Recording of the Week 24th April 2026 Share
Following superb accounts of his violin and cello concertos in 2024, Pentatone continues its advocacy for the music of Thomas de Hartmann today with the first complete recording of his 1946 opera-oratorio Esther, courtesy of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra and its Conductor Laureate Kirill Karabits.
Born in present-day Ukraine in 1884, de Hartmann studied in St Petersburg with Arensky, Taneyev and Rimsky-Korsakov before relocating to France in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution and found himself drawn to Racine’s 1689 play Esther during the Nazi occupation. The story of the Biblical queen (who has hitherto concealed her Jewish identity from her husband) and her successful bid to bring down a courtier intent on annihilating the Jewish race resonated powerfully with the composer against the backdrop of World War Two, and de Hartmann completed the vocal score shortly after hostilities ceased, orchestrating it once he and his wife had settled in New York.
Esther never received a complete performance in de Hartmann’s lifetime, perhaps because the subject-matter still felt too raw or perhaps because the sheer scale of the piece proved an obstacle – though the four mesmerising dances which open Act Three found a home in the concert-hall thanks to the advocacy of Stokowski and others, and in 1976 the composer’s widow arranged for an abridged concert-version (sung in English with a student orchestra and chorus) to be recorded and issued on a private label.
That recording proved a vital resource for Karabits and his cast as they prepared to give the work its first uncut, professional outing in the original French, and the results prove essential listening for twentieth-century music enthusiasts. Aside from some potent echoes of Stravinsky (not least in the Rite of Spring-ish Act Two postlude) and the occasional whiff of Walton’s Belshazzar’s Feast, the soundworld feels distinctively French, the opening scene between Esther and her companion Élise anticipating Poulenc’s Dialogues des carmélites and some of the interactions between Esther and her adoring husband looking back to Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande.
The scintillating, hyper-alert orchestral playing is one of the two great glories of the recording and is superbly captured by Pentatone’s engineers. Hartmann has a penchant for nestling exquisite little solos amid plush blankets of sound and these are always beautifully spotlit, as are the many atmospheric details from percussion and celeste. Himself the son of a Ukrainian composer, Karabits has the full measure of the score’s rather wonky architecture and weirdly wonderful sonorities, allowing the (occasionally rather prolix) lyrical episodes plenty of breathing-space and stepping hard on the gas when the dramatic tension ratchets up.
The other stand-out element is the full-throttle singing of the Grange Festival Chorus (superbly drilled by William Vann), who are absolutely hair-raising in their great laments and final jubilant hymn of praise. Of the soloists, it’s Swiss tenor Bernard Richter who takes the laurels as the rabidly anti-Semitic Aman, a smiling damned villain whose sweet-toned eloquence in his dealings with the king stands in chilling contrast to his poisonous rants behind closed doors (his vow to wipe ‘that insolent race from the face of the earth’ in Act Two is genuinely disturbing stuff).
His henchman Hydaspe is brought to life with great nuance by the classy French baritone Edwin Crossley-Mercer (especially compelling in his creepy description of King Assuérus’s nightmare) whilst Yuriy Yurchuk is on sonorous form as the uxorious monarch, whose tender Act Three attempt to get his anxious wife to open up is one of the loveliest passages in the score.
Esther herself is a formidable assignment indeed, calling for a true dramatic soprano with a strong lower-middle register as well as a rock-solid top and whilst Corinne Winters is infinitely touching in the more lyrical stretches, the very high declamatory passages (such as the end of her Act One prayer and the eleventh-hour revelation about her heritage) push her beyond her comfort-zone. The writing here is almost Turandot-esque, a big ask for a singer who’s currently making waves as Giorgetta, Suor Angelica and Butterfly.
But there’s no doubting her dramatic commitment, or indeed that of anyone involved in this fascinating exhumation: Karabits and Co. have restored a vital missing link in twentieth-century music history, and the end product is worth two hours of anyone’s time.