A thought-provoking, and entertaining, post-modern opera

David Lang: The Loser, an opera after the novel by Thomas Bernhard

Thomas Bernhard's The Loser is one of my favourite novels; it's the oddest combination of extremely challenging post-modernist structure and real readability. The fact that one of the three characters in Bernhard's story is (a highly fictionalized) Glenn Gould is a real feature for both the novel and the opera. There's also a streak of wry humour which runs through Bernhard's novel, and remarkably it survives in Lang's libretto, and in the outstanding performance of baritone Rod Gilfry. Everything from despair to hilarity is heard in Gilfry's voice (and seen on his face in the very good video clips from Red Poppy Music available on the web). Gilfry's very special vocal performance is ably supported by pianist Conrad Tao, who plays Lang's clever obbligato piano part, which comments on the action throughout; and by the Bang on a Can Ensemble (viola, cello, bass and percussion) led by Lesley Leighton. This is highly recommended for fans of David Lang, whose Pulitzer Prize winning Little Match Girl Passion is a highlight of 21st century opera, as well as for everyone who adores the quirky prose of Thomas Bernhard.

This album will be released on February 7, 2020.

Bearing witness to Lang's soul

David Lang: Mystery Sonatas

I'm interested only in expressing basic human emotions, tragedy, ecstasy, doom and so on, and the fact that a lot of people break down and cry when confronted with my pictures show that I communicate those basic human emotions. The people who weep before my pictures are having the same religious experience I had when I painted them.

- Mark Rothko

David Lang has taken away the liturgical context from his model, Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber's Mystery Sonatas, written in 1676, but a deeply emotional and even spiritual level remains embedded in this music. The music is divided into sections denoting joy, sorrow and glory, and various gradations between, and like Biber's music, and even more so, Bach's Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin, the single line of the violin bears the entire weight of his thesis. George Grella praised the work in his post at New York Classical Review: "...this music is humane and vibrantly expressive. We are essentially bearing witness to Lang’s soul."

The violinist Augustin Hadelich premiered this work at Zankel Hall in New York in April 2014, to considerable acclaim, and in May of 2016 the present recording was made. Hadelich has a warm, commanding tone, enhanced by the 1723 “ex-Kiesewetter” Stradivari he plays, which perfectly matches the open and intensely sincere music. I'm a bit surprised by the delay in this release, considering how accessible and appealing this music is, and how effective is Hadelich's advocacy. But years and decades into the future, I'm sure we'll be listening to this recording, and also performances and recordings of the Lang Mystery Sonatas by other violinists.  It's an instant classic, even if it took a while to get to the top of the queue.

This disc will be released on October 19, 2018.

The album cover includes a cropped portion of the 1905 photograph Nude boy in rocky landscape, silhouette, by F. Holland Day (1864-1933). I had assumed a black & white original had been tinted blue for the cover, but here's the original from the Library of Congress website:

https://www.loc.gov/resource/cph.3g04684/