Tag: twentieth century music

CD Review, File Under?, Opera, Twentieth Century Composer

Michael Tippett – New Year (CD Review)

Michael Tippett 

New Year

Rhian Lois soprano

Ross Ramgobin baritone

Susan Bickley mezzo-soprano

Roland Wood baritone

Robert Murray tenor

Rachel Nicholls soprano

Alan Oke tenor

BBC Singers

BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Martyn Brabbins, conductor

NMC Recordings

 

Michael Tippett’s final opera, New Year (1988) has finally been recorded. The work was produced in Houston in 1989 and Glyndebourne in 1990 and then fell out of the repertoire. The Birmingham Opera performed it last year, and the NMC double-CD recording is of a 2024 live semi-staged production by the BBC Scottish Symphony, conducted by Martyn Brabbins. 

 

New Year’s reemergence is propitious in timing. Combining elements of sci-fi, time travel, and fairy tales, it seems readily approachable for the streaming generation, with shows like Stranger Things, Time Bandits, and Severance providing a suitable backdrop. The opera also takes on social issues that remain important today, such as urban decline, poverty, racism, and Tippett’s ubiquitous concern for pacifism. However, the vernacular elements are the least successful of the piece, and the Jamaican accent adopted by one of the characters, Donny, played by baritone Ross Ramgobin, is cringeworthy today, and perhaps was back in the eighties too. 

 

Even by the composer’s standards, New Year is abundantly eclectic. Electric guitars, a large percussion section, and electronics combine with a traditional orchestra. Pop styles from the late eighties, notably rap and reggae, are enfolded in an otherwise modernist score with complexly chromatic parts for both soloists and chorus. The narrative itself is circuitous, with one part featuring a time traveling spaceship and the other a dystopian urban landscape. Thus, the challenges, never mind the costs, for any production are substantial.

 

Brabbins and company surmount most of them in a dedicated and well-prepared performance. The soloists are excellent, in particular soprano Rhian Lois, who plays the principal character Jo Ann, and Robert Murray, who plays the time traveller Pelegrin, both vibrant singers with considerable charisma to match their voices. Susan Bickley, the foster-mother to Jo Ann and Donny, is a warm presence, perplexed by their challenging behavior, agoraphobia for the former and misbehavior for the latter, and yet as nurturing as she can manage. The other time travellers, Merlin, played by baritone Roland Wood, and Regan, played by soprano Rachell Nicholls, provide excellent characterizations of their roles. Tenor Alan Oake as the Voice, the presenter of the action, is an authoritative presence. 

 

New Year is a multifarious and, in places, problematic piece. But one can scarcely imagine a better effort to present it to best advantage than this recording.

 

-Christian Carey



by Christian Carey
CDs, Choral Music, Contemporary Classical, early music, File Under?, Twentieth Century Composer

Choir of Clare College Celebrates Epiphany

Mater ora fillium: Music for Epiphany

Choir of Clare College, Cambridge; Michael Papadopoulos, organ; Graham Ross, director

Harmonia Mundi CD HUM907653

On the Christian calendar, tomorrow (January 6th) is the Feast of the Epiphany. There are several aspects to Epiphany. First, it is the “Twelfth Day” after Christmas, and so ends the celebrations of that merry season. Second, it is the commemoration of Jesus the Christ’s baptism by John the Baptist. Finally, in the spirit of ending a party with a magnificent and mysterious flourish, it is also commemorates the Visit of the Magi to the infant Jesus.

It is this third aspect of Epiphany that has most often drawn composers to create music commemorating the festival. On the Harmonia Mundi CD Mater ora filium: Music for Epiphany, Graham Ross presents a program of primarily sixteenth and twentieth century selections. It is Ross’s seventh such recording for HM that is based around one of the events or seasons on the liturgical calendar. Here the interested believer may find much music that, in addition to being entertaining, informs them about the history of the liturgy. However, Christian and secularist alike can enjoy the high level of musicality and sheer beauty of the voices of the Choir of Clare College, Cambridge.

The hymn singing alone, accompanied with rousing verve by organist Michael Papadopoulos, is remarkable. It includes favorites like “As With Gladness, Men of Old” and “Hail to the Lord’s Anointed,” as well as a lovely rendition of “O worship the Lord in the beauty of Holiness!” Renaissance era motets are well represented. Omnes de Saba by Orlande de Lassus is a particularly jubilant album opener. Purity of tone from sopranos and sepulchral notes from basses are on display, and carefully balanced, in Jean Mouton’s Nesciens Mater. Clarity of contrapuntal lines feature in Clemens non Papa’s Magi veniunt ab oriente and Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina’s Tribus miraculis ornatum. The varied tone colors brought to bear in William Byrd’s Ecce advenit dominator Dominus provide a sense of mysterious grandeur appropriate to the festival. Careful tuning of cross relations, as well as seamless alternation between the rhythms of chant and polyphony, supplies listeners to John Sheppard’s Regis Tharsis with a particularly evocative glimpse into another era’s harmonic and rhythmic sensibilities.

Balancing the early music selections are a number of fine pieces from the twentieth century. A standout is Long, Long Ago by Herbert Howells; an initially tender melody gradually rises to an exciting climax, juxtaposed with a steady buildup of added note chords. Another is Benedicamus Domino by Peter Warlock, in which an intricate swath of modal melodies is set against strongly articulated tutti chords. Despite the considerable challenges it poses, Illuminare, Jerusalem, by Judith Weir, is taken at a spirited gallop. Judith Bingham’s alluring Epiphany pits a colorful organ part against sinuous vocal chromaticism. Lennox Berkeley’s I sing of a maiden is delivered with haunting delicacy. All of this is capped off by the large-scale title work, a tour de force of choral writing by Arnold Bax.

Impressive performances throughout, combined with thoughtful programming, makes Mater ora filium the ideal recording for Twelfth Night!

by Christian Carey