Music: A Fink to a Flop

Shall we start with some singers? Not long ago, Bernarda Fink appeared in New York with the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra. She sang a Handel cantata and a Bach cantata -- and she sang them brilliantly. This is a singer with everything: voice, of course; and technique; and intelligence. Even some spirituality, as a bonus. Her singing almost made up for the aural and interpretive offenses of the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra.

You may wonder about the nationality of Bernarda Fink. As her bio puts it, she "was born in Buenos Aires to Slovenian parents." She is not exactly a household name, but she has a strong cult following, and those ranks are growing. Her recordings are wide-ranging, as she is a wide-ranging singer herself.

Of special interest may be her album of Spanish songs, in the company of the able British pianist Roger Vignoles. Canciones amatorias -- which comes on the Hyperion label -- contains songs of Granados, Rodrigo, and Nin; also of Ginastera and Guastavino. (Perhaps I should have said "Spanish-language songs": Ginastera and Guastavino are from Fink's own Argentina.)

It is hard for some of us to hear some of this music out of any mouth but Victoria de los Angeles's -- but so fine and varied a repertoire should not be confined to one person, no matter how great. Bernarda Fink, a mezzo-soprano, is distinguished in these songs (if just a touch cerebral -- she can't help it). Besides, if you must have "the divine Victoria," you can find her on a big fat Spanish boxed set from EMI.

--David Daniels has made another Handel album. His collection of opera arias was a hit -- and justly so -- and this new collection of oratorio arias is just as good. It is even more valuable, in a way, because it's imbued with the holy. The album (on Virgin Classics) contains arias from Belshazzar and, of course, Messiah ("He was despised"). It also cheats a little by including music from Semele, which -- sorry, guys -- is an opera. But no matter. If I could hail just one selection, it would be "O Lord, whose mercies numberless," from Saul. It is riveting, transformative.

When Daniels first arrived on the scene, he was something of a curiosity -- a countertenor, after all. Nearly a freak. But the truth should have long ago settled in that, countertenor or not, he is one of the most satisfying singers now working.

For years, if we were asked to name one female composer, we probably would have said, "Chaminade" -- Cecile Chaminade, a Frenchwoman who lived from 1857 to 1944. There was also Clara Schumann, of course, and America's own Mrs. H. H. A. Beach, whom, round about 1983, we had to start calling "Amy Beach," thus losing one of the great names in all of music. (Life's a Beach.)

Anne Sofie von Otter has revived Chaminade, with a frothy CD of songs (Deutsche Grammophon). Von Otter, a Swedish mezzo, makes a specialty of specialties: She has gone on a Korngold jag, a Stenhammar jag, and other jags, all to the benefit of the public. There's no limit to what she can sing, well. She is known as a brainy, slightly cool Scandinavian -- but her Carmen -- yes, sexy, slutty Carmen from Seville -- brings houses down. Von Otter makes a lovely case for Chaminade. Her music is gay, relaxed, and thoroughly French -- which is not all bad, particularly in tense times.

-- We do not often hear Alan Hovhaness these days, but he's back on a Telarc CD, featuring three of his symphonies. Hovhaness (1911-2000) composed 67 symphonies, possibly a modern record. Originally from Massachusetts, he did some wandering, before ultimately settling in Seattle. From his Pacific Northwest period are the Symphony No. 50, "Mount St. Helens," and the Symphony No. 66, "Hymn to Glacier Peak." Both are heard on this disc, along with another "mountain symphony."

That is the Symphony No. 2, nicknamed "Mysterious Mountain," and it is surely Hovhaness's most famous work. It was commissioned by Leopold Stokowski, an early champion. (In fact, Stoki was a tireless advocate of new music, a fact for which he seldom gets credit, eager as people are to label him a showman.) Hovhaness was never a fashionable composer, for he clung to Romanticism, or neo-Romanticism. But he had a distinctive voice, and that voice is an American one, singing of America.

Leading these performances is Gerard Schwarz, conductor of both the Seattle Symphony and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic (the latter of which he conducts here). Schwarz began his career as a trumpeter, and he was a superlative one. But he gave it up for the baton, and he has achieved a special status in the field of American symphonic music. He has traversed, for example, the symphonies of Walter Piston -- a few of which ought to be staples of the concert scene. In Hovhaness, Schwarz is warm, expansive, and sympathetic, which is exactly what's demanded.

--Olivier Messiaen has a friend in Myung-Whun Chung, one of the finest French conductors on the planet. The name doesn't sound French, does it? Chung is indeed a Korean, the brother of Kyung-Wha, the violinist, and Myung-Wha, the cellist. But Myung-Whun Chung has had a largely French career, and he is much prized in the French repertoire, particularly that of the 20th century. (Need I say that this does not include dear, salon-attached Chaminade?)