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Remember our earlier postings on this subject, in connection with a 2010 CD premiere by Melodiya of this exciting Requiem Mass?
Now we have a new (2023) recording on the Pentatone label, involving the Singapore Symphony and Choruses, plus various soloists conducted by Hans Graf - who also prepared a new edition of the score. Very recommendable!

Just issued:

An exciting 5CD Box, entitled "Heaven and Hell" from the Fuga Libera label, featuring Benoits sacred oratorios, recorded by the Anbtwerp Symphony between 2015 and 2023 - including the long-awaited "Lucifer" and "De oorlog"!
We get a rather dull looking 82-page booklet with interesting essays, but no sung texts/translations.

The same program (except "Lucifer" and "De Oorlog") by the same forces had already been issued in 2018, in a lavish 2CD edition by the label "Antwerp Symphony Orchestra" under the title "Peter Benoit: Religious tetralogy".
Here we get a splendid 80-page booklet with sung texts/translations! This item has become very hard-to-find.

As far as Benoit's "De Schelde" is concerned, there is an excellent CD recordings by the label "Belgian Boutique", conducted by Martyn Brabbins - who also conducts "Hoogmis" (The Great Mass) and "Te Deum" in the above mentioned box set.

Sir Mark Elder conducts this difficult oratorio with great skill and passion. The Bergen Philharmonic and Choruses are well-prepared. The only miscast is, in my personal opinion, baritone Roderick Williams, who has a really beautiful voice, but a rather problematic wobble. We had him already in that Chandos CD with the excerpts from Bernard Herrmann's "Wuthering Heights"... This leading Delius part should be sung by a baritone with a great linear voice! Though, reviewers are happy with him...
The other soloists are good.

https://www.prestomusic.com/classical/articles/5631--recording-of-the-week-deliuss-a-mass-of-life-from-sir-mark-elder-and-the-bergen-philharmonic#:~:text=But%20this%20superb%20new%20set,all%20Elder's%20masterly%20grasp%20on

https://limelight-arts.com.au/reviews/delius-a-mass-of-life-roderick-williams-bergen-philharmonic-mark-elder/

https://www.classical-music.com/reviews/choral-song/delius-a-mass-of-life

I think the best recordings (for me) are still the older ones, those conducted by Beecham, Groves and Del Mar...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_von_Klenau
Another excellent composer, whose personality and art, alas, remains strongly associated with National Socialism...
Some of his orchestral works are available on the CaDapo label.
His vocal cycle "Die Weise von Liebe und Tod des Kornetts Christoph Rilke" (excellently conducted by Paul Mann) is a masterwork. In there you are confronted with the various aspects of his musical style, ranging from post-Romanticism to Impressionism - and even to quarter-tone music.
Swiss composer Frank Martin also wrote an impressing vocal cycle on the same poem cycle by Rainer Maria Rilke.
Incidentally: in 1923 Klenau conducted Schoenberg's "Gurrelieder" and Beethoven's "Missa Solemnis", and in 1924 Liszt's "Christus" at the Vienna Konzerthaus.
Unfortunately, CDs with his music have become very difficult to buy...
https://www.prestomusic.com/classical/composers/7133/browse
(This composer has already been a theme in here in the past...)

Hi all :-)

https://www.mediafire.com/view/bkop363oqmg4lvu/HERMANN_SUTER_-_Le_Laudi.jpg/file

The great choral work will celebrate this year its 100th birthday!

Ambroise Thomas' "Hamlet" in its first version will be performed on July 15th:
https://lefestival.eu/representation/hamlet/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Vesque_von_P%C3%BCttlingen

A still forgotten early Romantic composer, who named himself "Hoven" to affirm that he was only half as good as Beethoven.

Over 20 years ago I handed over my scores of his songs (set on Heinrich Heine's poems) to my friend, the tenor Markus Schäfer. He was so enthusiastic about it that the recorded 3 CDs on the Signum label. The 3rd volume ist still available from jpc:
https://www.jpc.de/jpcng/classic/detail/-/art/Johann-Hoven-1803-1883-Die-Heimkehr-Vol-3/hnum/3614114

And here is the complete Heine album:
https://ks4.imslp.net/files/imglnks/usimg/d/d6/IMSLP471504-PMLP765354-vesque_P%C3%BCttlingen_88_gedichte_heine.pdf

In my earlier "would-be-baritone" days I used to sing those songs with great pleasure. Tempi passati!
Hoven also wrote 8 operas, like "Turandot" and "Joan of Arc".

My dear Munich friends Ilona and Michael just sent me this wonderful, very recommendable CD:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/CDs-Vinyl-Paolo-Litta/s?rh=n%3A229816%2Cp_32%3APaolo+Litta

Lovers of Symbolist art will be delighted!

RICCARDO CHAILLY's Respighi CD (Decca) is rather disappointing. The interpretations are nice, not sanguine, without tension – and there is no real love for detail and no real eye for agogics. Slower sections of "Pini" and "Fontane" are a bore.
All pieces sound as if they would have been just played through once or twice before the recordings - it's good that we have to do with a good orchestra. Instrumental soli are not unsufficiently flattered; there is an overall lack of rubato sense. The playing is good, but the engineering muddy and uninteresting in loud tutti piaces; the final March of "Pini di Roma" sounds like a mediocre recording of the 1960s.
The 3rd Suite of "Antiche Danze ed Arie" figures among the less interesting interpretations I've hear so far – I know over 30 of them.
Unfortunately, Maestro Chailly did not include "Feste Romane". Instead he chose the mentioned suite of "Antiche Arie e Danze" for string orchestra and some just lovely less-known pieces. Raffaele Mellace justifies this programme in his liner notes: "The recording sets out to present the full (!) complexity of the composer's image as well as the richness of his oeuvre by showcasing two "tryptics" of his works: three little-known pieces from among his juvenilia, and three compositions from his maturity including two from his famous Roman trilogy..." (my exclamation mark in brackets).
The booklet reproduces the cover of Elsa Respighi's biography of Ottorino an an inside dedication by Elsa to Maestro Chailly's father. This because "... [orchestral] writing of such prodigious skill has won the admiration of the greatest conductors, from Arturo Toscanini (...) right down to Riccardo Chailly, for whom the vistits of his father's house in Rome by Respighi's widow Elsa in the early 1960s make this music part of his own personal history".
Frankly, between Toscanini's and Chailly's interpretations there are worlds in between...

JOHN WILSON's very welcome and highly recommendable CHANDOS (Super Audio) recording of Respighi's complete "Roman" tryptic reveals, besides stunning sonics, very convincing and fully-tempered interpretations. This is the way those Respighi's showpieces should be done. And here one can even feel Toscanini's heritage. The Sinfonia of London delivers super playing and I also find the booklet notes very useful and of much higher standard than the ones for the Decca CD.

All this is but my personal opinion! As far as Chailly's CD is concerned I could go much more into detail, but this should be done by professional critics.

A new recording:

https://www.claves.ch/collections/rarities/products/giacomo-meyerbeer-gli-amori-di-teolinda?mc_cid=4bf50ed0e3&mc_eid=2f45fe1aa5

Although Respighi cannot be considered an "unsung composer" anymore, I would like to introduce an excellent 263-page biography of Respighi by Michael Webb, which was published last year.

On the publishers's website, this book is promoted as "the first English language biography of Respighi" - a thing which is not true. However, on the book back cover it says "this is the first full-lenght English language biography..."

https://www.troubador.co.uk/bookshop/biography/ottorino-respighi-his-life-and-times/

Unfortunately the publisher does not mention who the autor is, and there is not even a back-cover introduction of him - as it should generally be done in connection with such books. So, who is he?

The appendix do also include a short biography of Elsa Respighi and two indexes (by names and by works). There is no (at least a select) bibliography and no (at least a select) discography - and this is quite a disappointment - to all "first English" readers!

One of the author's main concerns is to reveal the numerous mistakes Elsa Respighi made in her own biography of Ottorino - which is a very welcome aspect, revealing that the authour has done an excellent research!

Potito Pedarra and I were a bit suprised that the author did not find it necessary to enter in contact with two Respighi specialists like us. Still, we have the honour of being mentioned in a couple of short footnotes  - and Pedarra's work catalogue is reproduced in the appendix. After all, Pedarra and I had been personally acquainted with Elsa from 1977 till her death in 1996 - and I had been a close friend of her.

In his introduction, Mr. Webb also mentions my indignant letter of January 2000 to the BBC Music Magazine, in connection with an article by Jeremy Siepmann, entitled (as far as I remember) something like "Mussolini's favourite composer" - this at the time I was presiding a short-lived "Respighi Society". This letter still survives in the internet:

http://www.musicweb-international.com/respighi/bbc.htm

Michael Webb also quotes (and appreciates) Christoph Flamm's monumental study "Ottorino Respighi und die italienische Instrumentalmusik von der Jahrhundertwende bis zum Faschismus" (Laaber Verlag, 2008, 917 pages - dedicated to Potito Pedarra!). But Flamm too does not figure on Webb's acknowledement list, which means that Flamm too, he was never contacted. In my opinion, when one writes such an important biography, he should enter in contact with specialists and authours which had previously dealt with the subject. Collegiality, fairness and respect should be a rule amongst musicologists (although this is more often not the case). Flamm, incidentally, honours me in three footnotes - two of them to criticize passages of my Marco Polo liner notes.

Nevertheless, I strongly recommend this biography - revealing a lot of yet unknow biographical details on Respighi, which also the publisher considers "the most performed Italian composer of the twentieth century".

I strongly recommend "Der Ferne Klang" from the Stockholm Opera:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFiIGESb0ss

An excellent, intelligent (rather Freudian) and respectful staging - some Deutsches Regietheater guys could learn something!
I like the singers, the playing and Stefan Blunier's expert and sensitive conducting.

The Covid situation will definitely affect the recording business, particularly as far as orchestral music and opera are concerned. At last producers could concentrate on a speedier publication of their backward productions - if there will be almost nothing new. Naxos and cpo have dozens - or hundreds - such productions wating since years to be issued - so this may be a chance to get them sooner!

The great Maestro Santi died yesterday.
He was a fabulous and highly respectful opera and symphonic conductor, a rare (and perhaps the last) expert of authentic Belcanto tradition. Besides numerous opera recitals and excerpts, his discography includes, for example, the complete "I Pagliacci", "L'amore dei tre Re" (for RCA),"Cavalleria Rusticana" (for Orfeo, live)"Francesca da Rimini" (for Rodolphe Productions), "Madama Butterfly"  and "Il Trovatore"(for Concert Hall). Of course there are more live broadcast recordings available.
For Accord he also recorded Leoncavallo's "La Nuit de Mai" and for Decca a vers successful selection of overtures and interludes by Wolf-Ferrari. For Meister Music and Panasonic he also recorded Symphonies by Beethoven and Tchaikovsky and pieces by Respighi with Japanese Orchestras.
Santi was not only a dear friend, but also the conductor from whom I have learned the most, especially during my 25 years at the Zurich Opera - where he conducted 94 premieres.
Some of these productions are also available on DVD.

My second Pilati disc, which was issued in 2010 on the Italian label "Inedita" since Naxos was not anymore interested in a sequel, will now be reissued by Naxos in January:

https://www.naxos.com/catalogue/item.asp?item_code=8.574168

On these two "volumes" I make Pilati's complete orchestral works available.

Conductor Christoph Schlüren wrote to me to say that he performed (and recorded) Scherber's Third Symphony on December 1st in Barcelona - with the Orquestra Sinfonica Camera Musicae from Catalunia. This will be issued on CD soon. The audio I have received reveal an absolutely excellent and thrilling performance of this difficult work.

This opera is this year's Montpellier's choice

https://lefestival.eu/montpellier/le-corum/opera-lyrique/v-dindy-fervaal

The France Musique broadcast will be a direct one, so I will try to record it.
Date: July 24th at 20:00 hrs

Interesting! But I think the Provatorov Melodia recording of 2010 will still remain a reference...

(Referring to my post in the Downloads Board of a recording of the Lyon Opéra's 2019 performance - Mark Thomas)

Here the video of a 1965 Swiss TV production of Emile Jaques-Dalcroze's witty light opera "The Twins of Bergamo"
https://www.rts.ch/play/tv/operas/video/musiques-09-05-1965?id=10057816

(The French introduction is short).
It involves singers and dancers (in this production, stars like Eric Tappy and Basia Retchitzka are cast).

The vocal score is available on IMSLP:
https://imslp.org/wiki/Les_jumeaux_de_Bergame_(Jaques-Dalcroze%2C_Emile)

The second volume is available now:

https://toccataclassics.com/product/jacques-dalcroze-piano-music-two/

As far as I remember, there will be three volumes - and - if I am not wrong - Toccata don't use making boxed editions