<\/p>
Felix Mendelssohn: Die erste Walpurgisnacht; Vom Himmel hoch; Fanny Mendelssohn:
Julia Doyle (soprano), Jess Dandy (contralto) et al; Crouch End Festival Chorus; London Mozart Players\/David Temple<\/p>
Chandos CHSA5318 (CD\/SACD)\u00a0\u00a0 Of the many current recordings to pair the sibling composers Felix Mendelssohn<\/a><\/strong> and Fanny Mendelssohn<\/a><\/strong>, this is one of the most unusual yet, featuring choral rarities by both \u2013 and the music offers some surprises.<\/p> Felix\u2019s cantata Vom Himmel hoch<\/em>, though written while the composer was in Italy and exploring music in Rome, is so Lutheran that he seems to be trying to become Bach. It\u2019s full of deliberately rousing, celebratory sounds, but memorable for sadly little else. As for Die erste Walpurgisnacht<\/em>, a secular cantata based on Goethe in which a druid village plays a practical joke to scare off the Christians, it has some pleasingly spooky moments, but I\u2019m not sure I\u2019d necessarily go rushing to hear it again.<\/p> Fanny fares rather better. Her Hiob<\/em>, a cantata on Old Testament words, feels slightly too truncated, if anything, and it\u2019s infuriating to see that it lay unpublished until 1992. Still, the one really wonderful discovery is her Gartenlieder<\/em>, six a cappella<\/em> choral settings of nature-related poems that turn out to be stunningly beautiful. The performances unfortunately don\u2019t always help the works\u2019 causes. <\/p> Among the soloists, there\u2019s a welcome spotlight for Jess Dandy\u2019s molasses-dark contralto, but the team proves uneven, with Ashley Riches\u2019s occasionally overdone vibrato and Mark Le Brocq\u2019s energetically effortful tenor contrasting with Julia Doyle\u2019s rather underpowered soprano. The ensemble, meanwhile, is a tad loose at the seams, both within the London Mozart Players and in their coordination with the Crouch End Festival Chorus; and the latter, though performing with plenty of enthusiasm, sometimes seem to struggle with higher tessituras<\/em> and German diction. Overall, then, there are good moments, but too few of them.<\/p> <\/body><\/html>\n By Jessica Duchen Published: Thursday, 29 February 2024 at 11:56 AM Felix Mendelssohn: Die erste Walpurgisnacht; Vom Himmel hoch; Fanny Mendelssohn:Hiob; Gartenlieder Julia Doyle (soprano), Jess Dandy (contralto) et al; Crouch End Festival Chorus; London Mozart Players\/David Temple Chandos CHSA5318 (CD\/SACD)\u00a0\u00a071:53 mins Of the many current recordings to pair the sibling composers Felix Mendelssohn and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":39554,"template":"","categories":[1,82,19],"acf":{"readingTimeMinutes":"2"},"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/37\/2024\/02\/fanny-mendelssohn-felix-mendelssohn-choral-works.jpg",900,900,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/37\/2024\/02\/fanny-mendelssohn-felix-mendelssohn-choral-works-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/37\/2024\/02\/fanny-mendelssohn-felix-mendelssohn-choral-works-300x300.jpg",300,300,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/37\/2024\/02\/fanny-mendelssohn-felix-mendelssohn-choral-works-768x768.jpg",768,768,true],"large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/37\/2024\/02\/fanny-mendelssohn-felix-mendelssohn-choral-works.jpg",800,800,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/37\/2024\/02\/fanny-mendelssohn-felix-mendelssohn-choral-works.jpg",900,900,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/37\/2024\/02\/fanny-mendelssohn-felix-mendelssohn-choral-works.jpg",900,900,false]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"importmanagerhub@sprylab.com","author_link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/author\/importmanagerhubsprylab-com\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"By Jessica Duchen Published: Thursday, 29 February 2024 at 11:56 AM Felix Mendelssohn: Die erste Walpurgisnacht; Vom Himmel hoch; Fanny Mendelssohn:Hiob; Gartenlieder Julia Doyle (soprano), Jess Dandy (contralto) et al; Crouch End Festival Chorus; London Mozart Players\/David Temple Chandos CHSA5318 (CD\/SACD)\u00a0\u00a071:53 mins Of the many current recordings to pair the sibling composers Felix Mendelssohn and…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed\/39553"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/rss_feed"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39554"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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