Smorg's 10 Favorite Classical Songs (Winter 2008) Dec 08 '08    Write an essay on this topic. Tweet Popular Products in Music The Dirtchamber Sessions, Vol. 1 by The Prodigy From $11 Jersey Boys [Original Broadway Cast Recording] by Original Broadway Cast From $8 The Bottom Line There's always music playing in my head. Currently, these 10 classical tunes are proving the most haunting. It's the end of the year... again. My stereo has been working like a horse (though, luckily, a smooth galloping one). I'm still an Italian bel canto opera fanatic, but somehow my music playlist is tipping more toward the late Romantic pieces from the German side of the Alps! I guess it has to do with the winter. Somehow lively bel canto music doesn't jive with this time of year as much as the darker flood of sound from the north does... The tracks below are playing on the Youtube player on my profile page until 2009 gets here. 1. N. Rimsky-Korsakov: Sadko: Song of India Sample: www.youtube.com/watch?v=SN7VM2nwgO4 (Gegam Grigorian) This is from Sadko the opera (Rimsky-Korsakov composed an orchestra suite with the same name earlier). Though it really isn't much of an opera at all. If anything it is more a series of musical tableaux with vivid orchestral portraits of Russia. The Song of India is sung not by Sadko, but by an Indian merchant he entertains before setting sail on a sea voyage. At any rate, this is one of my favorite 'calm down' song. I close my eyes as I listen to this thing and finds myself at sunset on the bank of the Indus. Floating right off the ground like a Buddhist monk undergoing a prayer-induced out-of-the-body experience, bobbling up and down weightlessly as the melody modulates chromatically... Who needs to experiment with any mind-altering chemical when you can have much of the same experience and none of the morning-after side effects listening to Rimsky-Korsakov's music? 2. F Lehar: Der Zarewitsch (The Tsarevitch): Volgalied Sample: www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_ek5WqQcV0 (Wieslaw Ochmann) For some reason this charming operetta isn't performed much nowadays. It's a shame! The story is of a young crown prince of Russia who, after a self-imposed romantic abstinance, is reintroduced to love again by a young dancer... only for their romance to be broken up by his patriotic duty. Occuring early in the story, this is as aristocratic as a lonely song can get, I think. One of these days I'll get around to reviewing the opera film this clip is taken from. It has the wonderful Teresa Stratas in it (which, naturally, makes it an automatic must have for opera fans). 3. G Bizet: Les pecheurs de perle (The Pearl Fishers): Je crois entend encore Sample: www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLdQ5goc4dM (Charles Castronovo) The Pearl Fishers used to be the forgotten opera of George Bizet (the composer of Carmen), but has lately been experiencing a Lazarus moment in a series of revival all over the USA and Europe. With tunes like this dreamy aria of Nadir, the love-struck hunter who is about to choose between friendship and courtship, it is easy to understand why. The ardor of this worshipful remembrance of past romance makes Nadir's choice a certain one. Gotta go see about a girl... (the line borrowed from the film Good Will Hunting, of course). 4. R Wagner: Tristan und Isolde: Mild und Leise (Isolde's Liebestod) Sample: www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HP8smXXbbs (Nina Stemme) The story of Tristan and Isault is probably well known to most; they love each other but he had to officially give her up to his kingly uncle. Much betrayals and fighting, and Tristan lays dead as the heartbroken Isolde refuses to submit to reality and, in a song, practically transfigure them both into this indescribable state of immortal death... A musical version of the Schroedinger's cat, I guess. Looking at the text, I am tempted to say that the song is written by someone who is deadly afraid of dying... Listening to the music, though, and it's another feeling entirely. Hopeful and certain of the utter unknowable without any aid of evidence whatsoever... It is as irrational as it is soothing. In a word; a religious experience. 5. H Purcell: King Arthur: Fairest Isle Sample: www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrfJWFM70RA (Sylvia McNair) Purcell and Dryden's King Arthur is a quirky work half way between an opera and a play. We don't see it staged very often since the implausibility (even by operatic standard) of the plot is enhanced by a preposterous musical arrangement. Some bits of it survives as regular recital songs, however, and this sparkling soprano solo is one of them. It paints a rather quirky picture of the fabled island (England?), doesn't it. You would like to call it idealically serene... but for all the quaver rhythms that modify each sung phrase. It's like listening to a smiley angel sputtering in the air... I love it! 6. G Händel: Alcina: Sta nell’ircana Sample: www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRC-tpaJJDI (Vesselina Kasarova) Even the long and slumbering nights of winter need a rousing break once in a while. So here comes Vesselina Kasarova, the opera singer who would have made a fabulous heavy metal rock star, to the rescue... After having spent much of Händel's fantastic opera in various states of uncertain doubts and anguish, Ruggiero (Roger) finally rises to his supposed superhero status in breaking free of Alcina's influence and fights back against her suffocating love. Being a character adapted from an Italian epic poem (Orlando Furioso), however, his lyric is a bit weird by today's standard.... He's basically comparing himself to a fierce tigress who has been backed to a corner and will now pounch on his imprudent hunter. Nevermind how funny that would sound when used to rally for a fight in real life, Kasarova's Ruggiero is overdosed not only on testosterone, but also on adrenaline as well. Who says hormonal imbalance has to always be a bad thing? 7. R Strauss: Vier letzte Lieder (Four Last Songs): September Sample: www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIirTJ5yn9c (Melanie Diener) The label 'Four Last Song' was actually imposed posthumously on a group of songs Richard Strauss wrote. Three (Frühling, September, and Beim Schlafengehen) are from a set of poem by Hermann Hesse, and Im Abendrot (At Sunset) is from an unconnected poem by Joseph von Eichendorff. September is my favorite of the bunch... Its soaring soprano line over the dense but uncluttered orchestra and soft calls of the French horn always remind me of the first time I saw Oregon's majestic Crater Lake in fall of 1994. 8. G Rossini: Maometto II: In questi estreme istanti Sample: www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlQSZTjLz-k (V Kasarova, B Lavarian, R Vargas) Bel canto doesn't come any more beautiful than this gorgeous trio from Rossini's rarely performed opera about Mohamed II of Turkey's siege of Negroponte, and his romantic entanglement with the daughter of the Negroponte ruler, Erisso. The first voice you hear is the Negroponte general Calbo (a trouser role), followed by Anna (the woman both Calbo and Maometto want to marry), and her father Paolo Erisso. An aria of three voices each airing their own distress alone and together... for the last time before the story ends. This rendition of this trio always make me feel a bit bad about myself, though... I keep hitting the repeat button at the end of it and make all three character suffer endlessly just because I can't get enough of the music! 9. EW Korngold: Die tote Stadt (The Dead City): Glück das mir verblieb Mariettas Lautenlied Sample: www.youtube.com/watch?v=roPSH0-_EZg (Angela Denoke, Torsten Kerl) Erich Wolfgang Korngold was known more for his film music and only wrote a few operas that, aside from Die tote Stadt, aren't being staged anymore. This nostalgic love duet (sort of) between Paul and the woman who resembles his dead wife to the very shade of her hair is also the opera's main Leitmotif... and a very suitably dark one. Marietta thinks she's innocently entertaining a weird guy whose attention she is enjoying, while Paul... is losing the ability to distinguish real life from the lost past he hasn't been able to let go off. If this work is ever staged at an opera house near you, you really must go and see it... and how beautiful and surreal it gets when this theme makes its final appearance at the very end. 10. W Mozart: Concert Aria K. 255 - Io ti lascio, oh cara, addio Sample: www.youtube.com/watch?v=YeODyrtf29w (Natalie Stutzmann) "Io ti lascio, o cara, addio............ I leave you, my dear. Farewell. vivi piu felice e scordati di me........ Live more happily and forget me." Originally written for a bass voice, I actually love the transposition to the contralto range better. This is a farewell song sung by a lover who forbids his beloved to remember him when he is gone... all the while recounting the happiness they've had together. I can't quite decide if it is the mark of a truly selfless love or if it is the height of cruelty... You decide. :oP If you have listened to all the clips included above and are somehow still sensible enough to be reading this last paragraph, then, my friends... you ARE a fan of classical vocal music! And this list doesn't even represent all the many different tastes of this huge music genre. No French grand opera, no operetta, no modern work, etc. Isn't it about time you start exploring classical music and opera more? It would look really cool on that list of New Year resolution for 2010, I say. Support the local orchestra and opera and buy a ticket to live performances. You might get to hear any of the above numbers sung live in a hall. That... could really be an unforgetable experience!

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