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Gramophone Awards Shortlist 2016 Ekaterina Semenchuk mez �Amneris Ludovic Tézier bar �Amonasro Erwin Schrott bass-bar �Ramfis Marco Spotti bass �King of Egypt Eleonora Buratto sop �Priestess Paolo Fanale ten �Messenger Chorus and Orchestra of the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia / Sir Antonio Pappano Warner Classics S c 2564 61066-3 (146’ • DDD • S/T/t) Aida is the most classically concise of the great 19th-century grand operas yet it remains the one most closely associated with theatrical excess. To savour its qualities, it should be heard first, seen later, which is why the gramophone has played so important a role in its performing history. Nowadays record companies mainly serve up opera on DVD or in cheap-to-record concert performances. Yet, as Antonio Pappano has had the courage to insist, you cannot record Aida in concert. Set in temple and tomb, by river and city gate, the sound planes are too various, the range of dynamics too complex to replicate in concert-hall conditions. Aida received its first complete studio recording in Rome in 1928 but it was the 1959 Decca recording – produced in Vienna by John Culshaw with Karajan conducting a largely Italian cast – that finally gave us what Andrew Porter, writing in these columns, called ‘a sound‑realisation of the score which transcends any shortcomings inherent in physical staging and brings us a step closer to that ideal imagined performance’. Not that the Decca set displaced the theatrically thrilling, albeit more conventionally produced, 1955 Serafin recording with Maria Callas as Aida and Tito Gobbi as a near‑definitive Amonasro. The new recording, produced by Stephen Johns, stands within that broad EMI tradition, albeit with a larger stage picture and a greatly enhanced dynamic range beautifully accommodated to the opera’s need, and the listener’s. Where the new set resembles the 1959 Decca is in the quality of the conducting. Pappano’s direction, like Karajan’s, is organic as the work is organic: each episode finely shaped within itself (the Triumphal Scene is beautifully judged) yet built unerringly into the larger whole. I don’t hear this to the same extent in Muti’s 1974 EMI recording and certainly not in the 1961 RCA set, where a strong cast headed by Leontyne Price and Jon Vickers has to do battle with Solti’s brazen and occasionally thoughtless conducting. Karajan has the Vienna Philharmonic but it is arguable that Pappano goes one better, with orchestral playing of rare accomplishment from an Italian ensemble which is alive to the opera’s every word. (And motion: the ballet sequences are superbly realised.) In both performances the orchestra is a powerful additional player which supports the singers at every turn. The result is a vocally lyrical Aida with Pappano’s cast, like Karajan’s, never needing to force the moment. We hear this at the very outset in Jonas Kaufmann’s account of ‘Celeste Aida’, less visceral than some but wonderfully mellifluous and crowned by a rarely heard quietly diminishing high B flat. Anja Harteros is arguably the most interesting Aida on record since Callas, albeit differently characterised. Where Callas is every inch the lovelorn warrior princess, Harteros is a humane and articulate Aida who is palpably not the mistress of her destiny. Her top C near the end of ‘O patria mia’ is neither as pianissimo nor as dolce as Caballé’s on the Muti recording, but that – for all but the most ardent canary-fancier – is beside the point when Caballé lacks the power persistently to outface Fiorenza Cossotto’s dauntless Amneris and is never as at one with her Radamès, Plácido Domingo, as Harteros is with the leonine yet liquidtoned Kaufmann. It matters little in an intelligently produced studio recording that of the principals only Ekaterina Semenchuk has sung her role on stage, though her Amneris is indeed one of the finest on record. Ludovic Tézier is an impressive Amonasro. Apart from an indistinct final syllable on ‘Ei t’ama’ as Amonasro confronts his daughter with the fact of Radamès’s love for her, he is a consistently strong player. Marco Spotti makes a plausible King, but Erwin Schrott’s High Priest sounds too benign to be the regime’s political enforcer. Pappano has already given us an exceptional recording of the Messa da Requiem (EMI, 10/09), which Verdi wrote shortly after Aida. The concentrated quiet of the choral work in the temple scenes, where Eleonora Buratto contributes an exquisite High Priestess, echoes this. In the trial scene and the lovers’ entombment, the new recording perhaps deploys too few tricks. I rather miss Culshaw’s contrived but subtly layered acoustic picture; and prefer hieratic brass which is palpably nel sotterraneo as Verdi directs. (The 1955 Serafin recording has this exactly right.) But the singing of the doomed lovers has tenderness and beauty, and the preternaturally quiet Santa Cecilia string-playing is exquisitely managed as the drama makes its longed-for tryst with silence. No recording is without the occasional oddity of balance and perspective. And Warner’s booklet is poor, preferring a PR puff to an essay on the opera itself. But these are minor matters in the presence of what is as fine an all-round Aida as the gramophone has yet given us. Richard Osborne Selected comparisons Serafin (1/56R) (WARN) 2564 63409-7 Karajan (11/59R) (DECC) 475 8240DOR2 Solti (7/62R) (DECCA) 478 2679DB2 Muti (2/75R) (EMI) 640630-2 Wagner Das Rheingold Michael Volle bar �Wotan Christian Van Horn bass-bar �Donner Benjamin Bruns ten �Froh Burkhard Ulrich ten �Loge Peter Rose bass �Fasolt Eric Halfvarson bass �Fafner Tomasz Konieczny bass-bar �Alberich Herwig Pecoraro ten �Mime Elisabeth Kulman mez �Fricka Annette Dasch sop �Freia Janina Baechle mez �Erda Mirella Hagen sop �Woglinde Stefanie Irányi mez �Wellgunde Eva Vogel mez �Flosshilde Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra / Sir Simon Rattle BR-Klassik F b 900133 (143’ • DDD • S/T/t) This is the fifth performance since 2004 you may be able to access of the first Ring opera under Simon Rattle – although the first to be made commercially available. (The previous ones – two with the OAE and two with the Berlin Philharmonic – may be found online or on a private Deutsche Bank release.) It is also by some way the most penetrating and successfully realised. By the clock his reading has become faster, perhaps almost inevitable in concert opera; but, significantly, it is mainly a question of weighting. Rather than luxuriating in the sonorities of the Berliners in this music – sounds that prompted some surprised comparisons with Karajan – the conductor 32 GRAMOPHONE AWARDS 2016 gramophone.co.uk
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Gramophone Awards Shortlist 2016 now rediscovers in abundance the rhythmic energy and sheer enjoyment of the orchestration apparent in his reading from those first OAE concerts. This is married to an increased understanding – and use in the playing – of the dark irony, wit and even occasionally tragedy of the drama. The Bavarians are in tune with the approach (and there’s significantly more colour and character here than in their late-1980s recording for Haitink – EMI, 12/89) and also manage to surf over that slight dip in stamina that any orchestra must feel ‘live’ after descending to Nibelheim for scene 3 with a good half of the opera still to accomplish. Rattle’s cast (apart from Fasolt) has inevitably changed over the years and tends now to feature strong vocal actors evidently encouraged by their maestro. Michael Volle – who, like Tomasz Konieczny’s Alberich (Rattle’s Wotan this year in Vienna), does a fair amount of swapping between Wagnerian goodies and baddies – nails Wotan’s self-interest and shortsightedness from the beginning. He lacks the last ounce of bass depth to the voice but it’s already a compelling character. Konieczny is now a little too noble to be sheerly frightening in the two curses – and is allowed to laugh too much. Annette Dasch – already an established Elsa and Eva – counts as luxury casting as Freia and is genuinely sensual in her distress, so much more than just a dizzy flapper. Loge’s music is rightfully swift and well taken without mannerism by the experienced Burkhard Ulrich. Both he and the giants are given useful musical space to enjoy their texts and conflicting emotions. The sound from Munich’s Herkulessaal is crystal clear, the balance of the voices almost ideal. Rattle and the orchestra’s percussionists make sure that we never feel cheated of special sound effects, concert or not. Hugely recommended – and would make a good modern companion to the historic 1950s Bayreuth broadcasts under Krauss (Pristine, 6/04R) and Keilberth (Testament, 1/07). The Thielemann performances from Bayreuth (Opus Arte, 1/10) and Vienna (DG) are finely conducted but their casts are not so well attuned as this one. Mike Ashman Zandonai Francesca da Rimini Christina Vasileva sop �Francesca Martin Mühle ten �Paolo il Bello Juan Orozco bar �Gianciotto Adriano Graziani ten �Malatestino Kim-Lillian Strebel sop �Garsenda Bénédicte Tauran sop �Biancofiore Sally Wilson mez �Adonella Marija Jokovic mez �Altichiara Viktória Mester mez �Samaritana/Smaragdi Levente Molnár bar �Torrigiano/Ostasio Freiburg Chamber Choir; Opera and Extra Chorus of Theater Freiburg; Vocal Ensemble of the Freiburg Hochschüle für Musik; Freiburg Philharmonic Orchestra / Fabrice Bollon CPO F b CPO777 960-2 (133’ • DDD • S/T/t) The only work of Riccardo Zandonai’s to maintain a toehold in the repertory, Francesca da Rimini is one of the more interesting of the post-verismo Italian operas that, composed on the eve of the First World War, quickly did the international rounds before sinking into obscurity. A lavish production at the New York Met staged for Scotto and Domingo in the 1980s was very much against the run of play – at least outside of Italy – although it was filmed (and is available on DVD) and revived, with a new cast obviously, in 2013, with the HD broadcast further helping Francesca’s cause. On disc the work has not fared terribly well. Alongside the usual live releases, including a recent Bregenz recording conducted by Fabio Luisi (Koch – nla), from the studio there have been only Decca highlights from Magda Oliviero and Mario del Monaco, an early Cetra set (in scrawny sound, starring Maria Caniglia and Giacinto Prandelli), and an RCA set from the 1980s (with better but still with slightly raw, voice-heavy engineering), starring Raina Kabaivanska and William Matteuzzi under Maurizio Arena. This new CPO set, the first, as far as I’m aware, to present the score uncut, fills an important gap, giving us a well-engineered modern account of the work and including, as seems now happily to be the company’s default, both libretto and translation. But it’s also an excellent achievement on its own terms. The cast features singers largely active in Germany in general and at Theater Freiburg in particular, and they sing powerfully, reliably and impressively. Christina Vasileva’s soprano is up to the challenge of Francesca. It’s a rich, complex voice, a touch soft-edged where Kabaivanska’s becomes strident, and she makes some luxurious sounds, even if those sounds thin out a little at the top; she admittedly doesn’t do what she might with the words, but the characterisation, though generalised, is nevertheless convincing. Martin Mühle as her lover Paolo is rock solid, the voice occasionally reminiscent of del Monaco – and the slightly stentorian delivery, too. But he delivers a fine, handsome and robust performance. Juan Orozco sings with suitably unstinting menace as Gianciotto (Paolo’s lame brother) and Adriano Graziani with threatening, insinuating bite as Malatestino (the one with one eye), and there’s not a weak link among the rest of the quite large cast, with Viktória Mester’s rich-voiced Smaragdi especially fine. (It should be noted that CPO’s booklet could be clearer regarding the characters, with some confusion between libretto and cast list). Fabrice Bollon conducts the score with a sure touch and is particularly adept at bringing out its moments of beauty – some of them, such as the dreamy orchestral and choral postlude to the first act, offering a breathtaking mixture of Wagnerian atmosphere and, with Zandonai’s onstage use of a plangent viola pomposa and lute, neo-Renaissance colour. When reviewing the earlier RCA set, Michael Oliver noted that the work pits such ravishing moments against those of unappealing brutality. That dichotomy is still apparent here, and Bollon can’t hide some of the score’s more galumphing, militaristic character, but under his direction it feels less jarring, with both the orchestral playing and CPO’s engineering – still voice-orientated but not overbearingly so, and well-blended – offering real refinement. The piece therefore comes across as more sophisticated and economical than elsewhere, an escape into the heightened psychological reality and symbolism of Gabriele D’Annunzio, on whose play Tito Ricordi’s libretto was based. And while there are explicit references to the story of Tristan and Isolde in the text, the score has more of the heavy fatalism and occasional brutality of Götterdämmerung and often also brings Gurrelieder to mind (although Schoenberg’s work was premiered only a year before Zandonai’s). Francesca’s final scene, meanwhile, shares a beautiful calmbefore-the storm colour with Desdemona’s (although, of course, Verdi’s heroine is somewhat more blameless). It’s a fascinating and seductive work, then, and one that finally receives the advocacy it deserves with this excellent recording. Do give it a go. Hugo Shirley Selected comparison: Arena (7/88) (RCA) RD71456 gramophone.co.uk GRAMOPHONE AWards 2016 33

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Gramophone Awards Shortlist 2016

Ekaterina Semenchuk mez �Amneris Ludovic Tézier bar �Amonasro Erwin Schrott bass-bar �Ramfis Marco Spotti bass �King of Egypt Eleonora Buratto sop �Priestess Paolo Fanale ten �Messenger Chorus and Orchestra of the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia / Sir Antonio Pappano Warner Classics S c 2564 61066-3 (146’ • DDD • S/T/t)

Aida is the most classically concise of the great 19th-century grand operas yet it remains the one most closely associated with theatrical excess. To savour its qualities, it should be heard first, seen later, which is why the gramophone has played so important a role in its performing history. Nowadays record companies mainly serve up opera on DVD or in cheap-to-record concert performances. Yet, as Antonio Pappano has had the courage to insist, you cannot record Aida in concert. Set in temple and tomb, by river and city gate, the sound planes are too various, the range of dynamics too complex to replicate in concert-hall conditions.

Aida received its first complete studio recording in Rome in 1928 but it was the 1959 Decca recording – produced in Vienna by John Culshaw with Karajan conducting a largely Italian cast – that finally gave us what Andrew Porter, writing in these columns, called ‘a sound‑realisation of the score which transcends any shortcomings inherent in physical staging and brings us a step closer to that ideal imagined performance’. Not that the Decca set displaced the theatrically thrilling, albeit more conventionally produced, 1955 Serafin recording with Maria Callas as Aida and Tito Gobbi as a near‑definitive Amonasro.

The new recording, produced by Stephen Johns, stands within that broad EMI tradition, albeit with a larger stage picture and a greatly enhanced dynamic range beautifully accommodated to the opera’s need, and the listener’s. Where the new set resembles the 1959 Decca is in the quality of the conducting. Pappano’s direction, like Karajan’s, is organic as the work is organic: each episode finely shaped within itself (the Triumphal Scene is beautifully judged) yet built unerringly into the larger whole. I don’t hear this to the same extent in Muti’s 1974 EMI recording and certainly not in the 1961

RCA set, where a strong cast headed by Leontyne Price and Jon Vickers has to do battle with Solti’s brazen and occasionally thoughtless conducting.

Karajan has the Vienna Philharmonic but it is arguable that Pappano goes one better, with orchestral playing of rare accomplishment from an Italian ensemble which is alive to the opera’s every word. (And motion: the ballet sequences are superbly realised.) In both performances the orchestra is a powerful additional player which supports the singers at every turn. The result is a vocally lyrical Aida with Pappano’s cast, like Karajan’s, never needing to force the moment. We hear this at the very outset in Jonas Kaufmann’s account of ‘Celeste Aida’, less visceral than some but wonderfully mellifluous and crowned by a rarely heard quietly diminishing high B flat.

Anja Harteros is arguably the most interesting Aida on record since Callas, albeit differently characterised. Where Callas is every inch the lovelorn warrior princess, Harteros is a humane and articulate Aida who is palpably not the mistress of her destiny. Her top C near the end of ‘O patria mia’ is neither as pianissimo nor as dolce as Caballé’s on the Muti recording, but that – for all but the most ardent canary-fancier – is beside the point when Caballé lacks the power persistently to outface Fiorenza Cossotto’s dauntless Amneris and is never as at one with her Radamès, Plácido Domingo, as Harteros is with the leonine yet liquidtoned Kaufmann.

It matters little in an intelligently produced studio recording that of the principals only Ekaterina Semenchuk has sung her role on stage, though her Amneris is indeed one of the finest on record. Ludovic Tézier is an impressive Amonasro. Apart from an indistinct final syllable on ‘Ei t’ama’ as Amonasro confronts his daughter with the fact of Radamès’s love for her, he is a consistently strong player. Marco Spotti makes a plausible King, but Erwin Schrott’s High Priest sounds too benign to be the regime’s political enforcer.

Pappano has already given us an exceptional recording of the Messa da Requiem (EMI, 10/09), which Verdi wrote shortly after Aida. The concentrated quiet of the choral work in the temple scenes, where Eleonora Buratto contributes an exquisite High Priestess, echoes this. In the trial scene and the lovers’ entombment, the new recording perhaps deploys too few tricks. I rather miss Culshaw’s contrived but subtly layered acoustic picture; and prefer hieratic brass which is palpably nel sotterraneo as Verdi directs. (The 1955 Serafin recording has this exactly right.) But the singing of the doomed lovers has tenderness and beauty, and the preternaturally quiet Santa Cecilia string-playing is exquisitely managed as the drama makes its longed-for tryst with silence.

No recording is without the occasional oddity of balance and perspective. And Warner’s booklet is poor, preferring a PR puff to an essay on the opera itself. But these are minor matters in the presence of what is as fine an all-round Aida as the gramophone has yet given us. Richard Osborne Selected comparisons Serafin (1/56R) (WARN) 2564 63409-7 Karajan (11/59R) (DECC) 475 8240DOR2 Solti (7/62R) (DECCA) 478 2679DB2 Muti (2/75R) (EMI) 640630-2

Wagner Das Rheingold Michael Volle bar �Wotan Christian Van Horn bass-bar �Donner Benjamin Bruns ten �Froh Burkhard Ulrich ten �Loge Peter Rose bass �Fasolt Eric Halfvarson bass �Fafner Tomasz Konieczny bass-bar �Alberich Herwig Pecoraro ten �Mime Elisabeth Kulman mez �Fricka Annette Dasch sop �Freia Janina Baechle mez �Erda Mirella Hagen sop �Woglinde Stefanie Irányi mez �Wellgunde Eva Vogel mez �Flosshilde Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra / Sir Simon Rattle BR-Klassik F b 900133 (143’ • DDD • S/T/t)

This is the fifth performance since 2004 you may be able to access of the first Ring opera under Simon Rattle – although the first to be made commercially available. (The previous ones – two with the OAE and two with the Berlin Philharmonic – may be found online or on a private Deutsche Bank release.) It is also by some way the most penetrating and successfully realised. By the clock his reading has become faster, perhaps almost inevitable in concert opera; but, significantly, it is mainly a question of weighting. Rather than luxuriating in the sonorities of the Berliners in this music – sounds that prompted some surprised comparisons with Karajan – the conductor

32 GRAMOPHONE AWARDS 2016

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