Dorothea Röschmann reviews
A Scarlatti: Il Primo Omicidio
Graciela Oddone, Dorothea Röschmann, Bernarda Fink, René Jacobs, Richard Croft, Antonio Abete; Akademie Fur Alte Musik Berlin/René Jacobs (Harmonia Mundi)
Mozart: Die Zauberflöte
This is Covent Garden’s latest Magic Flute production, filmed in January. It’s a mixed bag, hard to recommend as a total Flute experience over other DVDs already available. For one component part, though, it’s a must-have. Simon Keenlyside’s Papageno offers none of the vaudeville high jinks traditionally associated with the role: he brings to its comedy a Pierrot lunaire-like poetry, precisely achieved down to the smallest detail. This Papageno arouses both delight and poignant emotions, and his singing is wonderfully strong and true in style.
Bach: St Matthew Passion
It is just over 30 years since Nikolaus Harnoncourt made his first recording of Bach’s St Matthew Passion. I can remember listening with astonishment and joy to the lively dance-like character of the opening chorus, a far cry from any tempo I had grown up with. Now Harnoncourt takes it more briskly, knocking almost three-quarters of a minute off the earlier recording – and it evinced no astonishment at all, such has been the evolution in Baroque music performance over the past quarter-century and more.