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Folks Songs: Magdalena Kožená/Simon Rattle (Pentatone)
★★★★☆
Most report reviewers hearken to a launch no a couple of and a half instances earlier than making up their minds. Myself, I wish to take slightly longer. When doubt lingers or expectation is unfulfilled, I’ll return to the report per week later for relistening. It doesn’t all the time resolve my qualms, and my second impression can typically be much less optimistic than the primary. However, from time to time, I’m glad I returned.
Nothing appeared so as to add up on my first encounter with Magdalena Kožená’s trawl by 4 units of people songs orchestrated by Béla Bartók, Luciano Berio, Maurice Ravel and the Spaniard Xavier Montsalvage. The Hungarian set was an prompt stumbling block. Orchestrated in 1933, at a low level in Bartók’s life and world, Kožená appeared to easy over astringencies within the rating and a harshness to the textual content. The Czech Philharmonic, performed by her husband, sounded atypically tentative. Second time spherical, I had extra tolerance for her relative sentimentality. Musical interpretation doesn’t all the time have to accommodate a ghost of the composer’s historical past.
Berio’s set of American, Armenian, French, Italian and Azeri folks songs was assembled for his spouse, Cathy Berberian, an American-Armenian with astonishing vocal versatility. Kožená tamps down the voltage and performs hide-and-seek with the orchestra, her playfulness countermanding Berberian’s missionary zeal. A few of the instrumental solos are filigree.
Ravel’s Greek melodies are dispatched with panache; they can not absolutely be this straightforward to sing. Within the Montsalvatge set, Kožená goes Carmen within the Caribbean. Second time spherical, this album seems to be greater than the sum of its components. The disparate cultures on show yield hope that we could be one humanity, in spite of everything. Kožená is a conviction singer, and I emerged virtually completely satisfied.
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Norman Lebrecht is without doubt one of the most widely-read commentators on music, tradition and cultural politics. He’s an everyday presenter on BBC Radio 3 and a contributor to the Wall Avenue Journal, Bloomberg, Standpoint, Sinfini and different publications. His weblog, Slipped Disc, is among the many most generally learn cultural websites on-line, breaking unique tales and campaigning towards human abuse and acts of injustice within the cultural industries.
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