劃時代的韓德爾歌劇全曲錄音~珊米勒 (世界首錄音與首度CD發行)

學者兼指揮家Anthony Lewis在1950年代首次將這齣韓德爾歌劇帶進錄音室,並找來英國偉大女高音詹妮弗·維維安擔綱大樑.完成了這一份跨時代的錄音.這份錄音完成後至今已經有另外超過十套的錄音問世.Eloquence首次將這套錄音以CD發行, Anthony Lewis的指揮與Jennifer Vyvyan的精彩演唱,讓這份錄音成功無比.一套您不可錯過的韓德爾錄音!
 
A pioneering Handel recording of the 1950s in a new digital remastering, released on Decca CD for the first time.
 
The scholar and conductor, Anthony Lewis, was one of the early luminaries of the L’Oiseau Lyre label which became, over time, the early-music imprint of Decca. Drawing on his experience of conducting and staging Baroque opera both at the Barber Institute in Birmingham and with the English Opera Group in London, he made recordings which have become milestones in the discography of Purcell and Handel.
 
The Eloquence release of Lewis directing Purcell’s masque ‘The Fairy Queen’ (482 7449) in 1957, was given an Editor’s Choice in Gramophone (December 2017) where it was welcomed as ‘a long overdue reissue’: ‘the first time his ground-breaking recording has been available in modern formats … The shifting moods of comedy, tragedy, charm and sense of spectacle are transparent throughout Lewis’s congenial performance.’
 
The same qualities infuse ‘Semele’. The cast is led by one of Britten’s favourite singers and a company member of the English Opera Group, Jennifer Vyvyan whose pellucid soprano and exemplary technique were celebrated in 2017 by a series of Eloquence reissues including ‘Songs of England’ (482 5045), ‘Mr. Bach at Vauxhall Gardens’ (482 5387) and scenes and arias by Haydn and Mozart (482 5049).
 
Listeners who have grown up with period-instrument recordings may find themselves surprised and, like Gramophone’s first reviewer, ‘delighted’ by the sure sense of Handelian style exhibited by both singers and players, guided as they are by the sure and lively hand of Lewis. Ultimately, though, this is Vyvyan’s recording, from the haunting unease she brings to her opening ‘O Jove, in pity teach me’ with its wide, dissonant leaps, to Semele’s sublime death scene, to which Vyvyan brings that directness and emotional truth which was a hallmark of all that she sang.
 
曲目:
GEORGE FRIDERIC HANDEL:
Semele, HWV 58
(Edited by Julian Herbage)
 
Jupiter, William Herbert
Cadmus, George Prangnell
Semele, Jennifer Vyvyan
Athamas, John Whitworth
Ino, Helen Watts
Somnus, George James
Apollo, Robert Ellis
Juno, Anna Pollak
Iris, Brenda Griffith
 
Chorus of priests, augurs, loves, zephyrs, nymphs, swains and attendants
Saint Anthony Singers
New Symphony Orchestra of London
Thurston Dart, harpsichord continuo
Anthony Lewis
 
FIRST CD RELEASE ON DECCA