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Recital
22 June 2009
Wigmore Hall, London
Gerald Finley
Julius Drake
As part of the Song Recital Series “In sweet music is such art” devised by Julius Drake
Programme
George Butterworth: Seven songs from A Shropshire Lad
Bredon Hill
Loveliest of Trees
When I was one-and-twenty
Look not in my eyes
Think no more, lad
The lads in their hundreds
Is my team ploughing?
Gerald Finzi: Earth and Air and Rain Op. 15
Summer Schemes
When I set out for Lyonnesse
Waiting both
The phantom
So I have fared
Rollicum-rorum
To Lizbie Browne
The clock of the years
In a churchyard
Proud songsters
Interval
Ralph Vaughan Williams: Four Poems of Fredigond Shove
Motion and stillness
Four nights
The new ghost
The watermill
Ralph Vaughan Williams: Songs of Travel
The vagabond
Let beauty awake
The roadside fire
Youth and love
In dreams
The infinite shining heavens
Whither must I wander?
Bright is the ring of words
I have trod the upward and the downward slope
Encores
Gerald Finzi:
Rollicum-rorum
Ralph Vaughan Williams:
Silent Noon
What the critics say
Andrew Clements, The Guardian, 24 June 2009
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/jun/23/finley-drake-wigmore-review
If Gerald Finley were not also such an outstanding interpreter of German, French and American songs, he could easily get pigeonholed as an English-music specialist. The clarity and precise shading of his singing ensures that not a word goes astray; the effortless elegance of his phrasing preserves the exact shape of every line, while crucially never lapsing into the sentimentality that so often seems to be lurking round the corner in this repertory.
Finley and pianist Julius Drake began their recital with two of the finest achievements of 20th-century English song, seven of George Butterworth's settings of Housman's A Shropshire Lad providing the perfect foil to the second of Gerald Finzi's Hardy collections, Earth and Air and Rain. If they caught the bittersweet guilelessness of Butterworth's wonderfully economical writing to perfection, fully aware that what was left unsaid was just as important as what was in the music, they gave wonderfully searching accounts of Finzi's more highly wrought songs, and their all-pervading sense of transience. Only Finley's occasional tendency - almost a mannerism - of landing on notes just a microtone flat and then sliding on to the correct pitch took the smoothness from some lines.
After such performances, Vaughan Williams's Four Poems By Fredegond Shove and the Songs of Travel seemed distinctly second rate. The Shove songs have mediocre texts set rather routinely by the composer around 1922, while, for all their enduring popularity, the Stevenson settings of the Songs of Travel never quite escape the whiff of the Victorian parlour. Finley still lavished a huge amount of care upon them, and his wonderfully relaxed delivery of The Infinite Shining Heavens especially almost placed it up alongside the Butterworth and Finzi.
Robert Hugill, 24 June 2009
http://hugill.blogspot.com/2009/06/gerald-finley-at-wigmore-hall.html
To the Wigmore Hall on Monday to see Gerald Finley and Julius Drake doing a recital of English song, finishing with RVW's Songs of Travel. They opened with seven songs from Butterworth's A Shropshire Lad, followed by Finzi's Earth and Air and Rain. The Butterworth group contained songs that I knew, but I had never heard them sung as a group before. Despite the beauty of Loveliest of Trees, I still found the last 2 in the set the most moving; The Lads in their Hundreds because of its evocation of the casual losses of war and the remarkable pre-echo of the losses of WW1, and Is my team ploughing, for similar reasons plus, of course, the rather unconscious homo-erotic elements in the last verses.
Finley has one of the most beautiful baritone voices around, but his performances were never about sheer beauty. His diction was such that you didn't need the words, even sitting at the back of the hall. And he was responsive to word and mood, sometimes his performance veered towards the over dramatic but he was never fully operatic, which was right for the mood.
The Finzi cycle sets Hardy poems, all rather understated and slightly gloomy in mood. Written between the wars, these were the most sophisticated songs of the evening, particularly in the accompaniments (finely played by Julius Drake). I can't say that Hardy is my favourite poet, but Finley made a wonderful case for these songs.
The second half contained RVW's four Fredegond Shove poems and The Songs of Travel. The Shove songs were beautifully done, but the words seem slight and to verge on sentimental. Finley worked hard but I don't think that the Watermill suits the baritone voice as much as a higher one. On the other hand the Songs of Travel were superbly done. I only wish that we had such a cycle from much later in RVW's career, after all a baritone would probably not do the four last songs. He encored one of the Finzi songs, and managed to hilariously get the words wrong. Then finally did Silent Noon. Julius Drake, in a spoken intro to this, mentioned that Finley had learned most of the programme especially for the recital - though you couldn't tell. They did not seem to be recording it for a Wigmore Hall Live CD, which is a shame.