Maurice Ravel: Histoires naturelles / Ronsard à son âme / Don Quichotte à Dulcinée / Un grand sommeil noir / Les grands vents venus d’outremer / Sur l’herbe / Chants populaires / Noël des jouets / Deux épigrammes de Clément Marot / Cinq mélodies populaires grecques / Deux mélodies hébraïques
Gramophone Editor's Choice - August 2009
Canadian baritone Gerald Finley continues his strong recorded legacy with a new disc of Ravel songs. There may not be a more prolific Canadian recording artist in the past two years than Gerald Finley. He has followed recordings of Ives, Schumann, and a DVD of Adams' 'Dr. Atomic' with this latest release. These songs are beautifully sung, especially the 'Chanson de Quichotte a Dulcinee' in which he portrays a lovesick Don Quixote. The set 'Histoires Naturelles' is a wonderful, often forgotten cycle, while the 'Cinq melodies populaires grecques' is given a new life by Finley after being a staple of the soprano repertoire. Ravel was indeed a song master in the tradition of Faure, and this disc is evidence. Julius Drake, on piano, is his usual professional self, having collaborated with Finley on many of his preceeding recordings. This is a fantastic recording of one of the great chanson composers, and also of one of the greatest baritones of our time. Finley is truly a Canadian treasure!
The award-winning partnership of Gerald Finley and Julius Drake continue their musical explorations with this beautiful and thought-provoking disc. Gerald Finley’s lustrous tones, extraordinary gift for characterisation, and direct, unaffected utterance make him an ideal and revelatory performer of Ravel’s songs.
These works, somewhat under-appreciated in the composer’s oeuvre, demonstrate the endless variety and vast emotional scope of Ravel’s musical sphere. Charming folk-song settings contrast with the almost surrealist world of Histoires naturelles, which caused outrage at its first performance. Yet this cycle contains some of Ravel’s most dreamily beautiful music: the still, crystalline ‘music of silence’ created in Le martin-pêcheur. In the words of Roger Nichols, who provides the fascinating booklet notes, ‘From the sepulchral gloom of Un grand sommeil noir to the final exclamation ‘Je bois / À la joie’ …, Ravel’s songs embrace a whole world’.
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Price: $22.98