Among which the nicest thing was that
we ran into bass-baritone Gerald Finley
Gerald Finley, bass-baritone; London Symphony Chorus and Orchestra. LSO Live, recorded live in the Barbican, Apr. 29-30, 2005
by Ken
So there we were ("Decoration Day greetings -- with 'old New England'-style memories provided for us by Charles Ives"), making typically (for this operation) unsteady one-step-forward, several-steps sideways progress toward Schumann's Humoreske, the final step in our Radu Lupu remembrance ("We're still targeting Radu Lupu's Schumann Humoreske, but first we're going to detour . . ."). Really, could we let another Decoration Day (probably better known lo this past half-century as Memorial Day) pass without taking note of Charles Ives's holiday musical reminiscence? From which it seemed only natural once and for all to retrace and then complete our circuit of the four remembrance pieces that make up Ives's Holidays Symphony.
It was while I was laboring on that detour down Ives alley that things started going haywire, with one thing leading to another and then another, until by happy chance we were arranging to hear first one and then two Ives songs sung by Canada's Gerald Finley, from the 61 he's recorded on his not one but two Ives song CDs. A fresh encounter with Gerald F seemed an altogether pleasanter prospect than the piling-up Ives craziness, or for that matter the hard-to-penetrate Schumann-piano perplex.
While Sunday Classics can hardly claim Gerald F as an "old friend" of Sunday Classics, we have heard him in some choice musical situations. For example, back when we were remembering conductor Bernard Haitink, and dipped into his 1980 and 2005 live recordings of the Beethoven Ninth Symphony, Gerald F was the 2005 bass soloist, and so we've already heard the magical moment I've pulled out above: when the symphony discovered that it could sing!
WE HEARD GERALD F. IN ANOTHER COLLEGIAL SETTING
It was when we were beholding Benjamin Britten's War Requiem, in which the great pacifist composer enmeshed into sections of the Requiem settings of poems by Wilfred Owen (1893-1918). What we heard was the Offertorium, in which Britten nestled what is for me the most disturbing of the Owen poems, the variant retelling of the "Abraham and Isaac" story -- told jointly by the tenor and baritone soloists (as, essentially, father and son, then together as the Angel) -- where the story not only reaches a more grimly logical conclusion than the already-shocking Biblical version but makes a single-bounded leap into the slaughterfields of World War I, from which, as we know too distressingly, Owen himself didn't return alive.
And I thought, as long as we're already revisiting the Offertorium of the War Requiem, written for the May 1962 dedication of the new Coventry Cathedral finally completed as replacement for the cathedral bombed out during World War II -- well, I thought we might as well rehear as well the composer's own studio recording, made the following January with the original soloists. (In our excerpt we're missing only soprano Galina Vishnevskaya.)
BRITTEN: War Requiem:
Offertorium
Gerald Finley, bass-baritone; Anthony Dean Griffey, tenor; Tiffin Boys' Choir, London Philharmonic Choir and Orchestra, Kurt Masur, cond. LPO, recorded live in the Royal Festival Hall, May 8, 2005
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, baritone; Peter Pears, tenor; Highgate School Choir, Bach Choir, London Symphony Orchestra Chorus, Melos Ensemble, London Symphony Orchestra, Benjamin Britten, cond. Decca, recorded in Kingsway Hall, Jan. 3-10, 1963
THEN THERE WAS A MOMENT I COULDN'T DELIVER ON
With longtime piano partner Julius Drake driving the tale onward, Gerald F knocks out Schubert's "Erlkönig" at the Library of Congress, April 2018. (Yes, yes, we're going to hear it, in just a moment.)
Back during the lockdown period of the pandemic, I reported on one of the specially created-for-streaming programs offered by the Berlin Philharmonic's Digital Concert Hall (free back then!): a May 2020 Evening in Vienna (now by subscription) in which chamber performances newly recorded in Berlin's darkened Philharmonie framed archival performances of orchestral versions of three Viennese super-songs: two Schubert Goethe settings, "Gretchen am Spinnrade, sung by Christianne Stotijn with Claudio Abbado conducting, and "Erlkönig," sung really rousingly by our Gerald with Daniel Harding conducting; and Wolf's, er, kind of creepy-crazy (or is it crazy-creepy? I go back and forth) epic fire-fest Mörike setting "Der Feuerreiter" ("The Fire Rider"), sung by Christian Gerhaher (if "sung" is the right word for the popular baritone's signature vocal mode, which usually sounds to me more like vocal sound effects) with Iván Fischer conducting.
We heard all three songs, but alas, I didn't have any of the Berlin performers available for presentation -- or even, as I recall, ready-at-hand orchestral versions of all songs. So we had to make do. Now, however, I thought we might hear (piano-accompanied) versions of both of the male songs -- by Gerald F!
We start with "Erlkönig," of which there is indeed a studio recording -- naturally, with his usual piano partner, Julius Drake. But we're going to hear a live performance from an April 2018 Library of Congress recital that, thanks to the LoC, we can watch in its entirety, either as an LoC webcast or on YouTube. ("Erlkönig" is at 39:30, but it isn't necessary to remember this -- the whole program is indexed onsite(s).)
SCHUBERT: "Erlkönig" ("Erl-King"), D. 328d
Gerald Finley, bass-baritone; Julius Drake, piano. Live performance from the Library of Congress, Apr. 25, 2018
And, finally, the freakish tale of Mörike and Wolf's fire-fiend.
WOLF: Mörike-Lieder: "Der Feuerreiter" ("The Fire-Rider")
Gerald Finley, bass-baritone; Julius Drake, piano. Hyperion, from the CD The Ballad Singer, recorded in All Saints Durham Road, East Finchley, London, Feb. 1-3, 2010
STILL IN THE WORKS:
• We plow into a speed bump lumbering down Ives alley
(with featured soloist Gerald Finley!)
• We make our way back, finally, to Schumann's Humoreske, and ponder what works and what doesn't, and try to figure why
we ran into bass-baritone Gerald Finley
In recital at New York City's Alice Tully Hall, 2012
[photo by Richard Termine/New York Times]
Gerald Finley, bass-baritone; London Symphony Chorus and Orchestra. LSO Live, recorded live in the Barbican, Apr. 29-30, 2005
by Ken
So there we were ("Decoration Day greetings -- with 'old New England'-style memories provided for us by Charles Ives"), making typically (for this operation) unsteady one-step-forward, several-steps sideways progress toward Schumann's Humoreske, the final step in our Radu Lupu remembrance ("We're still targeting Radu Lupu's Schumann Humoreske, but first we're going to detour . . ."). Really, could we let another Decoration Day (probably better known lo this past half-century as Memorial Day) pass without taking note of Charles Ives's holiday musical reminiscence? From which it seemed only natural once and for all to retrace and then complete our circuit of the four remembrance pieces that make up Ives's Holidays Symphony.
It was while I was laboring on that detour down Ives alley that things started going haywire, with one thing leading to another and then another, until by happy chance we were arranging to hear first one and then two Ives songs sung by Canada's Gerald Finley, from the 61 he's recorded on his not one but two Ives song CDs. A fresh encounter with Gerald F seemed an altogether pleasanter prospect than the piling-up Ives craziness, or for that matter the hard-to-penetrate Schumann-piano perplex.
While Sunday Classics can hardly claim Gerald F as an "old friend" of Sunday Classics, we have heard him in some choice musical situations. For example, back when we were remembering conductor Bernard Haitink, and dipped into his 1980 and 2005 live recordings of the Beethoven Ninth Symphony, Gerald F was the 2005 bass soloist, and so we've already heard the magical moment I've pulled out above: when the symphony discovered that it could sing!
WE HEARD GERALD F. IN ANOTHER COLLEGIAL SETTING
And I thought, as long as we're already revisiting the Offertorium of the War Requiem, written for the May 1962 dedication of the new Coventry Cathedral finally completed as replacement for the cathedral bombed out during World War II -- well, I thought we might as well rehear as well the composer's own studio recording, made the following January with the original soloists. (In our excerpt we're missing only soprano Galina Vishnevskaya.)
BRITTEN: War Requiem:
Offertorium
Gerald Finley, bass-baritone; Anthony Dean Griffey, tenor; Tiffin Boys' Choir, London Philharmonic Choir and Orchestra, Kurt Masur, cond. LPO, recorded live in the Royal Festival Hall, May 8, 2005
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, baritone; Peter Pears, tenor; Highgate School Choir, Bach Choir, London Symphony Orchestra Chorus, Melos Ensemble, London Symphony Orchestra, Benjamin Britten, cond. Decca, recorded in Kingsway Hall, Jan. 3-10, 1963
THEN THERE WAS A MOMENT I COULDN'T DELIVER ON
Back during the lockdown period of the pandemic, I reported on one of the specially created-for-streaming programs offered by the Berlin Philharmonic's Digital Concert Hall (free back then!): a May 2020 Evening in Vienna (now by subscription) in which chamber performances newly recorded in Berlin's darkened Philharmonie framed archival performances of orchestral versions of three Viennese super-songs: two Schubert Goethe settings, "Gretchen am Spinnrade, sung by Christianne Stotijn with Claudio Abbado conducting, and "Erlkönig," sung really rousingly by our Gerald with Daniel Harding conducting; and Wolf's, er, kind of creepy-crazy (or is it crazy-creepy? I go back and forth) epic fire-fest Mörike setting "Der Feuerreiter" ("The Fire Rider"), sung by Christian Gerhaher (if "sung" is the right word for the popular baritone's signature vocal mode, which usually sounds to me more like vocal sound effects) with Iván Fischer conducting.
We heard all three songs, but alas, I didn't have any of the Berlin performers available for presentation -- or even, as I recall, ready-at-hand orchestral versions of all songs. So we had to make do. Now, however, I thought we might hear (piano-accompanied) versions of both of the male songs -- by Gerald F!
We start with "Erlkönig," of which there is indeed a studio recording -- naturally, with his usual piano partner, Julius Drake. But we're going to hear a live performance from an April 2018 Library of Congress recital that, thanks to the LoC, we can watch in its entirety, either as an LoC webcast or on YouTube. ("Erlkönig" is at 39:30, but it isn't necessary to remember this -- the whole program is indexed onsite(s).)
SCHUBERT: "Erlkönig" ("Erl-King"), D. 328d
Gerald Finley, bass-baritone; Julius Drake, piano. Live performance from the Library of Congress, Apr. 25, 2018
And, finally, the freakish tale of Mörike and Wolf's fire-fiend.
WOLF: Mörike-Lieder: "Der Feuerreiter" ("The Fire-Rider")
Gerald Finley, bass-baritone; Julius Drake, piano. Hyperion, from the CD The Ballad Singer, recorded in All Saints Durham Road, East Finchley, London, Feb. 1-3, 2010
STILL IN THE WORKS:
• We plow into a speed bump lumbering down Ives alley
(with featured soloist Gerald Finley!)
• We make our way back, finally, to Schumann's Humoreske, and ponder what works and what doesn't, and try to figure why
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Great post Ken! Joc
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