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Recital
1 December 2005
Wigmore Hall, London
“An exemplary recital by one of the great singers of our time.” The Guardian
“Finley’s baritone has the breadth and the total assurance of technique to take whatever’s demanded of it. And, in this uniquely generous performance, he gave us his all.” The Times
Gerald Finley
Julius Drake
Robert Schumann:
Dichterliebe
Samuel Barber:
Hermit Songs
Charles Ives: 9 songs including
The Side Show
Memories a & b
Tom Sails Away
Swimmers
A Song for Anything
Encores
Charles Ives:
Charlie Rutledge
What the critics say
Tim Ashley for The Guardian, December 3, 2005
Five out of five stars
Classical The programme for Gerald Finley's recital with pianist Julius Drake consisted of Schumann's Dichterliebe, Samuel Barber's Hermit Songs and a group of songs by Charles Ives. An unusual combination, some might think, though the concert was carefully constructed to take us on an emotional journey from brooding introspection via an examination of the pleasures of solitude to a final celebration of life in all its diversity. Throughout, Finley's range as a performer was never in doubt. He is already justly famous as an exponent of American song, bettered by few in Ives above all. His Dichterliebe, however, will also linger in the memory as one of the finest interpretations to be heard for some time.
The cycle arouses mixed feelings. Some have wondered whether the word "love" in the title is entirely appropriate to its content. The text dreamily addresses an unknown woman, before showering her with imprecations when she fails to live up to an impossible ideal. Schumann's setting proceeds by a process of creation and dissolution, juxtaposing rapturous melodies with thematic fragmentation. It's far from being conventionally romantic, and Finley emphasised its neurotic undertow. He sang with an urgent, pressurised lyricism throughout, sometimes blanching his tone towards a timorous mezza voce, at other times letting a rasp intrude as obsessive anger took over. Drake matched his every emotional shift.
Barber's Hermit Songs is another tricky cycle, its spirituality offset by a gentle worldliness that embraces monastic gossip about female sexuality and the joys of watching a pet cat chasing mice. The songs are uneven, though Finley sang them with a combination of relaxed charm and great fervour. The closing Ives group was simply a knockout, rich in verbal detail and full of naive wonder at the beauty and pain of creation. An exemplary recital by one of the great singers of our time.
The Times (Hilary Finch), 5 December 2005
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/article745282.ece
Finally, I understood. Schumann wrote that long, long piano postlude to his songcycle Dichterliebe not to prolong, or even to assuage, the agony — but because he knew that his audience would simply need time to recover.
Only very rarely are we felled by the experience of Dichterliebe. But at the end of Thursday’s performance by Gerald Finley and Julius Drake the heart was stunned, the head left reeling. Finley revealed Schumann’s setting of Heine’s poems of love and loss as a cycle of hatred and anger. For those with ears to hear, Schumann never did mollify Heine’s bitterness and biting irony. He reinforced it musically, so that an entirely truthful performance is almost too painful to sing or to hear.
Finley and his accompanist, Drake, were unafraid. They laid Dichterliebe and themselves on the line, lengthening a vowel here, prolonging a moment of silence there — and stopping the clocks in a transfixing performance of that song about the waking, weeping dream. Finley’s baritone has the breadth and the total assurance of technique to take whatever’s demanded of it. And, in this uniquely generous performance, he gave us his all.
Finley, who hails from Ottawa, crossed the pond for the second half of his programme, presenting Samuel Barber’s Hermit Songs — and then nine songs by Charles Ives. Here, as in the Schumann, Finley dared a further degree of truthfulness, meeting Ives’s responses head-on, whether in hilariously ecstatic expectancy before curtain-up at the opera (from Memories) or in the tear-misted childhood remembrances of Tom sails away.
And since, in the end, life really is too serious to be taken seriously, I have to say that, until you’ve experienced the Finley-Drake take on Charlie Rutlage, the tale of a Texan cowboy’s death during round-up, crushed under his four-legged friend, then you really haven’t lived.
S Jenkins, musicalpointers, 1 December 2005
http://www.musicalpointers.co.uk/reviews/liveevents/AilishTynan.htm
Gerald Finley, the Canadian baritone, chose an interesting programme for his recital, combining Robert Schumann with Samuel Barber and Charles Ives.
One supposes that every singer feels obliged to include a composer of ‘classic' lieder, based on the canard still current in some quarters, that no piece of vocal writing is worth anything unless it is at least half an hour long and sung in German. Gerald Finley passed the test with flying colours, singing with commitment ranging from the frenzy of Die rose, die Lilie to the final bitter misanthropy of Die alten, bosen lieder. Perhaps the only thing missing was a sense of Heine's detachment – the feeling that he is viewing his soul from outside, as if he was a stranger. After all, the singer is not the sort of person who would have mooned over the cloisters of Cologne cathedral or drowned his sorrows in a nearby bierkeller; he would no doubt have leapt on his white horse and galloped across the prairie until he found a girl of more amenable disposition.
Gerald Finley was generous with his encores, one of which (Ives' Charlie Rutledge, a rip roaring cowboy song) probably gave rise to the above thoughts. Ives made his living as an insurance man, reminding me of a popular song which rhymed ‘insurance' with ‘endurance'. Ives needed plenty of that in his musical career, recognition only coming at its very end. Gerald Finley obviously has a feeling for these quirky compositions and displayed a proper North American vitality and humour in the songs which are like extracts from a diary, dealing with everyday events and experiences. Memories drew sighs of recognition from the audience; the pleasant memories of their childhood and sad reminders of old age and its infirmities. The programme ended with A Song for Anything which combines a farewell with a prayer – incongruous but somehow deeply moving.
Gerald Finley is a singer who enjoys his appearances before the public and is adept at winning their affection; a crowd pleaser in fact. This does not mean that he is not a highly conscientious musician; I look forward to his Don Giovanni and Eugene Onegin at Covent Garden next year.
Finally, the devoted work of Julius Drake must not be overlooked – he was an equal partner in this recital which called for the highest standard of accompaniment. We were not disappointed.