In this series, Classical 91.7's music librarian Chris
Hathaway reviews new additions to our ever-growing CD library.
This month, Chris reviews new releases featuring new recordings
featuring the works of Beethoven and Bartok.
BEETHOVEN:
Fidelio, op. 72. 2010 Lucerne Festival recording with Nina
Stemme, mezzo-soprano (Leonore); Jonas Kauffmann, tenor
(Florestan); Christof Fischesser, bass (Rocco); Falk Struckmann,
bass-baritone (Don Pizarro); Rachel Harnisch, soprano
(Marzelline); Christoph Strehl, tenor (Jaquino) and Peter
Mattei, bass (Don Fernando). Arnold Schoenberg Choir (prepared
by Erwin Ortner) and the Mahler Chamber Orchestra and Lucerne
Festival Orchestra conducted by Claudio Abbado. Decca 4782551 (2
CDs, with libretto and notes enclosed).
There seems to
be, nowadays more so than ever before, a tendency in musical
performance to keep everything as understated as possible.
Whether this is a fear of emotion, of sensuality or of thinking
on a grand scale is uncertain, but it is something that is "in
the air" and in some cases profoundly disturbing. This writer
once heard a musicologist proclaim, in the comparatively
complacent period of the 1980s, that Beethoven's only opera
Fidelio "no longer has any relevance" because of its subject
matter and occasional fusion of Olympian ideals and melodrama.
No great work, however flawed, ever loses relevance; some may
not feel a connection with it, and that is the inevitable fate
of anyone's intellectual property: not everybody is going to
take to it. As Friedrich Schiller once put it, "To please many
is bad."
Fidelio is a flawed masterpiece, one that in the
beginning saw a quick gestation but which was produced under the
most inauspicious circumstances anyone could imagine. After some
scissors-and-paste fix-up jobs in which some numbers were cut
and the three acts became two, Beethoven laid aside his score
and did not have any thoughts about it, supposedly, until
1814—when he subjected the entire score to a thorough overhaul.
That version is the one which has entered the repertory, though
over the past slightly more than thirty years there have been a
few recordings and productions of the three-act version of nine
years before (not published in full score until 1967). What
remains in the revision is a seeming unevenness of style in the
first act: the first half of it seems more like a singspiel than
an opera, and indeed the published score contains more spoken
dialogue than is generally used in most performances. The
present recording dispenses with the spoken dialogue left by
Beethoven and his second literary collaborator, Friedrich
Treitschke. A certain Tatjana Gürbaca has written some new lines
in place of them. The second-act Melodram, where speech is given
orchestral accompaniment, is thankfully left alone.
In
the middle of this singspiel within the opera is the quartet,
Mir ist so wunderbar, in which Leonore (disguised as a young man
in an attempt to rescue her long-imprisoned husband); Rocco the
jailer, his daughter Marzelline and his assistant Jaquino
express their varied feelings in a short but highly effective
piece which is like a sophisticated "catch". This is the only
number that passed from the first to the second version
unaltered and unmodified. It begins with a tender, almost lush
string sonority (obtained by dividing the violas). In the
present recording of this quartet, Abbado seems to take a
cut-the-vibrato approach supposedly much in vogue today:
consequently, not all the sound is there. One may be grateful
that this tendency toward understatement doesn't carry through
the whole performance (this recording is of a live, staged
performance), and the singers are all first-rate. Bass-baritone
Falk Struckmann is a marvelously effective Pizarro, and there
isn't a thing understated about the opera after his initial
appearance (the point in the first act in which singspiel is
thrown out the window and grand opera takes over). There are
inevitable problems of balance in a live recording, as
singer-actors move away from the microphones and the orchestra
seems to overpower them (as in, particularly, the duet between
Rocco and Pizzaro, Jetzt, Alter and in Leonore's big recitative
and aria—Abscheulicher!—which follows on its heels). Mezzo Nina
Stemme is as good a Leonore as anyone could wish for.
The stark f-minor orchestral opening of the second act — written
differently than anything in the score — is carried off simply
by letting Beethoven be Beethoven. Abbado is laudably
conscientious about bringing out every nuance. Tenor
Jonas Kaufmann's almost instrumental-sounding crescendo on the
word "Gott!" is at first unsettling, but it's highly effective.
Kaufmann admirably succeeds in bringing out both the pathetic
and the heroic characteristics of the political prisoner
Florestan. The off-microphone sound in In des Lebens
Frühlingstagen is slightly disturbing—no fault of Mr. Abbado or
Mr. Kaufmann, but of microphone placement. One wonders if it
sounded that way in the theater. The oboe obbligato in this aria
is very well-played indeed.
All concerned capture the
dark atmosphere of the grave-digging duet between Rocco and
Leonore (Nur hurtig fort) quite admirably. One cannot help but
think of Arturo Toscanini, presiding over a Salzburg dress
rehearsal of this sequence more than 70 years ago, whispering in
rapture "What music!" when it was over. The cathartic second-act
quartet Er sterbe! has everything in it that should be there,
but is slightly marred by the microphone placement problems
mentioned earlier.
There is no Leonore No. 3 overture
during the change of scene in the second act. Indeed, throughout
the entire opera, there seems to be no audience noise!
Everything is brisk but not brusque as the opera moves to its
triumphant conclusion. The chorus is tremendous, musical and
with impeccable diction and marvelous coloring. Kudos to Erwin
Ortner, who prepared the group.
On the whole, this is a
very good Fidelio, despite this reviewer's strong reservations
about tampering with the dialogue—which is an altogether
different thing than judiciously pruning it. One would be
hard-pressed to name any recorded performance of this opera
which preserves intact every single line of speech in the Peters
edition.
