Word: mezzos
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...Lied von der Erde was to have been the HRO's tour de force, as well as something of a swan song for Yannatos, who will be on leave next semester. The work requires a huge orchestra as well as mezzo-soprano and tenor soloists. Each of the six movements sets to music texts from a collection of Chinese poetry translated into German called Die chinesische Floete. Together they take an entire hour to perform. The work was thus the weightiest on the program, and received the bulk of rehearsal time since the HRO's last concert a month...
...decadent Mendelssohn. It is a delightful work in its way, but to succeed it requires complete control and attention to detail that the ensemble, heads buried in the music, was not prepared to give. The group was often not quite together and tended to play at a consistent mezzo volume. On the whole their performance was earnest but dull...
This year's HRO is doing something with the music. The difference between Tschaikovsky and last year's Brahms third was phenomenal. Instead of plowing dutifully through the notes at a nondescript mezzo volume, they are seizing the music by guts and expressing it. The tacit thought behind their playing is no longer "see what I can do," but rather "see what I can say." It's about time...
...mostly the singers forgot about the drama and one another, turned toward the audience, and simply belted out their best. Frequently it was more than good enough. Drenched by the robust melodiousness of Soprano Elena Suliotis and Basso Nicolai Ghiaurov in Nabucco, and of Tenor Carlo Bergonzi and Mezzo Soprano Fiorenza Cossotto in Trovatore, the Montreal audiences hardly seemed to notice anything missing elsewhere...
...opera about the love life on a collective farm by Rodion Shchedrin. The youngest composer represented on the album (and husband of Prima Ballerina Maya Plisetskaya), Shchedrin finds room for originality within conventional Soviet Realism-which means late, late, late Romanticism. However superficial, his melodies are refreshingly singable. Mezzo-Soprano Arkhipova renders all with intelligence and virtuosity...