Oedipe

[edashtav]

Greetings, Ed! Lovely to meet you here again....

I almost wish this hadn't come up, with a shelf-full of Enesco Orchestrals to peer at... but do not worry...no time just now for some grand overview.
[...]
So there you are, there are THREE masterpieces after all : Octet Op.7, Vox Maris Op.31, Isis (Op. posthumous 1923/1999, orch. Bentoiu)...
(but like I said, you'll get no grand overview from me ...
as for Oedipe... I just don't do Opera, sorry...)

Hello, again, Jayne and thanks for your perceptive thoughts. My word, your shelves do heave with their serried ranks of Enescu! I have a sub-set plus one or two interesting "novelties" such as Silvestri conducting the Octet. I respond to those performances that are common to both of us in a broadly similar manner to you although I'm more lenient / ignorant in matters of recorded sound because I've allowed my playing system(s) to languish and age, so I hear through a glass darkly.

My (trivial) advice to composers : don't live in France, a country that may etiolate masterpieces. Examples: Duparc, Dukas and Enescu.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Having now listened to the broadcast, I'm glad I didn't interrupt/postpone my Edinburgh break to see this - although I think I would have enjoyed it a lot more in the theatre than I did from loudspeakers. There were some horrible sounds from the singers in Act Three, and during some of the uneventful passages (of which there seemed to be a lot) it was something of a chore to keep my attention focussed.

BUT there was enough there to make me want to hear it again - a quite individual soundworld (somewhere between Fauré-ish and Szymanowski-ish - but I often wished I'd been listening to Krol Roger!) left me with a sense that the work would be worth persevering with. I'm inclined to get both the Lawrence Foster (for what looks like a better cast) and the Michael Gielen (for what looks like the better conductor) recordings.

Mebbe.

[ahinton]

Having now listened to the broadcast, I'm glad I didn't interrupt/postpone my Edinburgh break to see this - although I think I would have enjoyed it a lot more in the theatre than I did from loudspeakers. There were some horrible sounds from the singers in Act Three, and during some of the uneventful passages (of which there seemed to be a lot) it was something of a chore to keep my attention focussed.

BUT there was enough there to make me want to hear it again - a quite individual soundworld (somewhere between Fauré-ish and Szymanowski-ish - but I often wished I'd been listening to Krol Roger!) left me with a sense that the work would be worth persevering with. I'm inclined to get both the Lawrence Foster (for what looks like a better cast) and the Michael Gielen (for what looks like the better conductor) recordings.

Mebbe.

Interesting; I don't know the work well but it was the Szymanowski allegiance that struck me more than any other when first I listened to it years ago, almost as though it wanted to be a Romanian Król Roger but could quite aspire thereto. There's a lot going for Enescu, though and Jayne's heaving shelves of Discs sounds to be that of a knowledgeable devotee!

[Serial_Apologist]

Perhaps it's high time for Enescu to be on COTW?

[pastoralguy]

Perhaps it's high time for Enescu to be on COTW?

[underthecountertenor]

Having now listened to the broadcast, I'm glad I didn't interrupt/postpone my Edinburgh break to see this - although I think I would have enjoyed it a lot more in the theatre than I did from loudspeakers. There were some horrible sounds from the singers in Act Three, and during some of the uneventful passages (of which there seemed to be a lot) it was something of a chore to keep my attention focussed.

BUT there was enough there to make me want to hear it again - a quite individual soundworld (somewhere between Fauré-ish and Szymanowski-ish - but I often wished I'd been listening to Krol Roger!) left me with a sense that the work would be worth persevering with. I'm inclined to get both the Lawrence Foster (for what looks like a better cast) and the Michael Gielen (for what looks like the better conductor) recordings.

Mebbe.

The 'horrible sounds from the singers' in Act 3 certainly didn't trouble me in the theatre. It would be interesting to know who you had in mind. John Tomlinson has not been making beautiful noises for many years now, but the roles he takes tend to suit his voice very well, and that certainly applied to Tiresias - but I can imagine that through the loudspeakers without the visual context and the perspective from a seat in the auditorium it would probably have been difficult to stomach. And there are whole passages for Oedipe in Act 3 which require a particularly harsh form of sprechgesang, from which Johan Reuter did not flinch. Elsewhere though he sang beautifully when required to do so - indeed I marvelled at his ability to take his voice to such extremes and yet sing lyrically shortly afterwards.

Likewise the 'uneventful passages' did not seem so when immersed in the gesamtkunst in the theatre.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

The 'horrible sounds from the singers' in Act 3 certainly didn't trouble me in the theatre. It would be interesting to know who you had in mind.

Yes - I did mention that I felt that I would have got a lot more from the work in the theatre, but with just the loudspeakers to rely on, it was frequently an unattractive experience. I don't want to name too many names - mainly because I didn't know which of the women were singing when (some of the Tarzanesque vibrato was in a register that could have been Soprano or Mezzo). As you say, Tomlinson - and it grieves me to say this of one of my operatic heroes - hasn't been in good voice for many years now; but on the broadcast he was frequently out-of-tune, hitting a wrong note then using vibrato to glissando up to the correct one. Some of the old timbre is there on occasion, but I feel that vocally (again, his acting and physical presence in the theatre I cannot comment upon) he receives plaudits for the excellent work he has done in the past, rather than what he is doing now.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

The broadcast performance is still available on the i-Player/Listen Again; Act Three begins at 2hrs 06mins in.

[underthecountertenor]

The broadcast performance is still available on the i-Player/Listen Again; Act Three begins at 2hrs 06mins in.

One of those many occasions when perhaps it would be better if I didn't spoil the memory of the experience in the House by listening to it at home!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

One of those many occasions when perhaps it would be better if I didn't spoil the memory of the experience in the House by listening to it at home!