kd lang, Hymns of the 49th Parallel is released on Monday. It will quickly find itself a place at Gert Cottage
lang's Canada, as seen in the CD booklet, is a snowbound place of forest and sky; this collection brings it memorably to life. Easily the best of her extensive catalogue of covers albums.It's just over two months til I see her live. For the first time in - count them - twelve years!
Handel: Ode for St Cecilia's Day; Cecilia Volgi Un Sguardo
the soprano Carolyn Sampson and tenor James Gilchrist, are cultured, elegant soloists. What the performances lack, though, is any sense of engagement or presence; this is efficient rather than inspired music-making.I have this CD; I really rather like it. I think it inspired. But, fair dos to the Guardian, perhaps Andrew Clements has a wider selection of other versions.
Faint praise damns Massanet's Werther, to which I go next week.
Pappano's intelligently paced conducting is the only saving grace. He ratchets up the tension of the last two acts mercilessly, with the orchestra playing wonderfully for him; the moments when it all seems too loud are down to vocal weakness rather than its over-exuberance.
The Times similarly:
Antonio Pappano likewise sacrifices the score's elegance to something more Italianate, full of foreboding rumblings and Wagnerian buzzes of neurotic brass, but also creating the tenderest web of strings, woodwind and harp to cradle the singers as Werther expires prettily in Chattertoni's room beset by a snowstorm.
Whereas the Independent has a slightly different take
A tenor for a tenner. That's not just a bargain; that's a giveaway when the tenor in question is Marcelo Alvarez, probably the best in the world right now...what - better than Crooner Bocelli? Surely not!...the singing is fabulous...His quiet singing was, as ever, a joy, thanks to his ability to support the sound on barely a breath and then let it melt away like his dreams. These are the enticements that separate the artists from the singers, the purveyors of bel canto from the merchants of can belto.
