Orchestre de la Suisse Romande / Marek Janowski ANTON BRUCKNER The Symphonies

 

THE SYMPHONIES

 

Chamber Orchestra of Europe / Yannick Nézet-Séguin MOZART Die Zauberflöte

“So many people”, notes Yannick Nézet-Séguin, “when they think ‘Mozart opera’, think of The Magic Flute. Since the beginning, since its creation, this work has always reached different kinds of audiences. It’s just one greatest hit after another”. Each of his cast’s singers owns the rare blend of vocal shading, dramatic presence and psychological insight needed to bring Mozart’s magical characters to life.

The conductor himself was praised by mundoclasico.com for conducting an “excellent” concert production of The Magic Flute at Baden-Baden with his “characteristic precision, musicality, expressive power and energy”, and for treating every nuance and every tiny but meaningful and performance-enhancing detail with “attention, love and dedication”. The same review also hailed Rolando Villazon’s first foray into the baritone repertoire, noting that “his vocal and dramatic gifts lent themselves perfectly to the comic role of Pagageno”. 

Villazón conceived the idea for Deutsche Grammophon’s Mozart cycle in 2011 while performing Don Giovanni at the Festspielhaus Baden-Baden with the COE and Maestro Nézet-Séguin. He developed the project in partnership with the conductor and DG, brought ROLEX on board as generous supporters, and has served as its joint artistic consultant from its inception. Four of the five recordings released so far have received Grammy nominations, with Le nozze di Figaro winning a prestigious Echo Klassik Award in 2017.

“This is my most ambitious artistic project to date”, recalls Villazón. “I’ve never fallen in love with any composer like this before!” Since launching the enterprise eight years ago with Don Giovanni, he has performed in each release, embracing everything from Ferrando in Così fan tutte to the title-role in La clemenza di Tito.

The Magic Flute was first performed at the Theater auf der Wieden, outside the ancient city walls of Vienna, in September 1791, barely two months before Mozart’s premature death. The show ran for over 100 performances within its first season and soon became a hit throughout Europe and beyond. It mixes music and spoken dialogue, humour and pathos, mystery and mankind’s search for wisdom. The opera balances earthy comedy with an exploration of the nature of individual freedom, fraternity, enlightened leadership and unconditional love, all expressed in music of simplicity and beauty. “I very much like the perspective of doing The Magic Flute now,” Nézet-Séguin reflects, “because it throws light on all the operas we’ve already recorded.”

Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin / MDR Rundfunkchor Leipzig / Marek Janowski BEETHOVEN Missa Solemnis

The conductor Marek Janowski and the Rundfunk Sinfonieorchester Berlin continue their critically acclaimed collaboration with Pentatone in a magnificent reading of Beethoven's monumental Missa Solemnis, recorded live at the Berlin Philharmonie in September 2016 in partnership with Deutschlandradio Kultur.

Considered by many to be his finest work, with the Missa Solemnis Beethoven updated the choral traditions of Handel and Bach with his own ineffable style to create a startlingly original and dramatic large scale work. By turns intimate and deeply moving, it's also one of his most forward-looking works. With consummate skill, Beethoven marshals the disparate elements of liturgical, secular and operatic expression in a wholly original and compelling way. From the jubilant Gloria with its ecstatic outbursts, to the radiant Benedictus with its soaring, ethereal solo violin, it's a riveting experience. And Beethoven constantly surprises throughout, especially in the closing Agnus Dei where the serenity is shattered by a terrifying militaristic outburst, eventually subsiding for a radiant conclusion.

Marek Janowski is no stranger to the Pentatone catalogue; his recordings with the Rundfunk Sinfonieorchester Berlin of the ten mature operas of Wagner were universally praised for setting new musical standards. The BBC Music Magazine described the Tannhäuser release as "…the best recording since that made in Bayreuth in 1962". Also recorded in the superb acoustics of Berliner Philharmonie, the Parsifal release was praised by the critic Michael Tanner who wrote that the sound was "…so realistic as to be almost alarming."

Marek Janowski and the Rundfunk Sinfonieorchester Berlin are joined on this recording by the world famous MDR-Rundfunkchor Leipzig and the soloists Regine Hangler (soprano), Elisabeth Kulman (alto), Christian Elsner (tenor) and Franz-Josef Selig (bass).

Yannick Nézet-Séguin / Chamber Orchestra of Europe MOZART Die Entführung Aus Dem Serail

Deutsche Grammophon’s projected cycle of the mature Mozart operas, with Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducting the Chamber Orchestra of Europe is central to Rolando Villazón’s efforts to reinvent himself as a Mozart tenor. Villazón and Nézet-Séguin are the two constant factors in the seven recordings, which are to be based on concert performances given each summer at Baden-Baden. The first set, of Così fan Tutte, appeared two years ago; a Don Giovanni followed last autumn, and the fourth instalment, Le Nozze di Figaro, will be recorded next week.

If the Festspielhaus at Baden-Baden, the largest opera house in Germany, seems an odd place to choose for recording Mozart, then on the evidence of this Entführung neither Nézet-Séguin nor Villazón is an obvious point of reference for such a project, either.

The impression of the whole performance is of something old-fashioned which, the odd desultory vocal ornament apart, could have been recorded 40 or 50 years ago. There’s a bouncy enthusiasm to Nézet-Séguin’s approach, with its wide, dynamic contrasts, but not a great deal of subtlety, though the COE is its usual cultivated and alert self. The inclusion of a fortepiano continuo, which can only rarely be heard behind the weight of the modern strings and wind, seems tokenistic, especially with voices placed as far forward in the recording as they are, though the acoustic is consistent, and for once the spoken dialogue seems to belong in the same acoustic as the rest of the performance, with Thomas Quasthoff taking the purely speaking role of the Pasha Selim.

Villazón is Belmonte, but neither his sound nor his style is really plausible. It’s all very generalised, and often he could be singing Verdi rather than Mozart, with coloratura that is laboured, and tone that seems alternately nasal and curdled. The sense of style that’s missing in Villazón’s singing is emphasised by the other tenor, Paul Schweinester as Pedrillo, and especially by Diana Damrau as Konstanze, but Anna Prohaska is a disappointingly anonymous Blonde, and Franz-Josef Selig a surprisingly lightweight, rather unmenacing Osmin. Alongside the best performances already in the catalogue, whether traditional (conducted by Karl Böhm, say, or Colin Davis) or historically aware (William Christie or John Eliot Gardiner), this new version doesn’t begin to compete. (The Guardian)