PhilPaine.com

17575. The Music of Islam: Vol­ume 1 — Al Qahi­rah [Music of Cairo]
17576. (Mau­rice Rav­el) Séré­nade grotesque
17577. (Mau­rice Rav­el) Valses nobles et sen­ti­men­tales
17578. (Thelo­nius Monk) Thelo­nius Monk with John Coltrane — The Com­plete April-July 1957
. . . . . Record­ings
17579. (Cow­boy Junkies) The Cau­tion Hors­es
17580. (Wil­helm Sten­ham­mar) Snöfrid, Op.5
17581. (Wil­helm Sten­ham­mar) Mel­lanspel ur kan­tat­en “Sån­gen”, Op.44
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Marie-Élaine Thib­ert is a Mon­treal singer with a strong voice, which is reminis­cent of Bar­bara Streisand’s. She first came to pub­lic atten­tion when she belt­ed out Jacques Brel’s tech­ni­cally dif­fi­cult song “La quête”, on Quebec’s major tal­ent show, Star Académie. The sta­di­um-show-tunes kind of stuff is not real­ly my kind of music, but I can appre­ci­ate the tal­ent here. Que­bec seems to grow high­ly pro­fes­sional main­stream singers as eas­ily as British Colum­bia grows mar­i­juana. There seems to be an end­less sup­ply. But only a few of them, such as Céline Dion, break out into the rest of the world. On the strength of this album, which has con­fi­dent show­man­ship, I would guess that she will make it out, prob­a­bly first in Europe. I haven’t heard all her sec­ond album, Comme ça, but it has a hit in a cov­er of Monique Leyrac’s old stan­dard “Pour cet amour”, a duet with Chris deBurgh (a trans­la­tion of “Lone­ly Sky”), and a very fine, sub­tle song I’ve heard online, “Les herbes hautes”.

Lucian­not Pavarot­ti and James Brown

Well, there’s not much I can say about Pavarot­ti that oth­ers aren’t bet­ter qual­i­fied to say. He is one of those fig­ures that steps out of a genre. Peo­ple who hard­ly ever lis­ten to jazz know Louis Arm­strong, peo­ple who hard­ly ever lis­ten to opera know Pavarot­ti, who suc­cess­fully stepped into the shoes of Caru­so as the ambas­sador of opera to the broad pub­lic. He ful­filled the role bril­liantly, using his com­i­cal, un-threat­en­ing appear­ance to advan­tage. It was as if your favourite jol­ly uncle had super-pow­ers, which he only used after din­ner. On hear­ing of his death, I played his won­der­ful duet with James Brown, and his rather pecu­liar one with Lou Reed. Then I went through Pavarotti’s Great­est Hits, with his famed arias from Rigo­lettoand L’élisir d’Amore, among oth­ers. Then I played his album of Neapoli­tan folk songs, O Sole Mio, and his album of Christ­mas car­ols, O Holy Night. Over the course of the next two days, I played a few entire operas in which he starred: Bellini’s Beat­rice di Ten­da, and I Puri­tani, where he sang with Joan Suther­land, one of the few women with the stature and lung pow­er to stand up to him in the ring; as well as an ear­ly per­for­mance of Puccini’s La Bohème, with Freni, direct­ed by von Karajan.

Ten years ago, CBCradio broad­cast Robert Volkmann’s Sym­phony #1 in D. I was charmed by it. The announc­er said that it sound­ed like “a for­got­ten work by Brahms”. True enough, and Volkmann’s obscu­rity could eas­ily be explained by say­ing he was one of Brahms’ many imi­ta­tors. But that sym­phony was com­posed in 1862, and Brahms’ first sym­phony didn’t appear until four­teen years lat­er. I’ve nev­er been able to find a copy of that sym­phony, and didn’t hear the whole thing on the CBCbroad­cast, so it isn’t list­ed in my lis­ten­ing files. But I have obtained two works by him, the Konz­ert­stückfor Piano &Orches­tra, and the Cel­lo Con­certo. Both are enter­tain­ing and well-craft­ed, but not over­whelm­ing. The cel­lo con­certo is worth sev­eral lis­tens. Both works reveal his real influ­ence: Schu­mann. Volk­mann lived from 1815 to 1883. He was born in Sax­ony, spent a short stint in Prague, then the rest of his life in Budapest. He was respect­ed and often played in his life­time, but fell out of the reper­tory after his death. It’s more fair to say that he was a seri­ous com­poser whose work fol­lowed on Schu­mann and antic­i­pated Brahms, whom he influ­enced sig­nif­i­cantly. This is not dis­mis­sible as mere imi­ta­tion. But time has a way of cast­ing off such in-betweens.