Singing Handel with care

Handel: “Serse”

Anne Sofie von Otter, soprano. Les Arts Florissants. William Christie, conductor.

(Virgin Veritas)

****

Handel: “Lotario”

Sara Mingardo, mezzo-soprano. Il Complesso Barocco. Alan Curtis, conductor. (BMG Deutsche Harmonia Mundi)

***

In perhaps the most delightful opening aria in all opera, Serse, the Greek king Xerxes, sings a wondrously beautiful love song to a tree -- “Ombra mai fu.” And the Serse of this irresistible recording, Anne Sofie von Otter, seduces you instantly. Like bounteous gifts from Nature’s sweetest side, the opera -- conducted with a brilliant spirit by William Christie -- just keeps delivering. The plot is dumb -- so what else is new in Baroque opera? -- but not so dumb that you don’t fall in and out of love with vain characters, just as they do with each other, and get your heart broken and semi-repaired, just as they do. Wonderful music, wonderful singing and wonderful music-making abound. Don’t let this set escape you.

The plot of “Serse” may be dumb, but that of “Lotario” is downright idiotic. Who would care? The first audiences for this outright Handelian flop, that’s who. It closed immediately and went unheard for a couple of centuries. Those early audiences weren’t entirely wrong; it would take some doing to stage this clunky opera. But that doesn’t mean it lacks winning music, and this more-than-respectable recording (slightly trimmed to fit on two CDs) demonstrates just how blessed we are in Handel singers these days. My favorite here is the mezzo-soprano Hilary Summers, who makes the dopey role of a love-struck tyrant’s son sympathetic. Alan Curtis’ conducting is sophisticated.

-- Mark Swed

Spirit-lifting visits with a prolific composer

Harrison: For Strings

Wu Man, pipa. The New Professionals Orchestra, London. Rebecca Miller, conductor. (Mode)

*** 1/2

“An Homage to Lou Harrison,” Volume 4

Tammittam Percussion Ensemble. Guido Facchin, conductor. (Dynamic)

***

If you haven’t jumped on the Lou Harrison bandwagon yet, here’s your chance. The late California composer, who embodied the Asia/Pacific spirit in music lavishly melodic and lyrical but also full of punch and exoticism, is the composer I turn to again and again when in need of spirit-lifting. That not being such a rare need during the holidays, rejoice in these two heavy lifters, which taken together offer a small but valuable survey of a prolific composer’s output. The biggest news is the first recording of Harrison’s last major piece, the Concerto for Pipa and String Orchestra, on “For Strings.” With the help of the brilliant soloist Wu Man, for whom it was written, it leaps out at you with thrilling immediacy as it breaks musical barriers between East and West with rapturous glee. A very good performance of the 1960 Suite for Symphonic Strings -- full of a little bit of this, a little bit of that -- completes the disc.

The Italian ensemble Tammittam, in its fourth Harrison release, branches out from its purely percussion roots to include the bold Concerto for Organ, the alluring, exotic Varied Trio and the string orchestra piece “Air for the Poet,” which is a perfect example of Harrison’s gift for entrancing, otherworldly melody. The Italian players bring a Vivaldi vividness to Harrison that verges on the overeager but is thoroughly likable.

-- M.S.

Oratorios performed with vitality, insight

Haydn: “The Seasons”

Marlis Petersen, soprano. Werner Gura, tenor. Dietrich Henschel, bass. RIAS-Kammerchor. Freiburger Barockorchester. Rene Jacobs, conductor. (Harmonia Mundi)

*** 1/2

Haydn: “Die Schopfung” (The Creation)

Dorothea Roschmann, soprano. Michael Schade, tenor. Christian Gerhaher, bass. Concentus Musicus Wien. Arnold Schoenberg Chor. Nikolaus Harnoncourt, conductor. (Deutsche Harmonia Mundi)

****

These are two excellent period-instrument performances of Haydn’s great oratorios (both sung in German). Jacobs’ “The Seasons” is full of vitality, drama and Haydn’s evergreen naivete. There is splendid singing from the soloists and chorus and spirited playing from the orchestra. Jacobs also has gone back to the first version to present all the orchestral introductions complete. But Harnoncourt’s live performance of “The Creation” is in a class of its own. It is full of innumerable insights into text and music, an uncanny feeling that the events are happening now and for the first time, and an awesome grasp of the work’s cosmic and humane dimensions. As in the performances that the composer himself conducted, the soloists cast as the archangels Raphael and Gabriel also sing the roles of Adam and Eve. Harnoncourt has never been better.

-- Chris Pasles

Sumptuous works of desire, transcendence

Messiaen: “Visions de l’Amen”

Steven Osborne, Martin Roscoe, pianos. (Hyperion)

****

Messiaen: “Eclairs sur L’Au-dela ... “

Berlin Philharmonic. Simon Rattle, conductor. (EMI Classics)

*** 1/2

Olivier MESSIAEN, early and late, is Messiaen in love. Whether in his two-piano cycle of Amens, premiered in 1942 in occupied Paris, or his last major work, “Eclairs sur L’Au-dela ... “ (Illuminations of the Beyond), written for the New York Philharmonic just before his death in 1992, Messiaen was the great French sensualist/Modernist devotee of desire. In “Visions,” there is a compilation of desires -- the spiritual for Jesus, as representative of the suffering and salvation of mankind, and the erotic for the young pianist Yvonne Loriod -- and the two cannot be separated. For the final “Amen de la consummation,” bells -- celestial and sexual -- ring.

In “Eclairs,” with all the orchestral stops pulled, Messiaen reveals his final mystical thoughts: Birds sing, stars shine, Nature exudes majesty, Jesus appears in blinding splendor, and the senses rise to the highest of heights, body and soul overwhelmed. There was simply no stopping this composer -- ever.

Both recordings are superb: rich and full. They fill the ears like none before them in these sumptuous works.

-- M.S.

Energy and wit from a master of eclecticism

Bolcom: “Songs of Innocence and of Experience”

Various soloists, choirs. University of Michigan School of Music Symphony Orchestra and University Musical Society. Leonard Slatkin, conductor. (Naxos)

*** 1/2

Bolcom: Cabaret Songs

Joan Morris, mezzo-soprano. William Bolcom, piano. (Centaur)

***

After practically 20 years of trying, Leonard Slatkin has finally managed to get William Bolcom’s massive symphonic cycle, a complete setting of William Blake’s “Songs of Innocence and of Experience,” recorded, and that is cause for celebration. Bolcom, a master of eclecticism, throws in even the kitchen sink in his nearly three-hour compendium of musical styles -- from country and western to atonal contrapuntal -- written for gargantuan forces. But the real accomplishment is the way the piece holds together, has a voice and really does encompass innocence and experience. Although the many vocal soloists are variable, the performance overall has just the right amount of energy and enthusiasm.

Bolcom’s smart cabaret songs, to texts by Arnold Weinstein, are delivered with often devastating wit by the composer’s wife, Joan Morris, who is past her prime vocally but still knows how to put over a line like nobody’s business.

-- M.S.

A welcome musical ‘Messiah’ complex

“Messiah Remix”

(Cantaloupe Music)

*** 1/2

Handel’s “Messiah,” that musical fruitcake gift that won’t stop giving, is choice fodder for deconstructionist rethinking and remixing. And most of the artists gathered for the “Messiah Remix” project are just right for the job. Of this collection’s 11 compact tracks, the best are from artists practiced at musical data crunching, the sequence neatly framed by Tod Machover’s kaleidoscopic “Mixed Messiah” -- the prize of the package -- and John Oswald’s blurry, dreamy “Partial.”

Conceptualists who work their well-known digital magic include Paul Lansky, Charles Amirkhanian and Phil Kline (a seasoned holiday raconteur, he was behind the annual boombox-generated “Unsilent Night”), and dalek inserts a token, if ill-fitting, rap moment. On the whole, “Messiah Remix” is concerned less with irreverence than with refreshing our connection to music embedded in the collective psyche.

-- Josef Woodard