Gluck: Alceste.(Sound Recording Review)

[] Von Otter; Groves, Henschel; English Baroque Soloists and Monteverdi Choir, Gardiner. Text and translation. Philips 470 293-2

This Alceste follows, for the most part, Gluck's 1776 reworking of the score for Paris. Conductor John Eliot Gardiner has made a number of adjustments to the libretto, most conspicuously in the aria familiar as "Divinites du Styx," here rendered, as per a suggestion of Berlioz, as "Ombres, larves," closer in meaning and musical spirit to Gluck's Italian original.

The unusually involving performance is clearly creditable to Gardiner's leadership. He paces the score with the deft hand of an experienced theater conductor, keeping the music flowing while imbuing it with somber elegance, injecting a rhythmic spring that enlivens the composer's occasionally plodding orchestral writing, pivoting precisely around tempo changes. Rather than conventionally marking off the set pieces with pauses, he segues smoothly between recitative and aria to maintain dramatic impetus, only occasionally eliding a needed breathing space (as in Act I, before Alceste's "Immortel Apollon!"). But the orchestral playing, while characterful, is frustratingly casual: attacks aren't ideally incisive or precise, and, as the sonority expands, the spongy bass lines undercut the general rhythmic alertness.

Anne Sofie ...