This Week in Classical Music: March 13, 2023. Telemann and Two Singers. Georg Philipp Telemann, the prolific buddy of Johann Sebastian Bach, was born on March 14th of 1681. We’ve written concerning the “Telemann drawback”: he was so ample in his output as to make it virtually inconceivable to account for all his compositions and to pick – if not one of the best, then a minimum of probably the most consultant – items. Not only a great composer, Telemann was additionally a really attention-grabbing individual of apparently boundless power: along with composing, he produced live shows, revealed music, taught, and wrote theoretical treaties. We’ll dedicate one other entry to him, however this time we’ll simply play a few of his music – because it occurs, an Orchestra suite La Weird (right here). It’s carried out by the Akademie Für Alte Musik Berlin.
Two nice singers have been additionally born this week, each mezzo-sopranos and each born on the identical day, March 16th: the German mezzo Christa Ludwig, and the Spanish Teresa Berganza, 5 years later, in 1933. Teresa Berganza died lower than a yr in the past, on Could 13th of 2022. We paid a tribute to her that yr. Christa Ludwig died a yr earlier, on April 24th of 2021 on the age of 93. She was born in Berlin, studied together with her mom, and debuted on the age of 18 in Johann Strauss’s Die Fledermaus. In 1954 she sang the function of Cherubino in Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro on the Salzburg competition. In 1959 she made her American debut as Dorabella in Cosi fan Tutti on the Lyric opera in Chicago (Elisabeth Schwarzkopf was Fiordiligi). She would return to Chicago 5 extra occasions,.jpg "Christa Ludwig (with Bernstein)")
singing Cherubino in Le nozze di Figaro, Fricka in Die Walküre, and roles in Boito’s Mefistofele, Verdi’s La forza del destino, and Richard Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier. She had a wealthy, very targeted voice with no pointless vibrato. Her repertoire was massive, from Monteverdi to Gluck, Mozart, Wagner, Verdi, and Berg. She was additionally an excellent lied singer and an exquisite Mahlerian, performing in his music cycles, equivalent to Kindertotenlieder and Rückert-Lieder, and in Das Lied von der Erde and Symphony no. 3. She labored with one of the best conductors of her time, from Böhm and Klemperer to Bernstein, Solti, and Karajan.
Right here is her Dorabella within the aria È amore un ladroncello from Mozart’s Così fan tutte. Karl Böhm conducts the Philharmonia Orchestra on this 1962 recording. And right here Christa Ludwig is in an distinctive recording of Gustav Mahler’s Rückert-Lieder. Herbert von Karajan conducts the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra.
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