Recital
Spivey Hall, Clayton State University, Atlanta
Sunday, 14 March 2010, 3:00pm
Gerald Finley (bass-baritone)
Julius Drake (piano)
Gerry at Spivey Hall, courtesy of www.juliusdrake.com
Robert Schumann: Heine settings
I
Tragödie I, II Op. 64 No.3
Der arme Peter I, II, III Op. 53. No. 3
II
Lehn’ deine Wang’ Op.142 No. 2
Es leuchtet meine Liebe Op.127 No.3
Dein Angesicht Op.127 No. 2
Mein Wagen rollet langsam Op.142 No. 4
III
Belsazar Op. 57
Die feindlichen Brüder Op. 49 No. 2
Abends am Strand Op. 49 No. 3
Die beiden Grenadiere Op. 49 No. 1
Interval
Maurice Ravel: Histoires naturelles
Le Paon
Le Grillon
Le Cygne
Le Martin-pêcheur
Le Pintade
Samuel Barber: Four Songs
The Daisies
Solitary Hotel
Bessie Bobtail
Nocturne
Charles Ives: Four Songs
West London
In the Alley
Charlie Rutledge
Slugging a Vampire
Encores
Maurice Ravel: Chanson à boire ‘Foin du bâtard, illustre Dame’ from Don Quichotte à Dulcinée
Wolseley Charles: Green Eyed Dragon with the 13 tails
Maurice Ravel: Chanson écossaise ‘Ye banks and braes o’ bonnie Doon’
Clayton State University’s Dr Kurt-Alexander Zeller gave the pre-concert talk
What the critics say
Pere Ruhe, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 15 March 2010
Finley delivers charming, sensitive performance in Spivey debut
Finley’s rich baritone weaves complex, emotional tales
Canadian baritone Gerald Finley, who sang Sunday afternoon at Spivey Hall, has a deepening relationship with Atlanta. Earlier this season he joined the Atlanta Symphony Chorus for the Brahms Requiem with the Berlin Philharmonic in Germany. Two years ago, in Symphony Hall, he played the lead in John Adams’ “Doctor Atomic.” His singing of its most memorable aria, “Batter My Heart,” has come to define the richness and power of contemporary American opera.
Working with pianist Julius Drake, Finley’s Spivey debut was a literary and spiritual experience. They opened with 10 songs by Robert Schumann to poetry by Heinrich Heine, songs from the emotionally turbulent Romantic era on love unrequited and lost, on dreams and nightmares, on Gothic visions of nature pure and menacing.
In the opening phrases of “Es leuchtet meine Liebe” — “The Gleam of My Love/in its dark splendor” — the baritone and pianist instantly created a creepy, tender, tempestuous mood. With deep rumbles from the piano, Finley shaped and caressed every syllable and built a lovely musical line from the fundamentals of text and tone.
Indeed, it’s what Finley is famous for. Previewing his recital later this week at Carnegie Hall — Spivey was his warm-up — the New Yorker magazine compared Finley to “the greatest singers, from Callas to Sinatra, [who] make words and music indivisible; even as the voice envelopes you, the lyric is etched into your mind.”
After Schumann’s self-absorbed and overheated inner world, they moved to the cooler Oriental climes of Ravel’s “Histoires naturelles” — serene, cultured songs on the natural world that are as much silence and atmosphere as narrative storytelling.
With the exceptionally sensitive and expressive Drake framing Ravel’s exotic harmonies, Finley brought an understated and sometimes comic sensibility to these songs. In “Le Paon,” a lightly mocking tale of a peacock awaiting his bride, the baritone took on a variety of inscrutable animal voices. The audience laughed when he mewed like a haughty French cat, but Finley played it all so earnestly it was impossible not to be at once charmed and puzzled.
The remainder of the program was sung in English, which Finley articulated as well as he does German and French. Four neurotic songs by Samuel Barber brought out the core melancholy and anxiety in his voice where even an apple-cheeked song like “The Daisies” had a dark undercurrent.
A set by Charles Ives included “Charlie Rutlage,” about a cowboy killed by his horse, and was delivered in a cartoonish Texas twang that was, nevertheless, loaded with grief and foreboding. It was Finley the storyteller at his most potent.