Three times lucky (make that four)
Our Catch of the Day for January 31

We cleared the deck this week for three extra guests:

• Riccardo Muti, maestro of maestros;
• the pianist Mahani Teave, who visited with us via Zoom from her ancestral home in the shadow of the fabled moai of Easter Island (audio links above);
• the composer David Hertzberg, whose lavish, mind-altering scores affect his growing fan base like a narcotic.

As a chaser, there was choral music of luminous austerity from the Icelandic composer María Huld Markan Sigfúsdóttir. The Sigfúsdóttir tracks and those from "Rapa Nui Odyssey" are available on the linked Apple Music playlist.

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Bellini, I Puritani (Riccardo Muti Music 2018)

Riccardo Muti; Cristina Deutekom, Nicolai Gedda, Sesto Bruscantini, Agostino Ferrin; Orchestra e Coro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino

• Son vergin vezzoso
• Rendetemi la speme... Qui la voce sua soave
• Suoni la tromba

On the cusp: Riccardo Muti receives the Guido Cantelli Prize in 1967. (Photo: Gbonaju, Wikimedia Commons.)

Riccardo Muti, who turns 80 this year, needs no introduction. Yet many of his historic live performances have been hard if not impossible to access until their recent release on the Riccardo Muti Music label, distributed through his website. From Vincenzo Bellini's bel canto historic fantasy I Puritani, we prioritzed set pieces for the heroine, Elvira, sung by the Dutch soprano Cristina Deutekom in shimmering tones and limpid phrases blessedly free of affectation. Muti's tempi are strict yet by no means rigid: the carnivalesque ensemble "Son vergin vezzosa" dances on air; the elegiac cantilena "Qui la voce" suspends time without ceasing to flow. The martial "Suoni la tromba," for dueling basses, saw us off in a contrasting heroic mode. Captured live in Florence in 1970, the performance already epitomizes the qualities the world still treasures in Muti: the clarity of intention, the refinement of palette, the dedication to the expressive essence.

Rapa Nui Odyssey (Rubicon 2021)

Mahani Teave

• Handel, Suite No. 5 in E Major, HWV 430, IV Air and variations ("The Harmonious Blacksmith")
• Rachmaninoff, Moments musicaux Op 16, No. 4 in E Minor.
• I hē a Homumatu'a (arr. J.T. Tobar), featuring Enrique Icka, vocal

Mahani Teave's destiny arrived on her ancestral island of Rapa Nui (or Easter Island) in the form of an upright piano—the first ever to make landfall there--when the little girl was just nine years old. Eight months later, on Christmas Day, her mother whisked her away to Valdivia, in southern Chile, for more professional instruction. Later studies took her to the Cleveland Institute of Music and the Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eissler, Berlin. But just as her career was beginning to take off, the island called her back. Her history and that of the school she has founded are the subject of the new documentary Song of Rapa Nui. Watch for my profile and Q&A with Teave next Saturday in Air Mail (update 2/6/21: now posted). The tracks on "Catch of the Day" speak well of the artist's technique—and eloquently of her sense of discreet, spontaneous fantasy. The final track, beginning with chant in the language of the island, weaves a spell that is as gentle as it is profound.

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David Hertzberg: The Wake World (David Hertzberg 2020)

Maeve Hogland, Samantha Hankey; Elizabeth Braden

• Lola, Lola my darling
• What light lingers there
• Is that you, my love?

Born at the Barnes; cover art for "The Wake World."

Regular listeners to "Catch of the Day" may remember that we ran into technical troubles recently with excerpts from Hertzberg's recent opera The Rose Elf. We promised the composer as well as our listeners a raincheck, and here it is: a trio of excerpts from The Wake World, which premiered in the celebrated art galleries of the Barnes Foundation under the aegis of Opera Philadelphia. Critics wrote of prose (read: text) that was "purple" ("and so was the music"), of a score that seemed the work of "a 21^st-century Ravel." The Music Critics Association of North America hailed The Wake World as the Best New Opera of 2017. At our request, Hertzberg curated our selection. Though his instrumental ensemble consists of just six players, he conjures soundscapes of astonishing postromantic opulence (think the Schönberg of Gurrelieder, the Strauss of Die Ägyptische Helena, the Mahler of the Third Symphony), and the vocal writing is rapturous, made to order for a Kiri Te Kanawa or Renée Fleming in her prime. Can't enlighten you as to the subject matter, but perhaps you'd like to explore the source material by the British mystic Aleister Crowley. Spoiler alert: it's esoteric. Here's a link.

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Kom Vinur: Two Choral Works (Sono Luminus 2021)

Villborg Dagbjartsdóttir, Schola Cantorum, Hördur Askelsson

• Kom vinur
• Maríuljóð

Balm for the ears; very peaceful.