2009 Gramophone Awards

Winner of Best Solo Vocal Album category

Schumann: Dichterliebe & other Heine settings (CD)

Gramophone magazine, November 2009

Gerald Finley might well be considering moving into the Dorchester Hotel’s ballroom, so often does he mount its stage to pick up his latest Gramophone Award! This is a bass-baritone at the height of his powers, fully inhabiting whatever repertoire he happens to be exploring. Richard Wigmore reviewed Finley’s disc of Dichterliebe and assorted other Heine settings last November: “One of the most beautifully sung and intensely experienced performances on disc of Schumann’s cycle of rapture, disillusion and tender regret,” he wrote, going on to praise it in terms as glowing as the recording itself.

Interview Gerald Finley

Julius Drake and I have a wonderful partnership and hold similar views about Dichterliebe. I’ve known the work since I was a very young singer. It was my first song-cycle ever; I performed it for my farewell to Ottawa at 19! It’s all about raw emotions, so a young singer feels an immediate affinity. But all these years later, I felt I could bring a perspective on those emotions that now have a depth of colour and experience. Also, Julius and I both wanted to explore the silences in Dichterliebe; its clarity is in rhythm and melody and silence. Nikolaus Harnoncourt once taught me that silence in music, especially Schumann, is almost as powerful as the notes. And just as there is rubato in music, we can find rubato in the silence – a punctuation for what has gone previously but also contemplation for what can then be, not least for Schumann himself. There’s a breath-catching, an anticipation. So we stretched and explored and experimented with that.