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Recital
2 October 2000
Wigmore Hall, London
Gerald Finley
Julius Drake
Carl Loewe:
Erlkönig Op. 1 No. 3
Die wandelnde Glocke Op. 20 No. 3
Der Papagei Op. 111
Hugo Wolf:
Fußreise
An die Geliebte
Mausfallensprüchlein
Der Feuerreiter
Mark Anthony Turnage: Three Songs
The Singing Cat
Mourning
Last Words
Maurice Ravel: Histoires Naturelles
Le Paon
Le Orillon
Le Cygne
Le Martin-Pecheur
La Pintade
What the critics say
Andrew Clements for the Guardian, October 5, 2000
http://arts.guardian.co.uk/reviews/story/0,,702780,00.html
Rating: Four stars ****
In the premiere of Mark-Anthony Turnage's The Silver Tassie at ENO in February, the baritone Gerald Finley sang the main role of Harry Heegan, the footballer who goes off to the first world war and returns in a wheelchair. During rehearsals for the show Finley asked Turnage if he would consider writing something for a recital programme that he was building around Ravel's Histoires Naturelles; the result was the Three Songs that formed the centrepiece of Finley's Radio 3 Lunchtime Concert with pianist Julius Drake at the Wigmore Hall. These were followed by the Histoires Naturelles themselves.
The Ravel songs are vivid portraits of animals; Turnage has taken up that theme in his miniature cycle, setting two poems about cats, Stevie Smith's The Singing Cat and Thomas Hardy's Mourning, and following them with Last Words, a section of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass in which the poet imagines that he could "turn and live with animals". They are beautifully judged pieces - the Smith spun out over piano tracery in a way that recalls some of Britten's late songs; the Hardy a sombre elegy; the Whitman an eloquent declaration tinged with blue notes, to which the piano adds spare yet telling punctuation.
Finley delivered them exquisitely, as totally absorbed in Turnage's world as he had been in the opera. The rest of his recital was equally compelling. Whether in Loewe's version of The Erl-King, or the four numbers from Wolf's Morike Lieder, his presentation was absolutely attuned to the text and the implicit drama, while the way in which he gently, affectionately brought Ravel's little vignettes to life was masterly. Nothing was overstated or contrived, and Drake added equally tactful support.