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Wigmore Hall Live: Gerald Finley & Julius Drake (CD)

 

“Finley captured on peak form in a stimulating and varied recital… A genuine treat, this, and not to be missed.” Gramophone

“…this disc reinforces Gerald Finley's credentials as one of the finest non-native singers of Russian.” The Telegraph

“Gerald Finley triumphs in his Wigmore recital” 5 out of 5 stars: BBC Music magazine

5 out of 5 stars: Classic FM magazine

Best CDs of 2008: Evening Standard

"Gerald Finley is a sovereign artist, both in the opera house and on the recital platform, a master of different styles and a relentless explorer of musical territory. Vocal gifts, combined with acute musicianship give him a position comparable to that of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau at his peak, while a partnership with Julius Drake is an assurance of quality and musical reward." Classicalsource.com

Performers:

Recorded live on 18 October 2007, Wigmore Hall, London, United Kingdom. Click here for details of the recital
Release date: 27 October 2008

Label: Wigmore Live WHLIVE0025

ASIN: B001H5GK74



Tchaikovsky Songs
1. Don Juan's Serenade [2.54]
2. It was in the Early Spring [2.45]
3. At the Ball [2.39]
4. Whether the Day reigns [3.39]
5. The mild stars shone for us [3.37] Click to hear http://www.juliusdrake.com/main.php 

6. Only one who knows longing [3.34]
7. As over burning Embers [2.18]

 

Musorgsky 'Songs and Dances of Death'
8. Lullaby [5.35]
9. Serenade [4.42]
10. Trepak [5.16]
11. The Field Marshall [6.20] 

Ned Rorem - 'War Scenes'
12. A Night Battle [5.07]
13. Specimen Case [2.22]
14. An Incident [2.03]
15. Inauguration Ball [1.50]
16. The real War will never get in the Books [3.38]

17. Announcement

18. ENCORE - Ives: Memories [3.46]
19. Announcement
20. ENCORE - Rautavvarra: Shall I compare thee [2.03]
21. Announcement
22. ENCORE - Wolseley Charles: Green Eyed Dragon [4.48]

   

 

 

Critically praised for his performances both on stage and in concert, this recital of American and Russian song by Gerald Finley offers listeners the rare opportunity to hear one of today’s most in-demand baritones within the beautiful, Intimate setting of the Wigmore Hall.

Gerald Finley writes: “It is with great sense of pride that this disc becomes the 25th release of the Wigmore Live series, in a musical partnership I have enjoyed for many years with Julius Drake. Performing at the Wigmore is always a highlight of any career. The others in the series are distinguished performers I have admired for years and the performances are wonderful. The audiences at the Wigmore are always welcoming and knowledgeable, and this atmosphere is captured perfectly. Already a fine catalogue, I hope the Wigmore Live series continues its honour roll”

 

 

Quotes from Gerry in the CD booklet

Encores

CHARLES IVES (1874-1954)

Memories (A) and (B)

“Julius and I have become firm devotees of the songs of Charles Ives, in addition to Barber and Rorem, for their constant ability to surprise with sometimes complex variety and to conceal earnest emotion with a disarming simplicity. Memories (A) and (B) appear to be rather straightforward but are equally entertaining and heartfelt; two vignettes of American music making, at the opera and down on the farm, whistling and humming in equal measure ... Julius contributing expertly!

EINOJUHANI RAUTAVAARA (b. 1928)

Shall I compare thee?

“My love of things Finnish began with the role of Jaufre Rudel in Kaiia Saariaho's L'amour de loin, culminating in its presentation by Finnish National Opera in 2004, conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen. During our recital tour of European cities, we were in Helsinki during the week of the 79th birthday of another great Finnish composer, Einojuhani Rautavaara. We thought it would be nice to acknowledge the event with one of his Shakespeare settings, full of pace, rhythm and very summery!”

WOLSELEY CHARLES (1889-1962)

The Green-Eyed Dragon

“As soon as I first heard this song on a disc sung by John Charles Thomas, one of my great heros, I knew I would include it in my programming. It was originally written for the masterful Stanley Holloway. This encore has become a favourite because whatever the recital, it allows a terrific energy to sweep through the audience, almost participating in its childlike bedtime story. We thought its comic and menacing theatricality was a good way to round off a programme of melodic richness, images of death and disturbing moral issues.”

Gerald Finley © 2008

 

What the critics say

Richard Wigmore, The Telegraph, 30 October 2008

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2008/10/30/bmclasscds130.xml

Filleted from his 2007 Wigmore Hall recital, this disc reinforces Gerald Finley's credentials as one of the finest non-native singers of Russian. In the opening Tchaikovsky group he brings a dangerous, debonair swagger to Don Juan's Serenade and catches without sentimentality the gloomy fatalism of None but the Lonely Heart.

Abetted by Julius Drake's dramatic, atmospheric playing, he combines burnished beauty of tone and unflinching emotional truth in Musorgsky's Songs and Dances of Death. No less harrowing is Finley's no-holds-barred performance of Ned Rorem's War Scenes, declamatory settings of Walt Whitman composed in protest at the Vietnam War.

Relief comes courtesy of a clutch of witty encores, despatched by singer and pianist with virtuoso panache.

 

Richard Nicholson, classicalsource.com

http://www.classicalsource.com/db_control/db_cd_review.php?id=6452

Back in the days of the Cold War this might have been marketed as a superpower confrontation in song, Russia versus the United States, with death as a central theme seen from different cultural standpoints by writers and musicians. Now it remains quite a grim programme, though without the political dimension.

The performers stand so high in contemporary esteem that expectations run high whenever they announce a concert or recording. Gerald Finley is a sovereign artist, both in the opera house and on the recital platform, a master of different styles and a relentless explorer of musical territory. Vocal gifts, combined with acute musicianship give him a position comparable to that of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau at his peak, while a partnership with Julius Drake is an assurance of quality and musical reward.

The “Songs and Dances of Death” will probably be the main selling-point of this disc. They seem to fit the talents of these two artists so well. Mussorgsky’s grisly cycle with its syllabic word-setting has few pretensions to melody. The composer’s intention was to mirror the inflections of everyday spoken Russian. The debate surrounding the performance of the work is the extent to which the interpreters should embellish what the composer has supplied. Drama can easily be distorted into melodrama and sometimes grievously has been on record. Finley is wholly musical, showing absolute respect for the written notes, while possessing the vocal skills of a great stage (and radio) actor.

His characterisation of Death is not one-dimensional, even in a single song: the ghostly visitor in ‘Lullaby’ is reassuring and consoling but becomes increasingly earnest as the mother’s agitation grows. Vocally Finley covers his top notes and does not resort to an emasculated tone in the final lines; ppp they may be but there is always bass resonance present to keep the menace close to the surface.

The scene-setting for ‘Serenade’ needs a flowing, elastic line, stretching upwards and downwards across a wide range. The effect here is to establish the atmosphere of a still spring night so alluringly that the accent on the first mention of Death (“Smert”) comes as a shock. The motivic melody of the serenade itself is suitably mesmeric but each verse is approached in a slightly different way. A slight increase in tempo in one, greater use of head-voice in another, more prominent decorations in the piano part in a third. The music seems to be drifting away inconclusively in a gradual diminuendo and a long tonic pedal, so that Death’s exultant claim of ownership again comes as a genuine coup de théâtre.

‘Trepak’ is riveting from the start. We feel the presence of the Evil One before he actually appears, so powerfully suggestive is Finley’s leering delivery of the opening lines. When the gruesome dance begins, his voice takes on just a hint of crudity as he presents himself as a fellow reveller to his drunken victim, throwing the arm of companionship around his shoulders before summoning up the storm as his true ally. Drake has his own revelation in the final verse: the insistent dance music itself is reduced to fragments, as if reflecting the death-convulsions of the doomed peasant. This is an intensely visual interpretation, as is ‘The Field-Marshal’. Tumultuous sounds of battle give way to nocturnal stillness. Then, as Death appears, Finley initially depicts the reaction of the watching multitude, which has first to be cowed into submission before the Field-Marshal can make his triumphant pronouncement. He has all the voice needed for his imperious message, delivered to the accompaniment of a quasi-patriotic anthem, but it is not all blazed out without nuance.

From symbolic treatment of death to the gruesome reality: Ned Rorem’s uncompromising settings of Walt Whitman’s eyewitness accounts of US Civil War battlefields. The musical style here is in a sense the ne plus ultra of Mussorgsky’s methods. The links to conventional melody and harmony are slim. The “accompaniment” in ‘A Night Battle’ consists largely of punctuation marks, sometimes fragments of illustrative music for the narration. The text (in prose) is set for the voice absolutely in the rhythms of English speech. The shape of the vocal lines undulates, initially with no obvious relevance to the words but before long it settles into a kind of melodic repetition, with the motif of a doleful falling-fifth prominent. Sometimes the rhetoric is enacted in the music (the surge of energy at “the flashing moonbeam’d woods” or the commander’s cry “Charge men, charge”). This sort of music makes heavy demands on a singer’s musicianship. Finley’s intonation is impeccable and his imagination put to work to bind the disparate material into logical shapes.

The other texts bring from Rorem a variety of treatments. ‘An Incident’ resembles an objective report, dryly factual in style, with no emotional response until the final phrase “but he died in a few minutes”. ‘Inauguration Ball’ has a stylised dance accompaniment, which ironically persists while the suffering of wounded and dead combatants is recounted. ‘The real war will never get in the books’ is a sober concluding judgement, much of it unaccompanied. Initially this had seemed forbidding music; these two artists make the settings seem inevitable.

Tchaikovsky, seven of whose songs open the recital, sets more commonplace musical challenges. With the control that Finley has over his voice the awkward corners in the music, particularly the movement from resonant low register to liquid top, are smoothly turned. The tone may not have the roundness of an Italian baritone but the combination of verbal precision and legato is impressive throughout this programme. However, it is in the initiative of their interpretations that Finley and Drake excelled on the evening preserved here. The gilt-edged fulfilment of the partnership’s promise is evident from the opening song of their Tchaikovsky group. The familiarity of ‘Don Juan’s Serenade’ has led some recent performers to exaggerate the pace and power of the accompaniment and the histrionics of the singing. Here there is no risk of prematurely exhausting the audience, or of conforming to current fashion. Drake wisely does not set off at express speed, nor does he hammer the keys but he does bring out the subtleties of the prelude, with the two hands moving in opposite directions. Finley does not portray a self-confident monster but a chivalrous suitor with a threat concealed, as in the second verse, where his tone is suave for the reference to Nisetta’s beauty but then hardens when Don Juan refers to fighting a duel with any rival.

Every one of these songs is given a distinct flavour but again the search for illumination among the detail of familiar and much-performed songs is well illustrated by “None but the lonely heart”. I am not talking about being different for the sake of it but of revealing what is present in the music as notated on the page and can be integrated into a consistent overall reading. Drake’s prelude, for example, brings out the halting, weary mood implicit in the rhythm. When the voice enters, its lack of energy confirms what the pianist has already predicted. After a passage in which he tries to assert himself in a mini-crescendo “Glyazhu ya v dal” (I look into the distance), Finley sinks even deeper into feebleness, “dalyoko!” (so far away!). Briefly he turns to protest at his condition, barking out the word “kak” (how much). Then the tone turns unexpectedly disembodied at “Vsya grud gorit” (my heart is burning), followed by a remorseless diminuendo, which, however, includes one last defiant gasp of full voice on the final word “strazdhu” (suffer). This is interpretation of the highest order and typical of the recital as a whole.

The mood is lightened by the encores, which Finley introduces. In Charles Ives’s “Memories”, nineteenth-century America is vividly recalled, both in the breathless excitement of an unsophisticated audience before curtain up at a backwoods music hall and in the nostalgia of a folk-tune passed down through the generations. Einojuhani Rautavaara’s setting of Shakespeare’s sonnet “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” is in lively fashion with exuberant leaps and pounding accompaniment. Finally comes a playful but vocally resourceful performance of the John Charles Thomas favourite “The Green-Eyed Dragon” composed by Wolseley Charles.

The “Wigmore Hall Live” series reflects the high quality of chamber music and art-song available at this admirable venue. Many of the 25 CDs so far issued preserve events of special value (and at a reasonable price). This beautifully recorded example is certainly one of them. Texts and translations are supplied.

Michael Scott Rohan, BBC Music Magazine, December 2008

Performance: * * * * *

Recording: * * * *

Cutting Power: Gerald Finley triumphs in his Wigmore recital

This latest Wigmore Hall Live recording is among the finest so far, a really superb recital by this accomplished Canadian bass-baritone and his celebrated accompanist, Julius Drake. In recent years Gerald Finley's voice has developed more character and cutting power, and a fine dramatic edge which suits this emphatic, sometimes shocking programme very well indeed. The selection ofTchaikovsky songs, sentimental and nostalgic, he delivers beautifully and with warmth rather than gush. His Russian sounds rather studied, especially to start with, but none the worse; his diction is clearer than many native singers. Musorgsky's Songs and Dances of Death, even with piano, is usually associated with weightier or furrier voices, but Finley is absolutely convincing, especially in the morbidly erotic sweetness of 'Serenade' and the bounding energy of'Trepak'. He delivers the terrible summons of ' The Field-Marshal' with riveting command, matched atmospherically by Drake.

Something of this dark awe carries over into the Rorem cycle War Songs, less overtly dramatic musically, but even more chilling in Whitman's descriptions of American Civil War carnage; Finley's dark tones capture the gory pathos as vividly as contemporary photographs.

His encores lighten the mood just as deftly: these are witty Charles Ives throwaways ('Memories A & B'), a rippling Shakespeare sonnet ('Shall I compare thee?') by the Finnish visionary Rautavaara, and Wolseley Charles's hilarious Green-Eyed Dragon. Altogether a strongly recommended disc.

 

From Classic FM magazine, January 2009

 

 

Best CDs of 2008

Evening Standard, 19 December 2008

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/music/article-23605201-details/Best+CDs+of+2008/article.do

Marking the 25th issue of Wigmore Hall Live, this recital is by the outstanding Canadian bass-baritone Gerald Finley with pianist Julius Drake. Finley admirably encompasses both the lyrical raptures of Tchaikovsky and the angry, harrowing Mussorgsky Songs and Dances of Death. Ned Rorem's War Scenes are equally gritty and uncompromising.

Andrew Achenbach, Gramophone, February 2009

Finley captured on peak form in a stimulating and varied recital

Gerald Finley can do no wrong at present, and this offering makes a cherishable keepsake of what was evidently a memorable event. Aided by scrupulous support from Julius Drake, Finley lavishes wonderfully rounded treatment upon the sequence of seven Tchaikovsky songs that open proceedings. Be it in the ardent swagger of "Don Juan's Serenade", wistful glow of "At the ball" or meltingly lovely "The mild stars shone for us", Finley is not found wanting. Not only do his top notes ring out with thrilling projection (yet without a hint of hardness), he exhibits a grace, sensitivity and intelligence that ensure that the music never topples into rampant self-pity.

There's a comparable authority and integrity about these artists' interpretation of Mussorgsky's Songs and Dances of Death. Finley is in complete command of his very considerable resources, distilling every ounce of pathos from the mother's desperate pleadings in the opening "Lullaby" and conveying in full the grim implacability of "The Field-Marshal". Ned Rorem's similarly declamatory War Scenes is also performed with total understanding, while the last of the three encores, Wolseley Charles's wickedly amusing The Green-Eyed Dragon (written in 1926 for Stanley Holloway), predictably brings the house down. A packed auditorium listens in hushed captivation, and Tony Faulkner's truthful sound and balance convey a palpable sense of occasion. A genuine treat, this, and not to be missed.

 

John Quinn, Musicweb International

http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2009/Feb09/Finley_whlive0025.htm

For this Wigmore Hall recital Gerald Finley and Julius Drake chose a programme that was technically and emotionally demanding and one which, moreover, challenged their listeners. The recital darkens in mood as it unfolds.

They begin with a Tchaikovsky group. The three songs from Op. 38 set words by Alexey Tolstoy. There’s an error in the booklet, where Tolstoy’s dates are given as 1883-1945 - but Tchaikovsky wrote these songs in 1878! I think there may have been some confusion between the novelist Alexey Nickolayevich Tolstoy (1883-1945) and Alexey Kostantinovich Tolstoy, the Russian poet, who lived between 1817 and 1875. I believe the two were related but it is Alexey Kostantinovich’s verses that Tchaikovsky set.

Finley and Drake convey well what annotator Andrew Huth aptly describes as the “bravura swagger” of ‘Don Juan’s Serenade’. The other songs from Op. 38 fare equally well. ‘It was in early spring’ is, for the most part, gently melancholic in tone and the music suits Finley’s lovely tone and easy legato very well. ‘At the ball’ is also a melancholy song – the melancholy of a gentleman – and it responds well to Finley’s manly timbre. As for the remaining Tchaikovsky offerings, ‘By day or by night’ is more overtly passionate and Finley does it very well, while his singing of the lovely ‘The mild stars shone for us’ is simply masterful.

With Mussorgsky we move on to what is musically stronger meat. These four songs are an ideal vehicle for Finley’s histrionic gifts. He gives a superb account of the first song, ‘Lullaby’ and I particularly admired the spare, concentrated atmosphere that he and Drake distil at the very start.  He invests the next song, ‘Serenade’, with a sinister legato; after all, this is Death’s serenade. The listener is left in no doubt that something rather unpleasant lurks just beneath the surface of the music.  The third song, ‘Trepak’, is a chilling melodrama and this particular performance benefits from Finley’s biting singing and from Drake’s superbly evocative pianism. Finally we hear ‘The Field Marshal’. This powerfully macabre drama is magnificently done, with Finley searingly intense. Both artists work as one to bring us a superb account of these songs.

The Rorem cycle was written for the great French baritone, Gérard Souzay and he and Dalton Baldwin first performed it in Constitution Hall, Washington D.C. in October 1969, during an American recital tour. I wonder what Souzay’s performance of these extraordinary pieces was like? I have them on an earlier recording by Donald Gramm with Eugene Istomin, which was originally released on the Desto label in 1969. My copy is a Phoenix CD (PHCD116), issued in 1991. The songs were composed in just ten days, using prose passages selected by Rorem from Walt Whitman’s Civil War diaries, published as Specimen Days in 1882. Andrew Huth’s excellent booklet note quotes from Rorem’s own diaries in which he makes clear that the songs were his protest against the Vietnam war. That is made even more explicit in the dedication of the songs, not reprinted in Huth’s note, which reads:

“To those who died in Vietnam, both sides, during the composition 20-30 June 1969”

I don’t think I know of another piece of music in which the horrors of war are more graphically described. John Adams’ The Wound Dresser taps a similar vein – he also sets words by Whitman – but his chosen text is a poem rather than prose and somehow Whitman’s poetic imagery, though vivid, is softer than his prose, precisely through versification. I found it was particularly unsettling to listen to these songs during the recent terrible events in Gaza – and in saying that I express no view as to the rights and wrongs of what has gone on there in recent weeks.

I wouldn’t wish to express a preference between the Gramm and Finley performances of the songs. It’s noticeable, however, that Finley’s reading is more spacious – he takes 15:13 for the cycle compared with Gramm’s 12:10. The difference is most marked in the first and last songs where, in both cases, Gramm takes about a minute less than Finley. I don’t think their delivery of the notes differs significantly but Finley seems inclined to make more short pauses between phrases. Both approaches seems valid to me and I think both performances are absolutely gripping.

Rorem chose a tough subject for these songs and the music is comparably tough. There’s none of the grateful lyricism that one encounters so often in his songs. As Andrew Huth puts it, the musical style is one of “heightened speech in the vocal line, with a piano part that serves as punctuation, commentary and background.” The first song, for example, is graphic and angry in tone, with a sharply dissonant accompaniment. Finley articulates the feelings of rage and futility that are all too evident in Rorem’s music. There is some lyricism in the second song, which tells of a young, dying soldier in his hospital bed but the lyricism is poignant and troubled. I cannot bring myself to write about the third song, ‘An Incident’, which contains one of the most horrifying descriptions of physical injury that can ever have been set to music. What Whitman lays bare here is the horror and brutality of war in the nineteenth century, even before all the technological “advances” of the twentieth century made things even worse.

These songs make very uncomfortable listening indeed and Gerald Finley’s vivid, dramatic performance, shot through with evident passionate sincerity, certainly does not give his listeners an easy ride.

After such a serious recital the audience deserved a lightening of the mood and Finley and Drake provide it with three well-chosen encores – about which the singer himself provides neat little notes in the booklet. The two Ives miniatures are a delight; the gentle sentimentality of the second one is beautifully judged. Rautavaara’s Shakespeare setting is an interesting novelty and the final item by Wolseley Charles, written for the inimitable Stanley Holloway, sends everyone away smiling, thanks to Finley’s infectious narration.

This is an exceptionally fine recital and I’m delighted that it’s been preserved on disc for us to enjoy over and over again.

 

Die Welt, 17 February 2009

Translated by Petra Habeth

http://www.welt.de/welt_print/article3217639/Klassische-Lieder-fuer-Liebende.html


New cds - classical songs for lovers


To the group of opera singers who very seldom appear at German opera houses sadly belongs the fabulous baritone Gerald Finley, who is with his captivating voice a wonder of adaptation. In his recorded recital at Wigmore Hall he opposes the conventional combination of two Russians, Tchaikovsky with Mussorgsky’s Songs and Dances of death, to Ned Rorem's War Scenes. As a story-telling singer, captivatingly soft-voiced and with flexible phrasing, Finley draws the connection to the American.

Judith Malafronte, Opera News, July  2009 , vol 74 , no.1

Wigmore Hall's CD series of live concerts continues with the October 2007 recital of Gerald Finley and Julius Drake. The Canadian bass-baritone, Doctor Atomic to you and me, presents a group of Tchaikovsky songs, the Mussorgsky cycle Songs and Dances of Death (misprinted on the back of both booklet and disc) and Ned Rorem's War Scenes, all powerful pieces that show off Finley's robust, bronze-hued sound, impeccable diction and musical confidence.

Finley leaps into the opening "Don Juan's Serenade" with vigor and firm focus (and a solid high F-sharp) that are perfectly suited to the swagger and seductiveness of the poet's entreaty — effectively a command — that Niseta come out on her balcony. Other songs, such as "It was in early spring" and "The mild stars shone for us," let Finley reveal intimate and controlled phrasing, and the famous Goethe setting "Only one who knows longing" (or "None but the lonely heart") is understated and deliberate, until a sudden snarl erupts from the surface. "By day or by night" and "As over burning embers" are fierce and intense in their sweeping drive and open-throated lyricism, but in both songs Tchaikovsky's long piano postludes dilute the power, in spite of Julius Drake's excellent collaborative skills.


Mussorgsky's four songs, with their folk-influenced style, have been treated to more extroverted and theatrical interpretations, but Finley's is a worthy presentation, if a bit lacking in color variety. The final song, "The Field Marshal," sets up a wartime psychology that leads inevitably into the next set.


Rorem's 1969 cycle is the high point of the recital, not only because Finley's English diction is so effective in its naturalness and immediacy but because his slightly detached presentation perfectly mirrors the excerpts from Walt Whitman's Civil War diaries (from Specimen Days, published in 1882) that serve as the songs' texts. Rorem's opposition to the Vietnam War led him to both the philosophical and the grittily descriptive portions of Whitman's work, and he lets the prose guide the musical narrative. Important lines are often set unaccompanied, such as the outraged opening words, "What scene is this? — is this indeed humanity — these butchers' shambles?" or the determined and pointed "Future years will never know the seething hell of countless minor scenes." One of these minor but deeply affecting scenes is described in "An Incident," where Finley captures the constraints of Rorem's repetitive melody, depicting the helpless, slowly dying soldier whose heel obsessively claws a furrow in the dirt.


As encores, Charles Ives's "Memories" (A) and (B), a setting of Shakespeare's "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day," by Rautavaara, and Wolseley Charles's lighthearted "Green-Eyed Dragon" show even more of Finley's dynamic range and theatrical verve.