple of decades. As for Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde, it achieved greater success in a shorter time thanks to Mahler’s relationships with conductors of his day who were eager to share his music shortly after his death. Sir Henry Wood gave the first known performance of this work in London in 1913, two years after Mahler’s death and the premiere of the work in Munich. Sir Henry Wood pioneered a series of concerts known as the Robert Newman Promenade Concerts; after the BBC took over producing the concerts, they would later name the series in his honor, calling it the Henry Wood Promenade Concerts, which we know today by its shortened colloquial title, the BBC Proms.
The Mahler soloists are tenor Tuomas Katajala and baritone Georg Nigl. They perform with the Milan Symphony Orchestra under Andrey Boreyko. This live performance is scheduled to air on RAI Radio 3’s Il cartellone on Sunday, September 10, 2023, at 6:00 PM GMT. It will be available for listening following the broadcast.