Huw Montague Rendall (baritone)
Contemplation
Opéra Orchestre Normandie Rouen/Ben Glassberg
rec. 2023, Opéra de Rouen Normandie, Rouen, France
Sung texts enclosed but no translations
Reviewed as WAV download
Erato 2173 236378 [75]
A couple of years ago I reviewed a disc with the complete songs of Henri Duparc (review). One of the four singers was the young baritone Huw Montague Rendall, whose name was new to me, “but I was immediately caught by his beauty of tone, the lightness of his delivery and involvement” I wrote and added: “I hope to hear more of him in the near future.” Well, that time has come, and here, in his debut album, he reveals much more versatility than the three songs he was allowed to sing on the Duparc disc could do. He sings one further Duparc song here as well, the wonderful Chanson triste, and he sings it just as beautifully as on the previous disc, though here it is in the orchestral version. The song was Duparc’s first, composed in 1868 when he was twenty, while the orchestration was made in 1912, when he had long since ceased to compose. Judging from his choice of repertoire here, Rendall obviously feels close to the French repertoire, but nor is he averse to wandering off the beaten track. Valentin’s prayer from Faust is of course standard fare, and he sings it both sensitively and brilliantly, but Mercutio’s Act One aria is seldom heard in recital programmes, and it becomes a tour de force in his vital performance. We don’t hear Hamlet’s utterly moving monologue “To be or not to be” too often either nowadays, though the opera is fairly often played. There exist two complete recordings on CD, one from 1983, conducted by Richard Bonynge with Sherrill Milnes and Joan Sutherland, the other from 1993, conducted by Antonio de Almeida with Thomas Hampson and June Anderson. There are a couple of later recordings on DVD, but there should be room for a more recent CD-recording – why not with Huw Montague Rendall in the title role? He has all the attributes of a memorable prince.
Another real rarity is André Messager’s Monsieur Beaucaire. Originally composed to an English libretto it premiered in 1919 in Birmingham, later the same year transferred to London where it was a great success, and the same year reached Broadway and had several revivals. Not until 1925 was it premiered in Paris, where thirty years later it entered the repertoire of the Opéra-Comique. I can’t remember hearing anything from this operetta before, but it is a truly enchanting piece.
Leaving the French repertoire we can enjoy Pierrot’s Tanzlied from Korngold’s Die tote Stadt, an aria I have loved since by chance I bought a second-hand LP with a young Hermann Prey. It needs to be sung with a seamless legato and fine nuances, and that is what it gets here, and a heavenly pianissimo diminuendo at the end. In the early 1990s my affection for Prey was supplanted by a recording with Thomas Hampson, but his hegemony has lately been challenged by first Samuel Hasselhorn and now Huw Montague Rendall, so competition is keen.
It came as no surprise that Rendall should be a brilliant Mozartian; he expresses Il Conte d’Almaviva’s wrath in Le nozze di Figaro, having been cheated by Susanna, Don Giovanni’s seductive tricks and the naïve Papageno tragic suicide attempt with equal skill. In particular, the latter is touching and the pert Elisabeth Boudreault is a charming Papagena in the following duet.
We are also treated to two English language numbers in this multi-lingual programme. The first is a very touching scene from Benjamin Britten’s Billy Budd, which finds Britten in his most lyrical vein. Sung as sensitively as here, time stands still in the moonlit night and the contemplation develops into a gentle duet between Billy and the urgent little bird, so charmingly created by Kouchyar Shahroudi’s piccolo. The second is a scene from Richard Rodgers musical Carousel, where another Billy, namely Bigelow, dreams of his son not yet born and how to raise him, when it suddenly dawns on him that it might after all be a daughter. This is a riveting scene, like everything else in this programme, and I have perhaps left the best to the last: his superb Mahler singing. First Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, very sensitively sung, and, crowning the performance and the third of the five Rückert songs, Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen. I have a lot of recordings of this favourite song, but few have touched me as much as this one.
In addition, the orchestra of the Opéra Normandie Rouen play like gods and the recording is spotless. This is a debut recital that every lover of great singing should treasure.
Göran Forsling
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Contents
Ambroise Thomas (1811–1896)
Hamlet · Libretto: Michel Carré & Jules Barbier,
after Alexandre Dumas père & Paul Meurice, after William Shakespeare
1 “J’ai pu frapper le misérable…Être ou ne pas être” (Hamlet, Act III)
Charles Gounod (1818–1893)
Faust · Libretto: Jules Barbier & Michel Carré, after Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
2 “Ô sainte médaille…Avant de quitter ces lieux” (Valentin, Act II)
Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1897–1957)
Die tote Stadt · Libretto: Paul Schott (a.k.a. Julius & Erich Wolfgang Korngold),
after Georges Rodenbach (Bruges-la-Morte)
3 “Mein Sehnen, mein Wähnen” (Fritz, Act II)
Gustav Mahler (1860–1911)
Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen · Texts: Gustav Mahler
4 “Wenn mein Schatz Hochzeit macht”
5 “Ging heut’ morgen über’s Feld”
6 “Ich hab’ ein glühend Messer”
7 “Die zwei blauen Augen von meinem Schatz”
Benjamin Britten (1913–1976)
Billy Budd · Libretto: E.M. Forster & Eric Crozier, after Herman Melville
8 “Look! Through the port comes the moonshine astray!” (Billy Budd, Act II)
Kouchyar Shahroudi piccolo
Charles Gounod
Roméo et Juliette · Libretto: Jules Barbier & Michel Carré, after William Shakespeare
9 “Mab, la reine des mensonges” (Mercutio, Act I)
Henri Duparc (1848–1933)
10 Chanson triste · Text: Jean Lahor (a.k.a. Henri Cazalis)
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791)
Le nozze di Figaro K.492 · Libretto: Lorenzo Da Ponte,
after Pierre Beaumarchais (La Folle Journée, ou Le Mariage de Figaro)
11 “Hai già vinta la causa!…Vedrò, mentr’io sospiro” (Conte d’Almaviva, Act III)
Don Giovanni K.527 · Libretto: Lorenzo Da Ponte,
after Tirso de Molina (El burlador de Sevilla y convidado de piedra)
12 “Deh, vieni alla finestra” (Don Giovanni, Act II)
Jacques Marmoud mandolin
André Messager (1853–1929)
Monsieur Beaucaire · Libretto: Adrian Ross & Frederick Lonsdale,
after Booth Tarkington; adapt. André Rivoire & Pierre Veber
13 “Au jardin où les fleurs sont écloses” (Red Rose) (Beaucaire, Prologue)
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Die Zauberflöte K.620 · Libretto: Emanuel Schikaneder
14 “Papagena! Weibchen! Täubchen! meine Schöne!”… (Papageno · Drei Knaben)
15 “Pa-pa-ge-na! / Pa-pa-ge-no!” (Papageno · Papagena, Act II)
Papagena: Elisabeth Boudreault soprano
Drei Knaben: Oliver Barlow, Sam Jackman & Benjamin Gilbert trebles
Laura Fromentin glockenspiel (14)
Richard Rodgers (1902–1979)
Carousel · Text: Oscar Hammerstein II, after Ferenc Molnár (Liliom)
16 Soliloquy (Billy Bigelow, Act I)
Gustav Mahler
5 Rückert-Lieder · Texts: Friedrich Rückert
17 Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen (No.3)
