New York Times
Feb 6 2005

One Singer Offers Another’s Writing
ANNE MIDGETTE

Viardot-Garcia: Songs
Isabel Bayrakdarian, soprano; Serouj Kradjian, pianist. Analekta AN 2
9903; CD.

THIS recording links two singers who are increasingly in the
spotlight. One is Isabel Bayrakdarian, a striking Canadian-Armenian
soprano. The other is Pauline Viardot-Garcia, who was recently the
focus of an evening at the New York Festival of Song and an opera
performance at Caramoor.

The main difference is that Viardot-Garcia has been dead for almost
95 years. She was also, however, a composer; her songs are
delightful, and Ms. Bayrakdarian does them vivacious justice.

Viardot-Garcia kept her compositional aspirations relatively modest,
but she performed her songs herself, often, both on tour and after
her retirement at 42. She continued to write music for her salons
until she was into her 80’s.

Her songs form a bright bouquet in an array of languages (French,
German and Italian) and styles. This CD includes four of her
arrangements of mazurkas by Chopin – “Seize Ans,” for instance, is
based on the Mazurka in A flat (Op. 50, No. 2) – approved by Chopin
himself. He was one of a circle of close friends that included pretty
much all the major musical figures of Europe in Viardot-Garcia’s very
long day, from Liszt (who taught her piano) to Massenet.

Ms. Bayrakdarian is a fine interpreter of this music. Her voice has a
brilliance and a lightness that don’t prevent it from descending to
darker nether regions (in “Die Sterne”) or swelling to near-operatic
fortes (in “Grands Oiseaux Blancs”). She genuinely engages with what
she is singing, and there is a hint of a laugh in her voice that
lifts the music with an infectious lilt.

“Chanson de la Pluie,” with its pitter-pattering raindrop
accompaniment, is a nice measure of her brightness, of Serouj
Kradjian’s agility at the piano and of the generally appealing nature
of the disc.
ANNE MIDGETTE

Alessandro Scarlatti: ‘Griselda’
Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, conducted by René Jacobs. Harmonia
Mundi France HMC 901805.07; three CD’s.
THE conductor René Jacobs has played a notable role in the Handel
opera boom. But the fixation on Handel, he is out to show, has
obscured other worthy Baroque opera composers, notably Alessandro
Scarlatti.

Mr. Jacobs’s latest recording from Harmonia Mundi France is an
account of Scarlatti’s impressive final opera, “Griselda,” first
performed in Rome in 1721. Scarlatti wrote a staggering number of
operas: more than 100.

Most are unknown, and many are no doubt standard fare. But “Griselda”
was a special case, a semiprivate commission for a major theater in
Rome. Scarlatti thought of it as a summation, Mr. Jacobs suggests in
booklet notes, a chance to fulfill his highest aims.

The story concerns King Gualtiero of Sicily, who has married a
shepherdess, Griselda. His subjects, affronted that he has made a
commoner their queen, demand that he renounce her.

The complicated plot turns on the king’s effort to prove Griselda’s
noble character by subjecting her to a series of feigned rejections
and insults. She proves steadfast and wins the admiration of the
Sicilian people, and all ends happily.

The opera runs some three hours, and almost every moment offers rich
pleasures: lyrically enchanting arias in which virtuosic flights
never seem extraneous displays; elaborate and surely paced
recitatives; elegant ensembles; savvy instrumental writing.

The top-notch cast is headed by the rich-voiced soprano Dorothea
Röschmann, in the title role, and the fine young countertenor
Lawrence Zazzo, as Gualtiero. The excellent tenor Kobie van Rensburg,
who made an impressive Metropolitan Opera debut this season in
Handel’s “Rodelinda,” sings Prince Corrado, the king’s friend.
Conducting the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, Mr. Jacobs elicits a
performance at once stylistically informed and wonderfully
spontaneous.
ANTHONY TOMMASINI

Mahler: Orchestral Song Cycles
Violeta Urmana, soprano; Anne Sofie von Otter, mezzo-soprano; Thomas
Quasthoff, bass-baritone; Vienna Philharmonic conducted by Pierre
Boulez. Deutsche Grammophon B0003894-02; CD.

IS one excellent album more treasurable than half a great one?

This is an excellent album. In comparison with their performances on
a Mahler recording of 1999 – “Des Knaben Wunderhorn,” also on
Deutsche Grammophon – Thomas Quasthoff is expectedly strong in
“Lieder Eines Fahrenden Gesellen” (“Songs of a Wayfarer”) and Anne
Sofie von Otter gratifyingly so in “Kindertotenlieder” (“Songs on the
Death of Children”).

Ms. von Otter, a superb mezzo-soprano, sounded disappointingly wan in
that earlier recording, perhaps because of vocal problems she was
having around the time. But Mr. Quasthoff, at his rough-hewn best in
some of Mahler’s earthiest music, was a force of nature. And the
Berlin Philharmonic, conducted by Claudio Abbado, drove the
earthiness home.

Mr. Quasthoff’s approach is slightly more refined here, in keeping
with the nature of the music, but he lacks nothing in expressiveness
and sheer beauty of tone. Ms. von Otter brings the needed poignancy,
anguish and consolation to the role of a bereft mother.

Violetta Urmana shows the power needed to stand up to Mahler’s
orchestra in the Rückert Songs. And though she undercuts some of the
more restful and luminous moments with an intense vibrato, she can
spin a sweet and lovely pianissimo.

The disc is only enhanced by the vibrant playing of the Vienna
Philharmonic under Pierre Boulez. Deutsche Grammophon’s recording
gives full and accurate voice to those colorful and piquant, if not
gamy, Viennese woodwinds.

There is every reason to buy this record. All it lacks is the bolt of
revelation that comes with the sense that a work has found its ideal
interpreter. For that you should return to Mr. Quasthoff in “Des
Knaben Wunderhorn.”
JAMES R. OESTREICH