|
Audio Asylum Thread Printer Get a view of an entire thread on one page |
For Sale Ads |
75.39.16.143
I first recommended this 11 years ago. It's wonderful, still :)
Follow Ups:
And it's stirred my interest in many of the Handel operas and oratorios I haven't heard. (And that's a lot of them!) The VAST majority of recordings of these works (like your recommended recording of Rinaldo) are HIP, and it's difficult for an anti-HIP listener such as me to find recordings of this repertoire I might like. Sometimes I have to bite the bullet and obtain a HIP recording just to get to a given work at all! (This is certainly the case with Rameau's music.)
And with video, many of the HIP inconsistencies are exacerbated, and the performances fairly shout "Hypocrisy!", as the instrumentalists are piously enjoined to minimize their vibrato (or even forbidden to use it at all) in order to "honor" Handel's "intentions", the singers sing with their normal vibrato, and the production itself (staging and costumes) bears absolutely NO relationship to anything Handel could ever have imagined. A case in point is a DVD of the Glyndebourne/OAE Rinaldo, which is set in a kind of Harry Potter / British prep school environment. (Some of it's on uTube.)
Nevertheless, I suspect that the recording you recommend might indeed be the best available at the present time, even though it's HIP. There seems to be an old Marilyn Horne recording which I might like, but I suspect the SQ on that recording would take some patience. It's hard to get around the almost total domination of HIP in certain areas of the repertoire in the last couple of decades.
I think it a little unfair to accuse the HIP movement itself of hypocrisy in recordings /DVDs having singers using vibrato or inauthentic opera settings and costumes.
In practice neither the choice of singers nor the staging/costumes are under the control of the musical director. The singer is selected by the record company no doubt with the view that an opera is very expensive to record and that a star singer* is necessary to secure adequate sales. Of course the staging and costumes are in the producer's gift. Neither record company nor producer may have any allegience to HIP ideals.
One may accuse the musical director of accepting compromises but as much performing art involves a group effort nothing would ever get done without them.
* Normally an opera star of the standard repertoire with a huge voice and concomitant technique who is unlikely to abandon their style viz. my copy of Rinanaldo being the Jean-Claude Malgoire one with , for an HIP performance, the unlikely selection of Ileana Cotrubas.
If HIPsters really believed in HIP, they wouldn't put up with the compromises we've discussed. Unfortunately, HIP has grown so powerful that it has acquired its own inertia (at least as far as the instrumental playing goes) and I'm sure that some conductors continue its stylistic mannerisms without thinking about it too much. In any case, it's obvious that they don't really care to enforce HIP tenets on other aspects of the production. Maybe you're right that these are just a compromises, but I still prefer to think that it's hypocrisy. ;-)
BTW, speaking of Ileana Cotrubas (and I did notice that Malgoire recording of Rinaldo), I once accompanied her teacher, Vera Rozsa, in concert when she came out to Northern California in the 70's. She was around 60 at that time and was still singing/performing herself (and very well too!) during the time she was teaching Cotrubas. Unfortunately for me, during one of our rehearsals in SF, I had parked my car in a limited-time-zone space, and the rehearsal went a bit longer than I'd expected. I came out to find that my car had been towed away. Not only did I have to pay the parking ticket but I had to get a ride to the impound lot where I had to pay the towing fee and the impound fee. Needless to say, I didn't make very much money on that concert - in fact, I may have had a net loss! Talk about the school of hard knocks! ;-)
Maybe I am too kind. I am a nice person :-)
As for mannerisms, such criticisms can also be levelled at any suitably idiosyncratic conductor e.g. Stokie, Solti, Mengelberg, Bernstein. Did they compromise at all? You bet they did e.g Bernstein's DGG performance of West Side Story, Stokowski and Fantasia. Were they hypocrites?
I don't want to revive an HIP v.the rest argument and am only interested in a performance of whatever kind that represents the music in such a way as to find an emotional and/or intellectual response in me. So this month I have bought recordings that are both subject in period to HIP interest; Haydn and Handel. I bought Handel Op.6 ( Manze, HIP ) and Haydn London Symphonies ( Beecham, ever so not HIP). Good is good.
Thank you so much for your recollection of Contrubas' teacher Vera Rosza. All I can add in brotherhood is that I too picked up a parking ticket in California (Santa Barbara). It remains unpaid nearly 40 years later. Please don't tell :-).
OK, make that two.
Started reading it, and put it down - at the time I just didn't think it was that well written. How are you finding it?
We are very much on the same page (no pun intended!) in our experience with Hogwood's Handel bio! ;-)
I think my copy was on a shelf for about 30 years. I'm now reading it at a very SLOW pace (I'm 3/4 of the way through it, at the rate of about 5 pages per day), and I'm OK with it: Hogwood seems to be sticking to the facts and early sources, without a lot of personal interpretation. Maybe some readers might wish for a more personal point of view, but I'm fairly happy with it. I've also had Robbins Landon's "Handel and His World" on my bookshelf (unread!) for about the same length of time, so I'm thinking I should read that bio (which I believe is shorter and, possibly, more concise) as soon as I finish Hogwwod's.
Actually, Hogwood's is the only interpretation I've heard. And it seems right, as if inevitable.There is beauty in it. But there are other ways of doing it, I'm sure.
Edits: 02/17/17
Post a Followup:
FAQ |
Post a Message! |
Forgot Password? |
|
||||||||||||||
|
This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors: