Classical Files

By JOHN BELL YOUNG
© St. Petersburg Times,
published November 25, 2001

IL TENERO MOMENTO; SUSAN GRAHAM, ORCHESTRA OF THE AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT/HARRY BICKET (ERATO) If there is any one thing about 18th century opera that distinguishes it from its mid and late 19th century romantic cousins, it is its emphasis on decorum, both compositional and dramatic. While the stories it tells are no less passionate or fanciful, the demands of through-composition in those days were governed by a well defined aesthetic.

Unlike Mozart, who embraced the bel canto peculiar to the Italian opera of his day, Christoph Willibald Gluck (1714-1767) disparaged what he viewed as its excesses in favor of the more austere, even ethereal, dimensions of the French style. Gluck was an outspoken reformer of operatic conventions, introducing flexibility that increased participation of instrumental ensembles and choruses.

Juxtaposing arias from Gluck's Iphegenie en Tauride, and two earlier works, Orphee et Eurydice (1762) and Paride ed Elena, together with selections from Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro and La clemenza di Tito, thus offers a musical history lesson. Susan Graham's refined, earthy mezzo sports a somewhat edgier, lighter sheen than her famous predecessors, notably Christa Ludwig and Marilyn Horne.

But that does nothing to compromise either her extraordinary technical command nor her probing, informed and abundantly detailed musicianship. She is the early music singer of one's dreams. Witness, for example her evocation, in one of the more famous "pants roles," of Orpheus' devotion to Eurydice as he attempts to rescue her from the jaws of Hades. Later, in the aria J'ai perdu mon Eurydice, she renders exasperation, then grief by means of a small, wistful breath from which emerges those very words, which mean "I have lost my Eurydice."

As Idamante in Mozart's Idomeneo (again a young male character, often played in classical opera by women), Graham's grasp of both text and the underlying agony of sentiment is specific, subtle and varied.

Susan Graham is a phenomenal artist, one to whom every burgeoning singer would be well advised to look as an object lesson on what great singing and even better musicmaking is all about. Harry Bicket's elegant and intelligent command of the Orchestra for the Age of Enlightenment, usually led by Sir Charles Mackerras, is no less welcome. A+

-- JOHN BELL YOUNG, Times correspondent

RACHMANINOFF: THE BELLS; TANEYEV: JOHN OF DAMASCUS, MOSCOW STATE CHAMBER CHOIR, RUSSIAN NATIONAL ORCHESTRA; MIKHAIL PLETNEV (DEUTSCHE GRAMMOPHON) It is no longer unusual for a superstar pianist to shift gears in midcareer and assume the riskier mantle of conductor. Most notable among them are Daniel Barenboim, Christoff Eschenbach, Vladimir Ashkenazy and now Mikhail Pletnev.

He has been conducting for more than a decade, although he never abandoned his career as a pianist. With Rachmaninoff Pletnev is in his element, conveying most persuasively the composer's opulent evocation of Russian bells in his four-movement work for chorus, orchestra and soloists. For the Russian people, bells have historically assumed heightened significance as a repository of their hopes and faith. Even in the silvery sonorities of a troika's tiny bells, for example, you can discern the magical spirit of Russia's secular folk legends. In medieval times Russia melted its bells, refashioning them into deadly canons. It is this vast dimension of his ancient culture that Rachmaninoff attempted to paint in sound in The Bells.

Sergei Taneyev (1856-1915), a prolific composer and for many years the director of the Moscow Conservatory, was best known as the teacher of Rachmaninoff, Medtner and Scriabin. He was only 28 when he composed his affecting cantata, John of Damascus, a pious quasi-requiem for four-part chorus and orchestra. It is remarkable for its succinct integration of liturgical and folk elements.

Pletnev's idiomatic, informed readings of these soulful works are at once eloquent and vibrant. What a pleasure to hear first-class Russian soloists, too, entrusted in the Rachmaninoff with symbolist poet Konstantin Balmont's translations of Edgar Allan Poe's verse, rendering every word so intelligibly. The Russian National Orchestra, which Pletnev founded in 1990, sports an especially lush sound ideally suited to the music it performs so passionately. A

-- J.B.Y.

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