Canadian baritone Gerald Finley was justly lauded for his earlier recital of songs by another American composer, Charles Ives (click here to read review), and here he equals and sometimes surpasses Thomas Hampson’s fine interpretations included on the 1994 DG set of complete Barber songs (with Cheryl Studer, John Browning, and the Emerson String Quartet). His warm timbre, technical facility, fluid, natural phrasing, and conscientious expression brings an easy, unforced clarity to the texts, ideally characterizing each song without distracting mannerisms or undue dramatic inflections.
Barber was a master songwriter, from his carefully chosen texts to his underrated genius for creating piano accompaniments that often are quite independent from the melody yet when combined transform both parts to a surprising and greater whole. Two of Barber’s finest songs, “The Monk and his Cat” and “With rue my heart is laden”, are good examples of this technique. In the former, even more intriguing is how the composer sets the rhythms of voice and piano against each other, as if they are performing in different meters; but a glance at the score shows the secret in the very clever (but precisely clear and remarkably easy to follow) notation.
In the two most popular of Barber’s songs—”The Daisies” and “Sure on this shining night”—it would be hard to imagine performances more purely beautiful, sensitive, and true to the music and poetry than Finley’s; on the acclaimed DG recording, Hampson’s “The Daisies” is just slightly too slow, and on Barber’s own rendition (with Leontyne Price from 1953—RCA), he plays it so fast that Price hardly is able to keep up! Cheryl Studer (DG) is just too loose with pitch and phrasing to place her “Sure on this shining night” among the better versions. My only slight reservation here concerns the balance that obscures spatial orientation between voice and string quartet in Dover Beach; otherwise, the sound is ideal.
The success of this recital is simple: allowing a beautiful voice, keen interpretive sense (on the part of both singer and pianist), and first-rate music to combine and present themselves. Well, I guess it’s not so simple, otherwise recordings such as this would come along a lot more often, and we can only be glad that the team of Finley, Drake, and Barber finally got together. [1/25/2008]
