Right now: Ann Hallenberg in Moscow (mezzo arias)

In case you need a reminder: check it out. At the Tchaikovsky Concert Hall.

Il ritorno di Tobia Haydn

Overture and aria Sudo il guerierro

Haydn’s stuff is always fun until he gets too noodly. I thought the aria was a bit low for her but an always welcome start.

Paride aed Elena Gluck

Paride’s mournful aria (don’t know the title)

It fit her very well; really nice variations in the middle section.

La clemenza di Tito Mozart

Overture and Deh, per questo instante solo

Capuano’s take on the overture is of the jaunty kind. There is a reason is often played in concerts. Her take on Deh, per questo… is something I think I talked about before. very affecting and natural at the same time ❤

Orphee et Eurydice Gluck

Amour, viens rendre a mon ame

Just yes, with a lot of warm smiles. The public loved it, too. Somehow 40min went in a blink.

Interval

L’italiana in Algeri Rossini

Overture and Cruda sorte!

The overture got out the bombast but perhaps not so much the Italian silliness. AH got all that in Cruda sorte. Just wonderful and tossed off like nothing.

Otello Rossini

Song of the willow

I know nothing about any Ot(h)ello operas, honestly. It sounds beautiful enough and very suited to AH’s tone.

La favorite Donizetti

Overture

Favaritka? It sounded like that in Russian. The darkest thing so far. The Russians love to go very Romantic on things.

Semiramide Rossini

Arsace! not the obvious choice from him, either but In si barbara sciagura.

Encores:

Che faro senza Euridice Gluck (Orfeo)

Really heartfelt, but then again, it’s AH.

Il segreto per esser felice Donizetti (Lucrezia Borgia)

Great to hear Il segreto…! The drinking song with a dark undertow. One of the first mezzo arias I got into, in that random manner one does. I want to listen to it on repeat now. Is there something she can’t sing?

The return of contralto duels

Haydn, right? The cheerful composer wrote vocal music among other things, and one of those pieces was the promisingly titled oratorio Il ritorno di Tobia. The biblically challenged me immediately wanted to know where Tobia went in the first place (answer: to Persia, on a money (owed to his father) collecting errand; (post)Baroque-bargain moment: he also found a wife; on the way he ran into the Angel Raphael (as you do), who wisely advised him to pick up certain items that came in very handy later, such as when he needed to cure his father’s blindness and get married – though not at the same time.

Anyway, a weekend Bible lesson isn’t the reason for this post, but a brass-happy aria, Sudò il guerriero (tl;dr: your efforts aren’t always justly rewarded but keep fighting and eventually you will prevail) sung by many (not just contraltos) but new to me. Our duellers today are Ewa Podles and Marie-Nicole Lemieux:

I like the Classicism of it all, with its post-Baroque flashes of virtuosity and construction and the more modern (for its time) development of the phrase. It reminds me of both Mozart’s Mitridate and Entfuhrung, which is of course a good thing.

The Mozartists (1768) (Wigmore Hall, 23 January 2018)

Classical Opera/The Mozartists
Ian Page conductor
Katy Bircher flute
Chiara Skerath soprano

Classical Opera does, as the name suggests, specialise in music of the Classical period and does it very well. You might remember my and thadieu‘s enthusiastic accounts (as well as Leander‘s) of a Cadogan Hall 2016 performance of Jommelli’s Il Vologeso – it was them that done it.

They’re also going through Mozart’s oeuvre, one year at a time. This time it’s the year 1768, when Wolfie was 12 and, opera-wise, wrote La finta semplice, here presented via its not too shabby overture and the Amoretti aria. It’s not just Mozart but a wider look at his time period as well, with works by other composers from the mid to late 18th century.

Joseph Haydn (1732-1809)
Symphony No. 26 in D minor HI:26 ‘Lamentatione’

Niccolò Jommelli (1714-1774)
Fetonte Ombre che tacite qui sede

Johann Christian Bach (1735-1782)
Flute Concerto in D major WC79

Joseph Haydn
Lo speziale HXXVIII:3
Amore nel mio petto
Salamelica, Semprugna cara

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)
La finta semplice K51
Overture
Amoretti, che ascosi qui siete

Johann Adolf Hasse (1699-1783)
Piramo e Tisbe Perderò l’amato bene

Johann Baptist Vanhal (1739-1813)
Symphony in D minor

As expected, Classical Opera were excellent and Ian Page got a very “surround sound” from them, with a deft merging of the different sections of the orchestra whilst at the same time allowing them space to breathe and make themselves heard (quite muscular at times). In other words, the opposite of the porridge-sound.

This was one of the best attended shows at Wiggy, though the troops thinned a bit after the intermission (luckily, the tall chap in front of me was among them). Skerath excelled, I thought, at Hasse’s Perderò l’amato bene, where she used some superb light weight trilling and the aria seemed a perfect fit for her gentle soprano voice.

Ian Page chose his soloists well, the both of them in possession of particularly fine ways with the trills. Being primarily a fan of vocal music I admit I don’t always “get” solo instrumentals but in Bircher’s case something clicked. It is perhaps that all winds are up my alley as opposed to, say, the piano, but I could follow very well, in a similar way to how I would the voice.

A lovely evening that invited the listener to further explore this engaging period of Western classical music, with the last piece hinting at the things to come in further decades.

Thursday’s Something Else (Haydn)

Staying a little longer in the 1700s (my favourite time period) with something from Mr. Wacky, aka Haydn: Il mondo della luna. I’m always struck by works from the period – and from Haydn in particular – in how Mozart-like they sound. Of course, it’s rather that Mozart sounded like his own times – with an extra spin. But The Trickster (Harnoncourt) conducts this like his Mozart (sloooow) and the recits sound just like the ones in Le Nozze. Mozart aside, there are plenty moments here (crackin’ ensembles) that are good in a Haydn way (goofier comedy than Wolfster’s) but it’s a bit long. Then again, it ends with the wise words life is better without moods and tempers.