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Your support makes all the difference.MUSIC'S CELESTIAL bandwagon lumbers on, stacked high with ancient and modern novelties. It seems that nowadays even non-believers are craving sound-tracks for comfortable religious certainties and long-abandoned faiths.
John Tavener has done more than most to awaken interest in Greek and Russian Orthodox church music, so it's hardly surprising that recent CD release sheets have featured numerous programmes centring on Eastern liturgical repertoire. Among the latest to appear showcases "the extraordinary low notes of the Russian Basso Profondo" and an enjoyable, hour-long programme by the Moscow-based Orthodox Singers under Georgy Smirnov. The opening "Hymn to the Mother of God" finds the soloist Yuri Wichniakov climbing so low as to elude discernible pitch, though there is more to the programme than deep-throated, sepulchral growlings. The great Chaliapin made famous records of Gretchaninov's "Litany" and "The Legend of the Twelve Robbers", and it's nice to encounter both in handsome reinterpretations. Perhaps the most disquieting track is "Anathema", where the deacon enumerates condemned heresies. We're told that, with the passing of time, the definition of "heretic" widened to include enemies of the government. Not a happy thought.
No doubt Don Giovanni would have been a high priority on any ecclesiastical hit-list, though with Mozart in dramatic mode and Otto Klemperer on the rostrum, hellfire and damnation are already guaranteed. Klemperer recorded the opera for EMI towards the end of his career, but a 1955 West German Radio broadcast recording with the Cologne Radio Symphony Orchestra dwarfs his later effort in virtually every respect, not least in Act II's chilling fifth scene where the Commendatore's statue comes to supper. This is Mozart anticipating Beethoven, demonic, benevolently autocratic (greatly aided by George London's masterful assumption of the title role) and wonderfully lyrical. You will search far and wide for a gentler, more beguiling "Il mio tesoro inanto" than the version Leopold Simoneau offers us here, and London is unexpectedly seductive in "La ci darem la mano". Of the women, Rita Streich's Zerlina is especially memorable. No other Mozart opera recording that I know of commands greater respect, and only Bruno Walter's high-octane wartime Don Giovanni (a scratchy Met broadcast currently available on Naxos) generates as much tension.
Which leaves just enough room for a colourful tray of balletic sweetmeats served by Robert Irving. To be truthful, neither Giselle nor Les Sylphides would be among my desert-island ballet scores, though Sylvia and Coppelia probably would. And I cannot imagine anyone making a more tasty dessert of Schumann's piano suite Carnaval as orchestrated by Glazunov, Rimsky- Korsakov, Arensky, Liadov and others. The Philharmonia plays with consummate style; the 40-year-old stereo recordings come up as good as new.
Basso Profondo from Old Russia/ Smirnov Russian Season/ harmonia mundi RUS 288 158.
Don Giovanni Mozart/Klemperer
Testament SBT 2149 (2 discs).
Great Ballet Music/ Irving `Royal Long Players'/ Complete DCL 705772 (2 discs)
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