Ooh, now this is pleasant stuff, a delicious change of pace.
After listening to Scottish Songs For [fill in the blank] for what seemed way too long, today’s CD – titled simply Songs – strips down the performance to just a soprano (Elly Ameling) and a pianist (Jorg Demus). It’s an enjoyable simplification, pairing two of my favorite instruments.
Questions: Who is Elly Ameling? And who is Jorg Demus?
Google time!
I learned that Elly Ameling is a Dutch soprano born in 1933. Info about her can be found here. According to that Wiki article,
After her professional début as a concert singer in Rotterdam in 1953, she performed for more than forty years in virtually every major cultural centre in the world. Her frequent appearances with the leading international orchestras and conductors (Bernard Haitink, Rafael Kubelík, Carlo Maria Giulini, Benjamin Britten, Seiji Ozawa, Wolfgang Sawallisch, Kurt Masur, Sir Neville Marriner, Karl Münchinger, André Previn, Edo de Waart among others) established her as one of the greatest singers of our age.
Jorg Demus is an Austrian pianist born in 1928. According to his Wikipedia article,
At the age of six, Demus received his first piano lessons. Five years later, at the age of 11, he entered the Vienna Academy of Music, studying piano and conducting. His debut as a pianist came when he was still a student: at the age of 14…He received the Mozart Medal of the Mozartgemeinde Wien in 1979.
Cool. Top-notch performers. Typical for Brilliant Classics, a company that strives to offer the very best Classical music at one of the most remarkably affordable prices in the world.
By the way, these recordings were made in 1980. So Ameling was 47 years old. Demus was 52. I’m not sure how old Haydn was, or when these songs were written.
Google time again!
Okay. After a bit of poking around, here’s what I discovered. The songs on this CD are called English Canzonettas. The AllMusic web site provides some background on these compositions:
The first of Haydn’s two sets of six “English” Canzonettas was published in June 1794. The texts, published anonymously, were in fact the work of Mrs. Anne Hunter, the dedicatee of these songs, and widow of a prominent surgeon whom Haydn had met during his first visit to London in 1791.
In these songs, writes Haydn scholar Professor H. C. Robbins Landon, “it seems clear that Haydn’s intention was to compose technically easy songs which could be sung at sight by any educated music lover, and played at the piano prima vista by the average lady of musical inclination.”
I can agree with that assessment. These aren’t terribly complex songs. Nor do they seem to require a vocal talent that’s much above “average” (although Ameling is far suprior to that description).
Given the above information, Haydn was about 62 when he composed these songs.
Incidentally, Mozart died in 1791. So these songs were written by Haydn three years after the too-young Mozart passed away. Just FYI.
Standout tracks on today’s CD are Track 3 (“Recollection”) because of Ameling’s occasional soaring notes, Track 4 (“Haydn: A Pastoral Song”) for the same reason. The latter of the two, especially, is both delicate and alluring.
Given the similarity of these songs (to one another, that is), I’m only going to write about songs that really stand out.
Like Track 7 (“Fidelity”), for example. The piano work is lively. Ameling’s voice is delightful. Very clear and soaring.
Track 9 (“Sailor’s Song”), too. Piano is terrific. Very Classical sounding. And Ameling’s voice is stunning. She belts out some notes that amaze. Well done.
The rest of the songs are good. But not noteworthy in my book.
What is noteworthy are the subject matters of these songs. Here are some of the titles;
“Despair”
“Pleasing Pain”
“Fidelity”
“Sympathy”
“Content”
I’m not sure what “Pleasing Pain” is about. It’s a pleasant enough song. But hardly the kinky excursion into a seamy underworld one might suppose from its title. (The rise up the scale to the note she hits at the 2:35 mark in the song is so very cool.)
This is what I listened to this morning: