Maria Cristina Kiehr - A. Scarlatti: Bella madre dei fiori, Cantates (2001)

In attempting to select something from the vast pool of solo cantatas left behind by Alessandro Scarlatti, it's hard to know what to highlight. Argentine soprano Maria Cristina Kiehr, a prominent European early music specialist who honed her craft in the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis under René Jacobs, casts in her lot with both the elder Scarlatti and Concerto Soave in a recital consisting of three of the elder Scarlatti's solo cantatas in Harmonia Mundi's Alessandro Scarlatti: Bella madre de' fiori. Although the authenticity of the title work has been challenged, that has not stopped it from being among the most frequently recorded of Scarlatti's cantatas, and the other two -- Poi che riseppe Orfeo and Correa nel seno amato -- are not new to recordings, but the intention here is seemingly to outdo the rest by providing the best. It is a contender; the continuo playing here is superb throughout, with Concerto Soave playing Scarlatti's most slithery chromatics with a sense of naturalism that places the music right in the drawing and dining rooms of late seventeenth century aristocracy. Kiehr's singing is also good; her tone is dark and burnished, a little like an alto, and in terms of range that certainly works as this is predominantly castrato literature. Kiehr gets in a little characterization here and there, but the overall performance is emotionally somewhat low-key; she soft-pedals ornamentation and the darkness of tone doesn't always project the text well and her pronunciation of the Italian is a bit mushy. Of the works, Poi che riseppe Orfeo is the best and Bella madre de' fiori surprisingly the least good; it's impossible to ignore that this long solo cantata has some dull stretches, although it has some lovely moments, as well, such as the calm finale "Così, la bella Clori." Correa nel seno amato is two minutes longer than Bella madre de' fiori, and yet seems longer than its discmate.
Nevertheless, Harmonia Mundi's Alessandro Scarlatti: Bella madre de' fiori is about as good as it gets in terms of whole discs devoted to Scarlatti's solo cantatas; about the only case that Kiehr and Concerto Soave don't succeed at making on Scarlatti's behalf is why we should listen to such works. These cantatas seem to belong to the perpetually reclining, lazy Italian aristocracy for which they were written that it is difficult to identify with such music, its arcane references to the adventures and sorrows of shepherds and pagan gods, and to genteel, courtly atmosphere. Those of Handel seem written with a bit more foresight in terms of their challenging musical ideas; by comparison, these Scarlatti works just seem cozy and lacking in a desire to shake up their aristocratic audience a bit for the sake of added musical interest.