Rich, creamy vocal; enveloping warmth; text, character alive; facile Baroque ornamentation; impeccable diction; fine Symphony .
Disadvantages:
Only over an hour of music here; wanted more !
Recommend to potential buyers:
yes
Full review
If you’ll kindly pardon the gushing tone of this review, the blame for which you can lay wholly on the phenomenal British mezzo-soprano, Sarah Connolly (whom I hereby unofficially dub the operatic Anjelica Huston). Her riveting portrayal of the title character in Glyndebourne’s 2005 staging by David McVicar of Georg Frideric Händel’s ‘Giulio Cesare’ first made this writer into a very interested listener [reviewed here: http://dvd.ciao.co.uk/Giulio_Cesare_Handel_Three_Discs__Review_5644748]. With this disc, she’s become a full-fledged Connolly fan.
This 2004 CD comprises airs (arias) and orchestral sinfonias from four works by Händel, and any Händel/Baroque music or opera/vocal music lover will not regret its acquisition. This disc also heralds Ms Connolly’s superb turn as the aforementioned Giulio Cesare the very next year at the Glyndebourne Festival Opera.
WHENCE CAME THE ARIAS, SINFONIAS, AND THE DIVINE MS SARAH ?
The airs and sinfonias are drawn from the epic operas, ‘Alcina’ and ‘Ariodante’, the sacred oratorio, ‘Solomon’ and the secular oratorio, ‘Hercules’. Eight of the thirteen tracks comprise arias that showcase the singer’s skill and art; the rest are Sinfonias that kind of introduce the respective arias, and are performed by the Symphony of Harmony and Invention under the direction of Harry Christophers. It’s of interest to note that Ms Connolly was originally in Mr Christophers’s well-known vocal group, The Sixteen, and left it sometime in the mid-Nineties to start a solo singing career. Well, we’re all the richer for it, and I’m sure the decision got enthusiastic support from Mr Christophers himself. (Were they known as ‘The Fifteen’ then, after her departure?)
THE VOICE
Händel’s sublime compositions are honoured and served most marvellously here by Ms Connolly’s splendid vocal renditions and versatile moods. So seductive is the loveliness of her singing, bolstered as it is by informed phrasing, subtle emotional hues and graceful shifts in the dynamics, all done to suit the musical and textual intent of each aria – which Ms Connolly fully achieves.
Hers is a big but gentle, rich and creamy voice that invites the listener to bask in its enveloping warmth. It gleams like bright moonlight at the top with luminous highlights of a metallic sheen. But watch out, for the voice can also soar to the heavens and burn with a fiery intensity when needed. The characters and the text portrayed by Ms Connolly all come alive with a natural and authentically coloured drama. Far from becoming a distraction, her gossamer vibrato only heightens the music’s emotional content. Every phrase reflects much thought given to its delivery, yet the result never hints at a self-conscious preciousness. What we get is an arresting vocal performance blessed with plenty of heart and intelligence. Furthermore, not only is she vocally impressive – Ms Connolly also sings in both Italian and English with an impeccable diction that more operatic singers should really emulate.
OF THINGS BAROQUE (BROKE? NO.)
Now, Baroque music wouldn’t call itself thus without any ornamentation, and Ms Connolly more than meets the challenges posed by the music. With her flawless technique and excellent breath control, she deploys these decorative details (melismas/roulades*, trills and the like) with aplomb. Note the nimble, feather-light, yet precise melismas* and trills in her first number, the ‘Sta nell’Ircana’ (‘An angry Hyrcanian tigress lurks’), from ‘Alcina’. A similar facility adorns the buoyant ‘Dopo notte’ (‘After night’) from ‘Ariodante’. Here Händel emphasises the character’s elation in the Italian word for joy, ‘gioia’, whose ‘o’ is embellished by the singer with an extended and florid roulade. (For some reason – and this must be taken in light of my less sophisticated ears – I enjoy these decorative touches in the music of Händel and Bach but can barely abide those in Rossini’s operas!)
THOSE GRAVITY-DEFYING PIANISSIMOS, AND DRAMATIC READINGS
Ms Connolly is equally adept at creating spine-tingling, gravity-defying pianissimos (very soft notes) that seem to float, weightless, in mid-air. She draws out a syllabic note into a fine, silvery, whisper-thin musical thread that remains amazingly audible and crystalline in its clarity. Listen to her treatment of the word ‘ancor’, for instance, at both the two- and six-minute marks in ‘Mi lusingha al dolce affetto’ (‘She deceives my sweet affection’), from ‘Alcina’.
Her lyrical readings of the more sombre pieces show off her silky tone, carried aloft on seamless melodic lines, to good advantage. She turns almost prayerful in the entrancing ‘Verdi prati’ (‘Verdant meadows’), an aria for the trouser role of Ruggiero from ‘Alcina’. Her dazed, monochromatic delivery captures so well the knight, Ruggiero’s sad anticipation of losing the magical world he now inhabits.
In ‘Scherza infida’ from ‘Ariodante’, the hero Ariodante suspects his fiancée of unfaithfulness, which is merely stoked by the tale’s antagonist, the duke Polinesso. The hero (another trouser role for the mezzo-soprano) goes into a deep gloom that welcomes death, and threatens his unfaithful lover with a haunting by his ghost. Ariodante’s sadness is made palpable through Ms Connolly’s grave, heartfelt rendition of the aria. The longest track in the collection, it runs for a full twelve minutes and twelve seconds – yet the dramatic interest never sags, and her expressive, modulated singing backed by the gentle pulsation from the string section (besides some exquisite pianissimos) keeps you engrossed through the end. (Fortunately, Ariodante’s disposition – and the story – turn sunny later on, as we witness in the jubilant ‘Dope notte’ described earlier.) Although not as bleak, a related mood holds in the piece from ‘Solomon’. Bidding farewell to her husband, King Solomon, the Queen of Sheba sings rhetorically, ‘Will the sun forget to streak?’, as a muted, single horn echoes Ms Connolly’s vocal with a contrapuntal melody, adding to the wistfulness of this majestic aria.
The final trio of pieces are taken from the ‘musical drama’, ‘Hercules’. Following the bouncy yet melancholic sinfonia, the tragic heroine, Dejanira, expresses her troubling suspicions about her husband Hercules’s seeming interest in the captured young princess, Iole, in the darkish and grand aria, ‘Cease, ruler of the day’. The disc ends with the accompagnato, ‘Where shall I fly’, depicting the torment that now haunts Dejanira’s psyche, which is rapidly going to pieces. Having done in her husband in a jealousy-fuelled, murderous moment, Dejanira’s Lady Macbeth-like mental unease forces her to dwell on thoughts like ‘No rest the guilty find / from the pursuing furies of the mind!’, as the girl goes utterly mad with guilt, a state persuasively conveyed by Ms Connolly’s vocal thespianism.
A WISELY PROGRAMMED PROGRAM and THE APTLY NAMED SYMPHONY OF HARMONY AND INVENTION
The track sequence has a kind of musical and narrative logic to it, and soporific monotony is avoided by smart programming. Slower pieces are interspersed with brisker ones. The shorter instrumental bits that preface each aria also serve as refreshing, palate-cleansing, between-course musical sorbets, allowing the listener to start afresh with the next sinfonia-aria duo.
In these orchestral sequences, the musical pleasures evoked by the Symphony of Harmony and Invention match those of Ms Connolly’s luscious singing. Founded and directed by Harry Christophers, this 26-person group play their parts faultlessly and thoughtfully, with a respect for and empathy with the singer. One mustn’t dismiss their contributions as mere buffer pieces between the vocal tracks, though. Each is a fully-fledged, alternately thrilling and jaunty (as in the respective Sinfonias from ‘Alcina’, and from ‘Solomon’ and ‘Hercules’), soothing or reflective musical piece (shown in the glorious, sarabande-like Sinfonia from ‘Ariodante’) in its own right, which just also happens to complement Ms Connolly’s arias with contrasting tempos and rhythms.
Ms Connolly’s vocal is wisely placed at centre stage, and she’s never rudely eclipsed by overly loud instrumentals. All tracks were performed at St Silas the Martyr in Kentish Town, London, a small church that has also drawn other musicians to its intimate hall for recording purposes.
A DISADVANTAGE, WHICH REALLY ISN’T ONE
The sole ‘disadvantage’ I can think of here is the disc’s relatively short running time. With just over an hour’s worth of music, one’s avaricious tendencies make one clamour for more, even if this disc satisfies so fully on its own. It’s a trivial complaint, and has nil to do with the quality of the disc itself. I suppose one must then seek out other recordings of the artist, as this collection both sates one’s hunger and whets the appetite for more. So it’s off, then, to hunt down other CDs by Ms Connolly.
HOW ABOUT SOME BACH? GENUINE ARTISTRY IN NEED OF MORE PUBLICITY
Finally, although Händel’s often secular compositions are of a lighter nature than J S Bach’s heavier, more liturgical ones, I wonder if Ms Connolly ever plans to do similar honours for Bach’s vocal works in future. For the moment, I can only say this: if you’re a Baroque music/vocal music lover, this disc is a must-listen, even a must-have. ‘Tis a crime that such a rare example of genuine artistry is left to languish in oblivion, thanks to the lack of a big publicity machine to broadcast its merits to an increasingly tone-deaf world. I can only hope this humble review brings more attention to this exceptional disc. It really deserves a ten-star rating, but I suppose Ciao’s five will have to do.
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Curious as to what I’m raving about here? Want to hear Sarah Connolly for yourself? Go copy and paste this link into your browser’s URL window:
(I find the samples at CD Universe superior to those useless ones provided by amazon.co.uk and amazon.com, which offer only the introductory thirty seconds of every track!)
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Notes:
*Melisma, roulade = a string of several notes sung to one syllable.
+For the Ciao police: this review has also been posted elsewhere in modified form by the author.+
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CD Notes:
SARAH CONNOLLY HEROES and HEROINES Georg Frideric Händel)
The Symphony of Harmony and Invention Harry Christophers
Track List:
Alcina (Ruggiero) * 1. Sinfonia (Act 3) 0.48 * 2. Sta nell' Ircana 5.39 * 3. Mi lusingha il dolce affetto 7.15
Solomon (Queen Of Sheba) * 4. Sinfonia - 'Arrival Of The Queen Sheba' 3.00 * 5. Recit & Aria: Will The Sun Forget To Streak 6.36
