Rossini - Stabat Mater

dir. Marcus Creed
RIAS-Kammerchor
Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin

Krassimira Stoyanova - soprano
Petra Lang - mezzo-soprano
Bruce Fowler - tenor
Daniel Borowski - bass

Lossless: Ape (img + cue + log) = 212 mb
Lossy: Mp3 (lame "preset standard") = 77 mb
Artwork @ 300dpi = 19 mb

Total playing time: 57:09
Recorded March 1999, Konzerthaus, Berlin | Released 2001

Harmonia Mundi HMX 2981693

Info (allmusic.com):
Rossini's Stabat Mater was performed publicly in its final form in Paris on January 7, 1842. The first six sections of this ten-movement work had been composed earlier, on commission from Don Francesco de Varela, for an 1833 Good Friday performance in Madrid (with the last four movements written by Giuseppe Tadolini). The work was received enthusiastically in both of its incarnations and has remained a core piece of the choral repertory ever since.

Critics were initially less inclined to give their unqualified endorsement, however, citing its overtly operatic character. Nonetheless, one finds similar theatricality in other sacred music written by Italian composers (Verdi's Requiem is one of the most obvious) and whatever reservations one might cite are diminished by the sheer sweep and intensity of Rossini's music.

Scored for four soloists (two sopranos, tenor, and bass), chorus, and orchestra, the Stabat Mater features two movements for chorus and solo voices without accompaniment. Despite the near-decade separating the Eia Mater fons amoris (section five) and Quando corpus morietur (section nine), there is absolute consistency in style and inspiration.

The opening movement, Stabat Mater dolorosa, emerges out of the silence, first with orchestra, then orchestra joined by chorus, finally adding the soloists. Both solemnity and ardor are present. The second section, Cujus animam gementem, is a tenor aria of considerable difficulty, imposing on the singer a high D in its final moments. The springing naïveté of the vocal line and the metric simplicity of the accompaniment require that soloist and conductor approach the music with utmost dignity to avoid any sense of banality.

Section three is a duet for the two sopranos, Quis est homo, qui non fleret, often recalling duets the composer had written for his female protagonists in opera (Semiramide and Tancredi, for example). Pro peccatis suae gentis, an aria for bass, alternates between a bold, striding motive and a more reflective, flowing one. Wide-ranging, this section, too, demands a seriousness of approach by the soloist if a descent into simple bravura is to be avoided. Section five, Eia Mater, finds the bass soloist alternating with the unaccompanied chorus in a moment of sublime reflection. The quartet, Sancta Mater istud agas (section six), presents the four soloists, each of whom restate and recast the primary musical theme with remarkable invention.

Section seven, Fac, ut portem Christi mortem, is a cavatina for the second soprano, technically demanding with its broad intervals in the vocal line. Inflammatus et accensus (section eight) burns with the flaming intensity of its text. The writing here is bold and forward-looking, as unyielding as was Verdi's in the Libera me section of his Manzoni Requiem. The first soprano makes two incendiary ascents to high C over the full-throated chorus.

The unaccompanied Quando corpus morietur and the Amen comprise sections nine and ten, the latter a magnificent example of polyphony and imperative finality.

Track listing:
1. Stabat Mater dolorosa
2. Cujus animam gementem
3. Quis est homo, qui non fleret
4. Pro peccatis suae gentis
5. Eja Mater, fons amoris
6. Sancta Mater, istud agas
7. Fac, ut portem Christi mortem
8. Inflammatus est accensus
9. Quando corpus morietur
10. In sempiterna saecula. Amen

Review:
Gramophone:
A return to Berlin for another impressive recording of Rossini’s popular Stabat mater, the first with period instruments.

One of the first, and best, recordings of this splendid but interpretatively elusive work was made in Berlin in 1954 under the direction of Ferenc Fricsay. Like the present recording, it featured the RIAS (Berlin Radio) Chamber Choir, though in those days the fledgling choir was supplemented in the full choruses by the famous St Hedwig’s Cathedral Choir. Now it is on its own, acquitting itself superbly in all movements and dimensions; what’s more, the conductor of the entire enterprise is its own conductor, the English-born Marcus Creed.

To the best of my knowledge, this is the first recording of the work to use period instruments. In so obviously ‘vocal’ a piece, this would seem to be of no particular moment. In practice, the work’s prevailingly dark orchestral colours are memorably envisioned and realized by the instrumentalists of Berlin’s Academy for Ancient Music. The recording is also imaginatively, if not in all respects flawlessly, realized: dark, deep and full. In the grand opening movement, I found the four soloists uncomfortably far forward; but if you can establish an agreeable level for this movement, the rest of the performance will sound very well indeed. Choir and orchestra are themselves unfailingly well balanced.

Creed’s reading is full of character: immensely strong but always sensitively paced. I can imagine Rossini raising an eyebrow at his fondness for romantically protracted codas; equally, he would have applauded his sensitive moulding of the accompaniments, matched shrewdly but never indulgently to the singers’ (and the music’s) needs. The soloists themselves, young and highly talented, are excellent, more than a match for most rival teams. Oddly, the line-up, in terms of nationality and style, is not unlike Fricsay’s (Stader, Radev, Haefliger and Borg) on that older Berlin set. It is a long time since I enjoyed a performance of the Stabat mater as much as this.'

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