“Then came Stravinsky’s Persephone, which starts out in his coolest, Greek-vase mode but soon becomes ripely expressive. It was the most moving moment of the weekend.” (The Daily Telegraph, review of The Proms 2003) Stravinsky composed Perséphone to a text by André Gide in 1933-34 and revised it in 1949. It is the story of Persephone who, of her own free will, descends to the Underworld in compassion for the hapless Shades, to become Pluto's wife. Springtime accompanies her ascent back to terrestrial life and a second marriage – to Triptolemus, the first farmer. According to the cycle of the seasons, she will in due course return to the Underworld. David Schiff comments that Persephone “can be read as a type of Christ, sacrificing her own life to redeem human suffering, or as an image of the socially committed artist who moves between the realms of aesthetic delight and human misery. Stravinsky's music, full of religious awe and humanistic wisdom, mirrors both readings." (Boosey & Hawkes/Joseph Horowitz) “The title role is declaimed rather than sung, intensifying the heroine's isolation; here it was persuasively performed by Nicole Tibbels. The role of narrator is given to a solo tenor; Paul Groves was a good choice… Perséphone is about the constant renewal of nature, and we're not a million miles away from the world of The Rite of Spring; but whereas that work presents nature as an aggressive force cracking the world open, Perséphone shows a more wistful view of a quiet, unrelenting, cyclical process. And here, under Andrew Davis's steady baton, that is how it came across, the three parts of the story eliding seamlessly into each other, a feeling of unyielding flow and slow-burning momentum underpinning the whole score. In a work in which the choir is an almost constant presence, the BBC Symphony Chorus made an outstanding contribution. The soprano and alto passages near the opening tripped along gently; the chorus of shades in Hades, surrounded by orchestral writing of previously unheard depth, was absorbingly beautiful. They were joined by an excellent children's chorus, formed from the Cantate Youth and Trinity Boys Choirs… Stravinsky's mesmeric lines lost none of their hypnotic quality.” (The Guardian, review of The Proms 2003) Polyeucte was Dukas’s third overture and his first to be published. He was in his mid-20s at the time he wrote it. It is based on the last great tragedy by Corneille and is rather like a symphonic poem with five episodes from the life of Polyeucte, an Armenian noble and born-again Christian, who seeks a martyr’s death. The other characters are his wife, Pauline, her father Felix (a Roman Senator and Governor of Armenia) and Pauline’s former lover Severus (a Roman Senator). The work, which is not often performed, is clearly influenced by the music of Wagner.
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A Superb "Persephone" - the Best Choice
Persephone is one of Stravinsky's most beautiful works, and for a long time one of his most neglected. True, without its dance element, the combination of speech, song and orchestral passages can seem odd at first, particularly as Stravinsky suppressed the elaborate scenario which Andre Gide provided with his text (and which the composer used as a guide in composing the piece); no doubt he felt its future lay in the concert hall. But time and repeated hearings have convinced me that this is a very special work, a feminine counterpart to Oedipus Rex (and with links to IS's other treatments of Greek myths, Apollo and Orpheus).On CD, Persephone has attracted conductors like Michael Tilson Thomas, Kent Nagano and Kurt Masur, in addition to three versions under the composer. All are worth hearing; even Robert Craft's weirdly rushed version (never re-issued) has the most idiomatically Francophone tenor of all, John Aler. But in my opinion, the palm goes to this live 2003 Proms performance: it is the most persuasive performance of Persephone I have ever heard.Credit goes first to Sir Andrew Davis, who, like Masur (but unlike Tilson Thomas or Nagano) takes the composer's tempo markings seriously, if not literally. He understands that contrasts between stasis and sudden movement are fundamental to Persephone, and his reading has both rhythmic vitality and weight. The BBC Symphony Orchestra and the various choirs can stand comparison with the best of other versions (excellent solo instrumental work!), and Paul Groves is a fine tenor soloist, with discreet and appropriate use of portamento.Davis's trump card is the Persephone of Nicole Tibbels, the most successful of any I've heard. Not only is her French exquisite and her musical timing very sensitive, she is the only speaker among the many who have recorded it to fully grasp and articulate the growth of the protagonist from naive girl to mature woman/goddess who, in Gide and Stravinsky's Christianized take on the myth, consciously seeks to relieve the suffering of the inhabitants of the Underworld. The whole weighty machinery of speaker, tenor, choruses and large orchestra finally seems justified. A fine achievement! UPDATE: In 2018, another live performance, under Esa-Pekka Salonen, appeared. I would rank it with Davis as the best now available on CD, though I retain a personal preference for Tibbels's performance, which in addition to its many other virtues finds an ideal balance between modern naturalism and the rhythms of Gide's rhymed couplets. (Also, there are a couple of brief cuts to the speaker's role on the Salonen, which leave rhymes stranded - something that appears to have slipped by the reviewers.)
C**K
oratorio sublime
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