Amanda Roocroft, Konrad Jarnot, Reinild Mees - 28610 Elgar Complete Songs volume 2
Product Description
As we noted in the first volume of this survey of Elgar’s songs, like most composers his first attempts at composition were with anthems and small chamber and piano pieces, though unlike many young composers of his day, strangely Elgar wrote few songs until his various love affairs from his mid-twenties on•wards. Elgar’s early life as a composer was one of constantly hawking salon music and popular short pieces round publishers – a situation that gradually changed in the 1890s as his early works for chorus and orchestra were heard. But it took Elgar a long time to become established, the Enigma Variations only appearing when he was 41. The earliest song presented here, indeed Elgar’s earliest surviving completed work, a setting of the American James Gates Percival’s The Language of Flowers dates from May 1872 when he was not quite 15. He dedicated it to his sister Lucy on her twentieth birthday. It remained unpublished and unknown until recently when it was printed in the Elgar Collected Edition. In the 1880s, in his late-twenties, Elgar tried to establish himself as a composer with various short pieces, salon music and songs which as we have seen he took round the many London publishers of the day. A Soldier’s Song, styled as ‘Op 5’ dates from 1884 and although it was sung at the Worcester Glee Club in March that year it had to wait for publication until 1890 when it appeared in The Magazine of Music – and 1903, when renamed A War Song, Boosey took it on, doubtless with the public’s preoccupation with the Boer War in mind. Another American, Colonel John Hay provided the words for Through the Long Days, which dated ‘Gigglewycke (his friend Charles William Buck’s Yorkshire home) on 10 Aug 1885 was sung in London at a St James’s Hall ballad concert in February 1887 and, being short and tuneful was published almost immediately by Stanley Lucas, Weber & Co. Elgar generally set lesser-known or minor verse doubtless feeling that great poetry should stand on its own and not constrain him in his response. In this case the words were of immediate emotional resonance for Elgar, since, written in August 1885, they herald his lost fiancé Helen Weaver’s planned departure for New Zealand two months later. Is She Not Passing Fair? to words by Charles, Duc d’Orléans translated by Louisa Stuart Costello is dated 28 Oct 1886 and although not published until 1908 is perhaps the bestknown of our group thus far. Elgar had just met his future wife Alice Roberts and we must wonder if he was celebrating it in music. The ballad As I Laye a-thynkynge is another early publishing success, dated 12 June 1887 and issued by John Beare & Son the following year. As a Victorian, Elgar shared the period’s love of the pseudo medieval which saw so much of academe and religion decked out in the trappings of a reinvented past. Here he sets ‘Thomas Ingoldsby’ (real name R.H.Barham) complete with olde-worlde spellings.....
Additional Information
| Artist | Amanda Roocroft soprano |
| Inlay | vol. 2 |
| Biography | Amanda Roocraft – soprano Amanda Roocroft has secured an international reputation as one of Britain’s most exciting singers, in opera, concert, and in recital. She graduated from the Royal Northern College of Music. A celebrated opera singer, she enjoys a close relationship with the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, the English National Opera, the Glyndebourne Festival, and the Bavarian State Opera in Munich where her roles have included Fiordiligi in Così fan Tutte, Countess in Le Nozze di Figaro, Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni, Desdemona in Otello, Amelia in Simon Boccanegra, Mimi in La Boheme, Eva in Die Meistersinger; the title roles in Madama Butterfly, Katya Kabanova and Jenufa, Ginevra in Ario•dante and Cleopatra in Giulio Cesare. In concert Amanda Roocroft has appeared with leading orchestras throughout Europe and North America with conductors including Sir Simon Rattle, Zubin Mehta, Mariss Jansons, Ivor Bolton, Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Daniele Gatti, Sir Neville Marriner, Sir Andrew Davis, Sir Charles Mackerrras and Sir Bernard Haitink. A noted recitalist, she has performed at London’s Wigmore Hall, Queen Elizabeth Hall, the Concertgebouw Amsterdam, the Musikverein in Vienna, New York’s Lincoln Center, La Monnaie in Brussels and in Munich, Frankfurt, Paris, Valencia and Lisbon. In 2007 Amanda Roocroft received the Laurence Olivier Award for her ‘Out•standing Achievement in Opera’ as Janacek’s Jenufa with English National Opera. Called ‘perhaps the best performance of her career’, ‘world class’ and a ‘performance memorable even by her own high stan•dards’, her involving portrayal was heart-wrenching and devastatingly moving. The 20th Century Song Foundation (Stichting but also by the recording of their Complete 20ste-eeuwse Lied), settled in Amsterdam Songs – a cd series issued by Channel (The Netherlands), aims at fanning the Classics Records that has an important flames of enthusiasm for the extensive documentary value. In order to appeal to a repertory of songs written during the last larger audience, a new form of recital has century. Many of these, especially those been developed: ‘spotlights concerts’. The composed between the World Wars, have 20th Century Song Foundation presents a fallen into oblivion. The Foundation tries series of various programmes which strike a systematically to champion these different note, the music being enhanced by masterpieces by uniting musicians, scholars, light effects, declamation, direction, the concert halls, cd-producers and the public. exposition of photographs or the projection Recently composers such as Franz Schreker, of slides. Ottorino Respighi and Karol Szymanowski were spotlighted, not only in the concert hall |
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| Quotes | Van Speels tot dramatische muziek van Elgar’s Liederen. Wat deze nieuwe Elgar-uitgave betreft is de hoogste lof eigenlijk maar net toereikend. Gedrieën staan Roocroft, Jarnot en Mees boven de zeer veeleisende techniek die het liederrepertoire nu eenmaal eigen is en waardoor ze zich interpretatief volkomen vrij kunnen bewegen, als drie zielen met één gedachte. In de vertolking van deze prachtige miniaturen treft het fraai afgewogen expressieve karakter waarmee de teksten muzikaal worden vormgegeven. Verbeeldingskracht en inlevingsvermogen gaan hier hand in hand, hetgeen het krachtigst denkbare pleidooi voor deze liederen oplevert. Het kan in deze liederen jagen en donderen, maar er zijn ook wondermooie pasteltinten te bewonderen als een frase net even wordt opgelicht alvorens een schaduwrand zich er meester van maakt. De spanningen worden feilloos geproportioneerd opgebouwd, zoals ze al even naturel weer mogen oplossen. Er gaat een magische aantrekkingskracht uit van deze spontane, frisse en doorleefde uitvoeringen, ze gaan rechtstreeks onder de huid en klinken nog lang na. Reinild Mees is een ideale begeleider, al moet worden gezegd dat het begrip 'begeleider' duidelijk afbreuk doet aan de creatieve invulling van zijn partij. Zijn vleugel kan fluisteren, zingen of bijna orkestraal naar de hemel reiken! De in april 2008 en januari 2009 in het Muziekcentrum Frits Philips in Eindhoven gemaakte opname is met evenveel liefde en vakmanschap gemaakt en laat het allemaal vlekkeloos uit de luidsprekers komen. Deze serie is zonder enige twijfel een must have; en niet alleen voor degenen die Elgars muziek al n hun hart hebben gesloten. Ein Tässchen Tee mit Sandwiches und Gebäck, so richtig nach englischer Tradition und dazu die passende Musik! (…) Zachtzinnige lyriek (…) Elgar's songs intermittently offer their share of faded Victorian/Edwardian pleasures (…) And, as on that first volume, those pleasure emerge with the utmost tact in the hands of these exceptional musicians, who manage to capture the songs' naïve innocence an sweet flights of fancy (…) A welcome second helping of Elgar songs from these sympathetic artists. (…) The songs are finely done here. Konrat Jarnot ‘s striking baritone is always neatly and eloquent employed. Amanda Roocroft brings an equally persuasive approach to both texts and notes and accompanist Reinild Mees is excellent throughout.
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| Format | SACD stereo multichannel - hybrid disc |
| Composer | Edward Elgar |
| Total Length | 66:30 |
| Year of release | 2010 |
| Number of cd's | 1 |
| Artist | Amanda Roocroft, Konrad Jarnot, Reinild Mees |
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