Recital
Chan Centre for the Performing Arts, University of British Columbia, Vancouver
Thursday 6 May 2010 8:00 pm
Gerald Finley (bass-baritone)
Julius Drake (piano)
“Vocal recitals don’t get better than this.” Globe & Mail
Programme
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
Encores
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
Louis Emmanuel: The Desert
“To hear Gerald Finley live with Julius Drake at the piano is an experience to cherish for a lifetime. He is in great demand in opera and recitals around the world. How lucky we are that he is returning to Vancouver for us, so soon after his “knock-out” Vancouver recital debut at the Chan Centre two years ago.”
Click here for an article in the Vancouver Sun
What the critics say
David Gordon Duke, Vancouver Sun, 7 May 2010
Music review: Singer Gerald Finley, pianist Julius Drake shine in international classical recital
Singers of bass-baritone Gerald Finley’s stature have great intrinsic appeal, but the classical song recital is an exacting process.
Thursday’s recital by Finley with pianist Julius Drake of songs by German, French and American composers was a case in point: intellectually demanding but inordinately rewarding, the complicated compact between poet and composer, singer and pianist played out in all its potential glory.
The duo began with Romantic-era songs by Robert Schumann on texts of Heinrich Heine. Finley chose to create two extended sets — do-it-yourself song cycles, as it were — grouping Heine settings from various opuses. An initial group of six offered plenty of drama centred around the inner world of the poet, revealed by extraordinary musical insight.
A second set of four songs required more overt storytelling, not so much pocket opera as theatrical soliloquies.
Finley’s incandescent sound remained focused and concentrated even at the softest dynamic levels; Drake exhibited a big technique and ideas to spare. In tandem they create lieder that is evocative and deeply nuanced. In the service of Heine’s powerful words and sly ironies plus Schumann’s febrile, intense musical vision, their effect is devastating.
The second half began with Maurice Ravel’s 1906 Histories naturelles, five songs of the most exquisite artifice delivered with knowing artistry. Here was a textbook example of how Ravel’s songs can and should sound: glittering with sophistication and wit, polished to the highest lustre and presented with self-assured elan.
Songs by Americans rounded out the evening. Four of the highly idiosyncratic works of Charles Ives ended the program. Ives was nothing if not eclectic, and we heard his take on Victorian-era hymn tunes, Irish ballad styles and, in Charlie Rutledge, the astonishing meeting of lieder and cowboy tale — delivered with a twang that would do Corb Lund proud. Great fun, but eclipsed by an earlier set of four songs by Samuel Barber, wonderful settings of texts by James Stephens and James Joyce (a passage from Ulysses!), and concluding with the sad, edgy, impeccable realization of Frederic Prokosch’s love song for grown-ups, Nocturne.
Elissa Poole, Globe and Mail, 7 May 2010
Gerard[sic] Finley: as good as singing gets
Baritone Gerald Finley is one of this country’s greatest artists, and we don’t see enough of him. An Ottawa native who has long lived in England, Finley has won multiple Gramophone and Juno awards for his recordings of recital repertoire. He has premiered lead roles in operas by Tobias Picker, John Adams, Mark-Anthony Turnage and Kaija Saariaho. His performances in operas by Debussy, Mozart and Benjamin Britten have been acclaimed on opera stages around the world. And as a song recitalist, Finley is in a class of his own.
Lieder recitals can be serious, near-sacrosanct affairs. The audience pores over translations of texts; singer and pianist present each song with jewel-like polish. We are often a long way from the intimate salon performances where much of this music was originally sung, and, because we often can’t understand the words – even when the songs are in English – the experience can seem highly aestheticized and somewhat remote.
Finley and his marvellous pianist, Julius Drake, brought it back to earth. They opened with a series of songs by Robert Schumann set to poetry by Heinrich Heine, and for the duration of each song we were held like children spellbound in the hands of a master storyteller. But there was just as much intimacy and transparency in songs by Ravel, Samuel Barber and Ives: Tales spun out of star-crossed lovers, duelling brothers, arrogant, blasphemous kings, proud peacocks and unlucky cowboys. Music, poetry, story and character were one.
Finley makes it seem so easy. His sound is clear, robust, natural and communicative, but it is not overtly voluptuous, which is to say that he does not broadcast its beauty indiscriminately. We hear each word as if it were our mother tongue (when he sings in English, there’s no need to follow the printed text). His line unwinds in a more declamatory fashion than it does in most singers, but when the text calls for beauty, then that is what we hear, unmistakably. One of the first moments in which I was suddenly aware of how gorgeous Finley’s tone could be happened on the word schon – the German word for beautiful.
Many of the songs were also presented with a wry humour that acknowledged the melodrama in this music as well as the occasional cliché. The composers clearly meant to entertain us, not simply to impress musical interpretations upon us. Drake captured this aspect on the piano perfectly, delaying entrances, setting scenes, and responding to the vocal lines, while Finley sang each song discreetly in character, with modest gestures, an actor’s timing and an inimitable sense of expressive nuance. Vocal recitals don’t get better than this.
Lloyd Dykk, Straight.com, 7 May 2010
Canadian baritone Gerald Finley unforgettable at the Chan Centre
The Canadian baritone Gerald Finley is taking the world by storm and he recently got a rave from the New Yorker. That was no surprise to those who’ve heard him sing here before. He returned to the Chan Centre for the Vancouver Recital Society with an unforgettable program that began with an entire first half devoted to Robert Schumann.
Schumann’s connection to song was greatly influenced by his youthful literary background. This, plus the fact that his original plans were to be a pianist and not a composer, made him almost unparalleled at word-setting. He was extraordinarily generous to the piano and had the gift of containing a world of emotion within just a few bars.
Finley’s 10 selections concentrated on the year 1840, at the end of which Clara Wieck became Schumann’s wife. It was an astonishingly productive year of songwriting, and many of the German composer’s lyrical outpourings have an irresistible combination of warmth and impulsiveness. His greatest collaboration was with the poet Heinrich Heine, whose terseness Schumann countered with music of expansive expression—more proof that there is a powerful dynamic in the play of opposites.
Urgency and a transfixing ardour gripped Finley but never shook him off-pitch in what was a captivating recital with tonal fullness from the bottom to the top. His word colouring and suspenseful mezza-voce shadings were extraordinary, giving the long narrative song called “Belsazar” the eerie fascination of a campfire tale.
But I was especially taken by his delicious performance of Maurice Ravel’s Histoires Naturelles, immensely witty philosophizing on text by Jules Renard, his diction, colouring, timing, and tonal nuancing absolutely on point.
The last set was in English: four songs by the American Samuel Barber and four by the great American original, Charles Ives, an insurance salesman who wrote music in his spare time and also independently anticipated revolutionary techniques before most Europeans had any idea. Only one choice was radical—Ives’s “Charlie Rutledge”—and it was thrilling, with real Yankee dialect.
A big mention for Finley’s pianist, Julius Drake, who’s accompanied many great singers including Olaf Bär and Ian Bostridge. In fact the word “accompanist” doesn’t begin to describe it. He had as much to do with the effect of this recital as Finley did.