Great Comedy Overtures (CD review)

Lance Friedel, Royal Scottish National Orchestra. Naxos 8.573418.

The best place to begin a review of an album titled Great Comedy Overtures would probably be with a definition of "comedy." My Random House Unabridged Dictionary defines the term as "a play, movie, etc., of light and humorous character with a happy or cheerful ending; a dramatic work in which the central motif is the triumph over adverse circumstance, resulting in a successful or happy conclusion." Not that there aren't comic operas that are pretty funny, but the emphasis for opera might be on the idea of triumph over adversity, with a successful or happy ending.

Such is the case with the eleven selections in the album under review, selections that include just about every famous comedy overture you can think of, all of them vigorously presented by Maestro Lance Friedel and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. A look at the track titles will give you the idea of the material:

1. Herold: Zampa
2. Nicolai: Die lustigen Weiber von Windsor
3. Wolf-Ferrari: Il segreto di Susanna
4. Thomas: Mignon
5. Reznicek: Donna Diana
6. Flotow: Martha
7. Auber: Fra Diavolo
8. Lortzing: Zar und Zimmermann
9. Cimarosa: Il matrimonio segreto
10. Adam: Si j'etais roi
11. Cornelius: Der Barbier von Bagdad (arr. F. Mottl for orchestra)

Lance Friedel

Maestro Friedel and his Scottish orchestra attack each overture with a commendable enthusiasm. The composers of these pieces meant them, after all, as curtain raisers. They should get our attention, and they do. However, I can't say we really needed another album of overtures, nor can I say that Friedel injects them with as much creative nuance as I've heard. While the music moves right along at a healthy gait, it never seems to catch fire and inspire or thrill one as it might. Nevertheless, these are personal quibbles, and one cannot deny that Friedel and company offer the tunes in a most serviceable fashion.

Favorites? Under Maestro Friedel, Nicolai's Merry Wives of Windsor has a lovely romantic spirit in its opening and a lively bounce in the Allegro section. Wolf-Ferrari's Il segreto di Susanna probably has the most-charming spirit of the bunch. Thomas's Mignon sounds most elegant. Since I grew up with Sergeant Preston of the Yukon, how could I fail to like Reznicek's Donna Dianna? Auber's Fra Diavolo shows plenty of spunk. And there's an appealing lightheartedness about Cimarosa's Il matrimonio segreto.

The total playing time for the disc is nearly eighty minutes (79:44), a most-generous number that approaches the limit of a standard CD.

Producer Tim Handley and engineer Phil Rowlands recorded the album at Henry Wood Hall, Glasgow, Scotland in January 2014. The producers seem to have miked this one for maximum realism rather than any kind of close-up clarity. The result is a little different and does, indeed, sound fairly lifelike. The orchestra shows up at a moderate distance, with lots of hall resonance to give it a properly natural bloom. Although detailing suffers somewhat and the sound appears a bit narrower and more muted than we usually hear from most modern recordings, there is a good depth of field and some strong dynamics involved.

JJP

To listen to a brief excerpt from this album, click here:

Overtures in Hi-Fi (CD review)

Saint-Saens, Berlioz, Adam, Herold, Reznicek, Suppe, Nicolai, Auber. Albert Wolff, Orchestre de L'Opera-Comique, Paris and Paris Conservatoire Orchestra. Decca Eloquence 480 2385 (2-disc set).

First, the only bad news: Decca made two of these recordings a few years before the widespread use of stereo. Thus, we get a couple of pieces in monaural sound, the rest in stereo. Now, the good news: All of the music sounds extremely good and is worth an audition.

Overtures in Hi-Fi is one of several two-disc sets of older material Decca are releasing on the "Eloquence" label out of Australia. This is a blessing for those of us who enjoy the Decca sound of the Fifties and Sixties and a double blessing at the more-than-reasonable price point we find the album. Now, on to the content.

Although the French maestro Albert Wolff (1884-1970) may not have been one of the most well-known conductors of his generation, he did record a number of basic items from the French repertoire for Decca, thanks largely I suppose to his work with the orchestras represented in this set, the Orchestre de L'Opera-Comique and the Paris Conservatoire Orchestra. The two discs include sixteen items, all of which Wolff presents with an elegant verve and excitement.

The program begins with the overtures to La Princess Jaune ("The Yellow Princess") by Camille Saint-Saens and Benvenuto Cellini by Hector Berlioz, these particular overtures being rather odd choices to start things off because they're both in mono from 1951. You see, nowhere on the front or back covers nor in the booklet itself do the folks at Decca mention the words "mono" or "stereo" at all, so unless the casual buyer looked closely at the fine print to notice that two of the selections came from the very early Fifties, the buyer would have no idea there were any items in monaural at all. Then, to be confronted with the two mono recordings right off the bat might prove a little discouraging. Fortunately, the performances are so animated, their sheer energy alone would probably win over a listener; but, still, it makes one wonder what the Decca producers were thinking. Maybe because they are the only tracks representing Wolff's work with the Orchestre de L'Opera-Comique the producers thought it would be logical to include them chronologically first. I dunno.

From here on, we get the rest of the program in stereo, with overtures to Le Corsaire, Le roi Lear, Le carnaval romain, and Les francs-juges by Berlioz and Si j'etais roi by Adolphe Adam, which brings the first disc to a rousing close. You'll find these Berlioz selections some of the most energetic and spirited versions you'll hear from anyone, with wonderfully judged tempos, rhythms, and dynamic contrasts. The set is almost worth the asking price just for these tracks alone.

Disc two opens with Ferdinand Herold's Zampa, a particular crowd pleaser, which forces the listener again to question why Decca didn't begin the proceedings with it back on disc one. Under Wolff, Zampa has almost too much energy, but that's no doubt what Herold wanted and certainly what audiences expect. Wolff's interpretation of things has all the pompous, aggressive swagger you'd expect of the opera's infamous pirate protagonist.

Next is music I've known from childhood, the overture to Donna Dianna by Emil Nikolaus Reznicek. This is because the old radio and TV program Sergeant Preston of the Yukon used it throughout their shows, and I was an ardent fan. Wolff brings back memories, and I still can't listen to the main tune without thinking of swirling snowdrifts and high adventure. "Well, King, this case is closed."

And so it goes, through Pique Dame by Franz von Suppe; Die Lustigen von Windsor by Otto Nicolai; and Le Domino noir, Masaniello, Le cheval de bronze, Fra diavolo, and Les diamants de la couronne by Daniel-Francois-Esprit Auber. Of these, Fra diavolo stands out for me because of its special confidence and verve. Wolff handles it beautifully.

With 144 minutes of music on the two discs, the set surely counts as a great value, whether you appreciate the occasional mono selections or not.

Decca recorded the music at La Maison de la Mutualite, Paris between 1951 and 1957, using some of their best producers (John Culshaw, Victor Olof, and James Walker) and engineers (Kenneth Wilkinson, James Brown, Roy Wallace, and Ken Cress). Mono or not, the sound is typical early Fifties Decca, meaning it has good body, presence, definition, and dimensionality, made before the company began using 800 microphones for each recording session. There is little or no background noise when listening to these selections at a normal volume level. Turned higher, one notices a small degree of hiss. Highs sound especially well extended, even in the two mono selections. In the stereo numbers, the left-right spread is wide, the bass is powerful, and the imaging is fairly realistic. With strong dynamics and a reasonably clean transient response, the sound comes across as quite lifelike.

JJP

To listen to a brief excerpt from this album, click here:

Herold-Lanchbery: La Fille Mal Gardee (XRCD review)

John Lanchbery, Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. LIM XR24 013.

La Fille Mal Gardee is a rustic ballet originally produced around the end of the eighteen century (1789), based on a number of folk tunes and subsequently arranged in any number of different versions. The one we have here was put together around 1960 by John Lanchbery, based on an 1828 arrangement by Ferdinand Herold (of Zampa fame). The music tells the story of a comically difficult romance between a farmer's daughter and her lover, complicated by the appearance of a young dunce favored by the girl's mother. The music is lively, earthy, sometimes unpolished, but always entertaining. Lanchbery's direction of the Covent Garden Orchestra is equally lively, never unpolished, and certainly entertaining. In fact, I can't imagine hearing the music played any other way.

This 1962 Decca release, remastered by LIM (Lasting Impression Music, a part of producer Winston Ma's FIM, First Impression Music group) in JVC's 24-bit XRCD super-analogue process, is the fifth incarnation of the recording I've owned over the years. I started with a London LP, moved up to a Decca LP when I was able to obtain it, then the regular CD from Decca, followed by a gold CD from Classic Compact Discs, and now this LIM edition. With each succeeding release, I have heard very minor but distinct improvements in sound.

For this review I first listened straight through the new remaster and found it impressive, indeed. Then I A/B compared it to the gold edition, and I was further impressed. The music has a very wide stereo spread and fairly good orchestral depth in both versions, but the LIM is noticeably fuller, smoother, more dynamic, and better focused. By contrast, the gold CD is a tiny bit harder and leaner. The LIM gives the impression of a bigger, more dramatic, more realistic recording. But if I had to single out any one area of improvement in the LIM, it would be focus. It is as though you were looking through the viewfinder of a camera and adjusting it just so in order to obtain a marginally clearer picture. It's not a night-and-day difference, mind you--nothing is--but you'll hear it, especially in the massed strings and percussion. Depending upon your playback equipment, you may even be bowled over by it. For a recording made in 1962, La Fille Mal Gardee sounds better than 99% of the classical albums being made today.

Of course, you pay a price for improvement, and the price may not be commensurate with the small differences you'll hear. I'd like to say you can get the FIM, LIM, or JVC XRCDs at a budget price, but you can't. They are premium-priced products for the discriminating audiophile. For ultraprecise XRCD/24 processing and the like, you pay through the nose, usually twice the cost of a full-priced CD, and in return you get subtle but often discernible improvements in sound. In the case of this LIM remastering, you also get a clothbound album cover, plastic insert pages, and a static-resistant disc sleeve. If none of this interests you, you can always buy the regular Decca CD release (because the gold edition is no longer available and would cost as much as the XRCD in any case).

JJP