Barbara Bonney is a singer whose work is defined by exceptional grace and intelligence, and one important sign of these characteristics (missing from so many other vocalists) is choosing repertoire not simply because you’d like to sing it but because you also can sing it. And although the songs she performs here are neither among the more popular of the genre nor free of substantial technical demands, she certainly can sing them! The group of Liszt songs shows Bonney at her interpretive best, beginning with the opening “Oh! quand je dors”, its dreamy, undulating accompaniment perfectly coloring the singer’s reverie, described in dramatic, lyrical solo lines. “Enfant, si j’étais roi” shows a more emphatic style, both in the vocal and piano parts, that Bonney and her excellent accompanist Antonio Pappano deliver with requisite confidence and character. Of course, one of the complaints about Liszt’s songwriting is that he often let the piano accompaniments get away from him–and thus it’s easy for the pianist to overwhelm the singer, as in the previously-mentioned “Enfant, si j’étais roi”. That doesn’t happen here as Pappano regulates the often thick-textured, big-voiced accompaniments as needed to serve the song. “Der Fischerknabe” is a highlight of the program, with its gentle, delicately shaded piano-playing and Bonney’s sensitive, subtley-nuanced singing (and an exquisite final high note!).
The second half of the disc is devoted to the predominantly male territory of Schumann’s Dichterliebe, a set of songs to texts by Heinrich Heine that the composer wrote in 1840 in a bursting, creatively romantic expression of desire and longing for his love, Clara. As Bonney explains in the notes, these are songs she had to sing (“I was always very jealous of all those tenors and baritones who sang it. . .”), but along with that contradiction of custom she offers a different interpretive perspective–imagining she was the woman to whom the poems were addressed and “retelling the story of the man who had loved her. . .” Although in most cases the results are just exemplary soprano versions of pieces normally heard in lower registers and different timbres, this approach gives an unusual cast to several of the songs, including the example Bonney describes in the notes, “Ich grolle nicht” (I’m not going to complain), which she performs with a regretful, heartfelt sadness instead of the usual defiance. No matter how you feel about those kinds of decisions, you have to agree that Bonney sings these songs with great spirit and energy and pours every ounce of her vocal charisma into bringing the texts to life, again proving the wisdom of her unconventional choice of repertoire. The sound is a little dry, giving a bit of a hard edge to the treble register of the piano and the upper range of Bonney’s voice. Nevertheless, this is a worthy release that every vocal fan looking to venture off the beaten path should hear.
