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Music Preserved Archive Recording of the Month: February 2012
03/02/12
The Music Preserved archive contains a wide range of live music performances, recorded on-site or from off-air broadcasts. To highlight archive recordings, the listening centres choose a regular Music Preserved Recording of the Month. To hear this month's featured recording, make an appointment with a Music Preserved Listening Centre: either the Jerwood Library of the Performing Arts in Greenwich, London (020 8305 3951, library@tcm.ac.uk) or the University of York Sound Archives (01904 432446).
February 2012:
Alfonso und Estrella
Music by Franz Schubert
Libretto by Franz von Schober
Scottish National Orchestra and Scottish Opera Chorus
Conductor: Alexander Gibson
Performed at the Usher Hall, Edinburgh, 7 September 1968
A01079
The work was composed in 1821, and despite Schubert's considered opinion that it was his finest opera, it remained unperformed for more than 30 years. Then Liszt, probably persuaded by Schober, who was for a while his secretary, conducted the premiere, in which Schubert's overture was replaced by one by Anton Rubenstein.
This performance from the Edinburgh Festival in 1968 claimed to be the British premiere of the work. Conrad Wilson, reviewing it in Opera Magazine, stated:
"Mr Gibson conducted an aptly lyrical, skilled, well-paced performance, drawing trim, sensitive playing from the SNO, who responded warmly to the beauties of the orchestral writing, with its marvellous, deeply Schubertian parts for woodwind, its rich cello lines, its variety and delicacy. The youthful Scottish Opera Chorus, sounding about four times bigger than they looked, put colour and life into everything they sang… Richard Lewis and Phyllis Curtin managed to bring charm to their love-songs and Josef Greindl gave a splendid Hagen-like venom to the part of the revolting General Adolfo."
