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When people think of Elizabeth Maconchy's music, if they do, then it is usually of her string quartets. She just isn't widely performed or recorded, which is both extraordinary and wrong for a composer who was a star of the Royal Academy of Music during the 1930s, and who subsequently enjoyed as many commissions, performances and broadcasts as her contemporaries. No mean feat in an age when to be a female composer was to be at an indisputable disadvantage. Today, even the aforementioned quartets have only been recorded once, and the 2007 centenary of her birth passed largely unmarked. How wonderful, then, for Chandos to record The Sofa (1957) for the first time since the BBC in 1967, and The Departure (1961), on disc here for the very first time. Both operas work particularly well as recordings; their short length helps, but the credit really goes to Independent Opera's vibrant productions.
Those who know the sombre, tightly organised quartets may be surprised by The Sofa's louche, mischievous score. It tells the story of Prince Dominic who is turned into a sofa by his grandmother, midway through a party he is hosting, as punishment for his loose morals. The spell will be broken when a couple makes love on top of him. Independent Opera's performance is right on the money with its recreation of the frantic, flirty, youthful energy of a party full of hopeful lovers. It's as frothy as the champagne they're drinking, but without the slurred speech - diction is uniformly crystal-clear. After such hedonistic abandonment, The Departure is a stark contrast. It enacts a final meeting and profession of love between Julia, who has recently been killed in a car crash, and her bereaved husband Mark. The performances of mezzo soprano Louise Poole and baritone Hakan Vramsmo heighten the chilling subject matter; they throw themselves into their tortured characters, and Poole's pure top notes and richly honeyed lower register send ghostly prickles down the spine. Independent Opera have demonstrated what a sacrilege it is that these two works should have been allowed to gather mothballs for over 40 years. --Charlotte Gardner
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Really approachable modern opera,
By
This review is from: Maconchy - The Sofa; Departure (Audio CD)
McConchy has a reputation for stern and principled dissonance, so it comes as something of a surprise to hear these accessible and tuneful miniatures. They were commissioned as two-thirds of a trilogy for Sadler's Wells in the 1960s, so it's appropriate that they should get their premiere recording by a local ensemble.
"The Sofa" is a comedy, libretto by Vaughan Williams widow Ursula from a satiric French text of the 1700s. In it the hero Dominic is turned into a sofa by his grandmother for his immoral behaviour; her curse will only be lifted when a couple make love on him. The rest of the piece concerns his attempts to egg on various amorous encounters to fruition, only to be thwarted several times. (It seems to me that there is a plot inconsdistency here, since no curse could ber devised more likely to encourage immorality, but no matter.) McConchy has huge fun with this, including parodies of Beethoven, Puccini, Strauss and Offenbach. There's plenty of light-hearted sleaze and a lovely "laughing" aria. Witty and tuneful, very redolent of the 1960s in its approach to free love, but also full of wisdom, as befits a work of two women in their 50s. "The Departure" is sad and haunting, a complete contrast. A woman listens to the sound of a funeral offstage, and watches it out of her window. She sees her husband at the funeral, and gradually comes to realise that this is her funeral, and she is dead. She remembers the good times together with him, and mourns the fact she will never be with him again. This is a piece about the bereavement process, and coming to accept loss, and packs a huge punch in its 35-minute span. Both pieces use a small orchestra, deployed with great variety and dramatic emphasis; always the music is at the service of the very tight and effective librettos (libretti?), which is as it should be. This CD proves that there is life in English opera after Benjamin Britten, and you want to hear "The Three STrangers", the third part of the trilogy, based on a Thomas Hardy story.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
4.0 out of 5 stars (1 customer review) 1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
NEWW MUSIC BUT NOT HARD ON THE EARS,
By RALPH P. GRAY "ralph" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Maconchy - The Sofa; Departure (Audio CD)
Acknowledgment: I am cribbing from the liner notes.
Let me introduce Elizabeth Maconchy (1907-94). Started composing at 6; entered Royal College of Music at 16; among teachers she impressed was Vaughan Williams. Later in Prague she met Josef Suk; Erwin Schulhoff (the fine Czech composer later to die in a concentration camp) conducted her piano concertino. Sir Henry Wood premiered her THE LAND at a 1930 Promenade Concert. Maconchy received numerous commissions and was performed in many places. She wrote all forms of music except opera until 1956 (THE SOFA; - THE DEPARTURE came a bit later). - Sexism kept her repute down but seems not to have discouraged her. However, British opera before PETER GRIMES was generally not valued. V'n Wms inspired her to write THE SOFA, for which she chose his wife as librettist. Maconchy's music had become fashionably dissonant but now she parodied Beethoven, Puccini, Johann Strauss, etc.,and Offenbach gestured in the wings. - She used a very small orchestra, with piano, in this satire that staged carefree bedding by the young. THE DEPARTURE, also employing a small orchestra, is serious stuff. It starts with a funeral and deals with the feelings of people close to the departed Julia. The liner notes suggest this qu'n: what underlies mourning? Basically our fantasies about our experiences? When I first heard this CD I was not greatly impressed but I did find spots I liked. Repeated hearings much increased my enjoyment. There really are tunes although I remember none. (Maybe because my att'n often wanders - not only here.) I like the orchestral writing a lot - sparse, inventive. The singing is good and often fine. Each opera lasts about 1/2 hour. The music is nothing to be afraid of (I say to those averse to modern stuff) but it requires a willingness to let what we are used to not determine our receptivity - admittedly a difficult, maybe impossible thing to achieve totally, but absolute success is not needed or maybe not even a wise thing to aim for. Why 4 stars only? Frankly because I don't thrill to the music as I do, say, to PETER GRIMES. But I DO like it and find it often intriguing. |
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