Arianna a Naxos HXXVIb:2 (1790)

After the first London performance of Haydn’s cantata Arianna a Naxos, by the castrato Pacchiarotti with Haydn himself at the piano in 1791, The Morning Chronicle predicted that, it would be “the musical desideratum of the winter.” In fact, its popularity lasted much longer than that, as Lady Hamilton confirmed when she was persuaded to sing it, to the composer’s accompaniment, on her visit to Eisenstadt with Lord Nelson in 1800.

To perform a cantata which not only calls for a full-scale operatic technique but which was also Haydn’s favourite among his vocal works, Lady Hamilton must have been uncommonly accomplished as a singer, uncommonly courageous, or both at once. Between the E flat major beginning of the cantata and the F minor ending there are two recitatives, two arias, much pathos and no little virtuoso vocal display. The first aria is a Largo (“Dove sei mio bel tesoro?”), with a superbly dramatic middle section. In the reprise there is a more intimate, almost Schubertian effect as the harmonies slip briefly into the tonic minor. Although there was a similar intimation of the ultimate tragedy in the introductory recitative, at this stage Arianna does not know that Theseus has abandoned her. It is only in the next recitative, when she climbs onto the rocks – to the accompaniment of an extraordinary sequence of chords on the piano – that she sees the Greek ship sailing away. She expresses her grief in a short Larghetto (“Ah che morir verrei”) and a precipitous Presto coda (“Misera abbandonata”).

Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)

4 Songs from Lieder und Gesänge Op.72 (1877)

No.1 Alte Liebe (1875)

No.2 Sommerfäden    (1876)

No.3 O kühler Wald (1877)

No. 4 Verzagen (1877)

4 Songs from Lieder Op.105 (1886–8)

No.1 Wie Melodien zieht es mir (1886)

No.2 Immer leiser wird mein Schlummer (1886)

No.3 Klage (1883)

No.4 Auf dem Kirchhofe (1888)

With the excption of the fifth and last song – Unüberwindlich, a cynically witty Goethe setting not included on this occasion – the poetic theme of Brahms’s Op.72 is disillusion of one kind or another. In most cases it is a matter of lost love. In Alte Liebe, although the poem begins with an expression of happiness in the arrival of spring, Brahms is under no illusion, as the minor harmonies of the first bar of the piano part clearly indicate and as the change of key on the repetition of “neues Glück” and the chilling minor arpeggio before the tap on the shoulder both confirm. Sommerfäden refers to no specific illusion but, again in a minor key, to illusions in general, threads of gossamer intertwining in the contrapuntal texture of Brahms’s Bach-like setting. O kühler Wald is set in the major but, as the modulation to a remote tonality at the beginning of the second stanza suggests, the notion of identification with nature is another illusion. In Verzagen the poet’s raging heart and the surging sea, so vividly evoked in the turbulent piano part, are in sympathy but, the pressure of minor harmonies insists, there is no consolation in that.

The Op.105 songs are for the most part reflections on loss but not without hints of reconciliation – until, that is, they are contradicted by the murderous Verrat, which is omitted on this occasion. Exactly where Wie Melodien zieht es mir stands in the emotional range it is impossible to say: the beauty of the song is its elusiveness. The reference to “ein feuchtes Auge” in the last stanza seems to point in one directions, while Brahms’s melodic allusion to the first movement of his blissful Violin Sonata in A major Op.100 seems to point in the other, in spite of some harmonic equivocation on the first mention of the “feuchtes Auge.” Immer leiser wird mein Schlummer is based on another self-quotation, in this case from the cello solo in the slow movement of the Piano Concerto in B flat major Op.83. There, however, the melody is nostalgic in the major; here it is profoundly unhappy in the minor, a mood which prevails until finally, encouraged by the prospect of a last meeting, it settles in the major.

All the more poignant for the absence of self-pity in the simple treatment of its folk-song text, Klage is followed by one of the most theatrical of Brahms’s songs. In the desolate setting of Auf dem Kirchhof, however, there is reconciliation: the gusty minor arpeggios that blow cold over the first six lines give way to a quotation in the major of the Lutheran chorale “O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden” in anticipation of the final “genesen.”

Ottorino Respighi (1879-1936)

Il Tramonto (1914)

for mezzo-soprano and string quartet

Il Tramonto is one of the very few works conceived, rather than arranged, for voice and string quartet. Its one notable predecessor is Schoenberg’s Second String Quartet, the last two movements of which are settings for soprano of poems by Stefan George. While we cannot be sure that Respighi knew that quartet – which was completed in 1908, six years before Il Tramonto – there can be little doubt that he was familiar with the same composer’s string sextet Verklärte Nacht (Transfigured Night) of 1899. There are obvious fundamental differences between Verklärte Nacht and Il Tramonto, not the least of which is that the former score, though closely based on Richard Dehmel’s poem of the same name, has no vocal part. The two works do, however, have a similar nocturnal atmosphere, each animated by two people walking together and, though in different ways, expressing their love under the moon. Both works end in a serene reconciliation.

Respighi might not have chosen Shelley’s The Sunset (in an Italian translation by R. Ascoli) with the specific intention of creating his own “Transfigured Night.” He was clearly drawn to the English poet anyway. Apart from three Shelley songs with piano, there are two other settings of Shelley texts for mezzo and instrumental ensemble – Aretusa written three years earlier in 1911 and La sensitiva completed a few months later in 1915 –    and in this context Il Tramonto is just the second in a series of three. Aretusa and La sensitiva, however, are both scored for orchestra whereas Il Tramonto was conceived for the all-but unprecedented combination of voice and string quartet. And it is not only that which invites comparison with Schoenberg but also the actual sound and some of the figuration of the string writing. The vocal part in Il Tramonto is not so much a solo role as a sensitively executed means of integrating the text with the reactions it provokes in the string quartet. It is going too far, as one commentator has done, to describe Il Tramonto as the best Italian string quartet alongside Puccini’s Crisantemi – which is more than a little unfair on Verdi’s Quartet in E minor for a start – but it is a not entirely irrelevant idea.

Perhaps the most inspired aspect of the vocal line in Il Tramonto is its flexibility, the ease with which it so spontaneously fluctuates through the area between dramatic recitative and lyrical arioso, only occasionally touching on song and generally avoiding anything like operatic word-setting. From the beginning, even before the first entry of the voice in recitative, the melodic interest is in the string quartet, which opens the work with an expressive melody of long-term significance. One of the most alluring episodes is the purely instrumental, and beautifully written, interlude before the couple “mingle,” as Shelley discreetly puts it, “in love and sleep.”

There seems to be no predetermined structural pattern: tempo and mood change only on the prompting of the poem. There is, however, a resourcefully sustained series of contrasts between the reflective, as in the section beginning “Ora è sommerso il sole” with its gently undulating string figuration passing through the ensemble, and the eventful, as when Isabel wakes in the morning to find her lover “gelido e morto.” The most effective contrast of all is between the percussive pizzicato sounds associated with “la nuda tomba” near the end and the caressing violin melody which, reflecting Isabel’s final prayer for peace (a long-sustained “Pace!”) so serenely transfigures the earlier material.

Manuel de Falla (1876-1945)

Siete canciones populares españolas (1914)

El paño moruno

Seguidilla murciana

Asturiana

Jota

Nana

Canción

Polo

Falla is said to have received less than the price of a bottle of champagne for his Siete canciones populares españolas (which should be translated as Seven Spanish Folk Songs, incidentally, not Popular Songs). After he had sold the rights to the score, it became one of his most popular works, attracting arrangements for voice and orchestra from composers as distinguished as Ernesto Halffter and Luciano Berio and transcriptions for a variety of instrumental combinations. The original stimulus came from a young Spanish soprano whom Falla met during the rehearsal of La Vida breve in Paris in January 1914 and who asked him for advice on a recital programme she was planning. That got him thinking and, finding inspiration and some source material in the Cancionero popular español by his revered teacher Felipe Pedrell, he had more or less completed the work before the outbreak of war forced him to return to Spain nine months later. It was first performed by Luisa Vela with the composer at the piano at the Ateneo in Madrid in January 1915.

All seven of the songs are based on traditional Spanish melodies accompanied by harmonies derived from their modality and, for the most part, dance rhythms appropriate to the regions of Spain where they originate. While the piano part imitates the sound and figurations of the Spanish guitar, the vocal part retains something of the colouring associated with the tunes in their natural setting, like the flamenco-style exclamations of “Ay!” in the opening El Paño murano and the fiercely conclusive Polo. Between the two there is a lively muleteer’s dance in Seguidilla murciana contrasting with a lament from the North of Spain in Asturiana and, symmetrically placed on the other side of the brilliant Aragonese Jota, a matching contrast between a lullaby from the Andalusian South in Nana and an artfully lilting villancico in Cancíon.

Georg Frideric Handel (1685-1759)

“Verdi prati” from Alcina (1735)

Captive on Alcina’s enchanted island, where he was happy to stay as her lover until he realised that he was under a spell, Ruggiero is about to be rescued by his betrothed, Bradamante. In “Verdi prati” he bids farewell to the verdant island landscape which he knows will be restored to its true desert state when, as planned, they deprive Alcina of her magic powers.

Although the celebrated alto castrato Giovanni Carestini was, by all accounts, reluctant to accept an aria with such a modest vocal line, “Verdi prati” made an immediate impression on the public when Alcina was first performed at Covent Garden in 1735 – perhaps because, with its poised melodic purity and its serious sarabande rhythms, it was reminiscent of London’s long-term favourite among Handel arias, “Lascio ch’io pianga” from Rinaldo.

Gioacchino Rossini (1792-1868)

“Eccomi alfine in Babilonia…Ah! Quel giorno” from Semiramide (1823)

Arsace Act 1

On his first appearance in Semiramide, Arsace enters the temple of Baal with the mixed feelings he expresses in “Eccomi alfine in Babilonia.” As a brilliant young commander in a distant region of the country, he has been summoned by Queen Semiramide for reasons which he doesn’t yet understand but which he hopes will help him secure the hand of Princess Azema. In fact, the opposite is true in that Semiramide – who turns out to be not only his mother but also the murderer of his father – wants to marry him and make him King of Babylon. In fact, he does become King but only after inadvertently killing his mother.

Preceded by the dramatic scena “Eccomi alfine in Babilonia” and modestly    designated as a cavatina, “Ah! Quel giorno” is one of the most resourcefully written and, after the tempo changes from Andantino to Allegro on “Oh! Come da quel di,” one of the most thrilling of all Rossini’s many brilliant mezzo and contralto arias. It is also one of the last of its kind in Italian since after Semiramide (first performed at La Fenice, Venice, in 1823) he was to write only one more opera to an Italian libretto.

Gerald Larner ©2008