There’s a lot of good old-fashioned vocal opulence on display here as the great Canadian contralto Maureen Forrester brings her luxurious instrument and sensitive interpretations to classics of the German Romantic lied. Her velvet-lined voice with its overtones of pathos is tailor-made for Brahms’ Four Serious Songs. She penetrates to the core of these grim meditations on death, with texts from Ecclesiastes, and does as well by Wagner’s Wesendonck Lieder, which benefit from her dramatic presence and shaping of melody as well as from John Newmark’s accompaniments.
Recorded in 1968, these big works find Forrester in excellent voice, still in her vocal prime. More surprising is the relatively unimpaired state of her instrument in the remainder of the disc, recorded at a 1981 University of Toronto concert almost 30 years after her debut recital. Her rendition of Brahms’ Viola Songs, with violist Rivka Golani, finds the voice only slightly frayed on sustained high notes. These pieces are followed by more Brahms, the Zigeunerlieder Op. 103, whose folkish cuteness is a bit too heavy-handed for my taste. Here, Forrester occasionally sounds stressed, her subtle art and no-longer-youthful voice apparently uncomfortable with the music’s primary colors. Two Brahms encores follow, the last a marvelously etched, tender Wiegenlied. Text and translations are supplied along with the wonderful singing. [7/3/2000]
