Aside from his extensive work in opera and oratorio, over the last decade baritone Gerald Finley has put together an impressive collection of recordings of 20th-century song, including complete programs dedicated to works by composers such as Ives, Britten, Ravel, and Barber. This new one, which ranks among his best work so far, appears to be his first foray into Shostakovich.
I and others have described the qualities of Finley’s voice as “golden”, “rich”, a “true baritone with plenty of ring and depth”, and “warmly resonant”. While all of those attributes are present here, in Shostakovich’s settings of these English and Italian poems–all of which he originally set in Russian translations–we get a chance to hear a darker and sometimes surprisingly deeper aspect of Finley’s tone (evident from his first utterance in the first song–“Sir Walter Raleigh to His Sonne”) that we really haven’t heard from him before in his song repertoire. Indeed, Shostakovich conceived these pieces for bass voice and piano, which probably explains why for this recording someone felt the need to change Finley’s usual baritone designation to bass-baritone.
Whatever the designation, Finley applies his consummate technical facility and unfailing interpretive instincts to elucidate each text in its special musical context–which in most cases ranks many degrees darker than anything in, say, Schubert’s Winterreise, and is more profoundly demanding of dramatic expression than most solo-song works. And yet this tonal/timbral extension is neither forced nor artificial: Finley inhabits these songs completely and confidently, captivating and sometimes unnerving us with his affinity for the particulars of sound and language. The sound world is Shostakovich’s–all of these works are his own settings for full orchestra of the original voice/piano versions–but here the Romances and Suite are performed in the language of the original poetry: English and Italian.
Shostakovich wrote the Six Romances while residing–or perhaps “biding his time” is a better word–in the city of Kuybïshev (now known as Samara) in the very grim days of 1942; he, along with many other cultural luminaries, diplomats, and government officials ended up in this provisional capital of the Soviet Union on the Volga during the early years of the Second World War. In October 1941, in the middle of working on his Seventh symphony, the composer was forced to evacuate Leningrad (St. Petersburg), leaving behind his mother, sister, and nephew. Having to make do in a freezing apartment in Kuybïshev, he prepared for the eventual premiere of the symphony in that city while continuing his efforts to ensure the safety of his family, who eventually joined him from the besieged Leningrad. (For an unforgettably vivid, powerful, profoundly human–and did I say unforgettable?–portrayal of this time and place, including life in Kuybïshev, Stalingrad, and Moscow during the Second World War and beyond, Vasily Grossman’s epic Russian novel Life and Fate is required reading.)
Shostakovich began his Six Romances with “Sir Walter Raleigh to His Sonne” in May 1942, expanded several months later on a trip to Moscow by three Robert Burns verses (in Russian translations by Samuil Marshak), and by November of that year added two more–Shakespeare’s Sonnet 66 and an English children’s folksong–to complete the set. Shortly thereafter he made a version for full orchestra (Op. 62a), which was lost for decades–the one we hear on this program–and much later (in the early 1970s) another version for chamber orchestra (Op. 140, until now the one heard on all available recordings). The impact of this full-orchestra setting is profound–and should be the preferred one from now on; the recording’s producers claim this to be its world-premiere, and although suggestions to the contrary are out there, they are not supported by any evidence in today’s catalog.
There’s also a puzzling vagueness regarding the provenance of the English-text setting–apparently it was provided by conductor Thomas Sanderling, but no direct credit is given, nor is it possible to find a definitive reference to it in any of the readily available sources on Shostakovich’s music. The fact is, it works very well–poetic inflection and natural word emphasis fit perfectly into the music–and for English speakers this makes listening to these works even more impressive and meaningful, the darkness more forbidding, the tragic aspects more telling, the brief satirical humor in “The King’s Campaign” more poignant. We also get a nice treat in between the two larger works–Shostakovich’s 1944 setting of the Scottish ballad Annie Laurie–also a world-premiere recording, beautifully and simply rendered by Finley.
The Suite on Poems by Michelangelo Buonarroti was among Shostakovich’s very last compositions, completed in mid-1974 and orchestrated at the end of that year. From a book of Michelangelo’s poetry the composer selected eight sonnets and three poems for their “lyricism, tragedy, and drama.” And there is no shortage of all three throughout these intensely-felt songs. Finley and others spent enormous amounts of time and effort to re-set Shostakovich’s music to Michelangelo’s original Italian texts–a detailed account of this struggle appears in the liner notes. The process was hindered by the inability to truly discern what the original texts were–these poems have been “worked over” by many hands over the centuries–and the new words necessitated making some small changes, both rhythmic and melodic, to Shostakovich’s music.
I can’t say that the result was worth it: plugging Italian words into this music only makes you aware of how profoundly, soulfully bound these settings are to the Russian language that Shostakovich heard as he conceived his original version. Finley may be singing Italian, but the very sound cannot escape its Russian roots. The Italian works best in the fourth song, “Distacco” (Separation), but it’s uncannily unidiomatic in others, such as No. 7 “All’Esule” (To the Exile) and No. 11 “Immortalità”. But don’t worry: this Russian-Italian “effect” takes nothing away from the overall power of the performances. This is some of the most deeply personal and strongly affecting music in the vocal/orchestral repertoire, and we couldn’t have a more skilled singer or more authoritative conductor to bring out its drama, its nuances, its humanness. This is one of those recordings that affirms its value not only by presenting something truly new and important from something familiar, but by doing it in such a way that it invites you to listen and then compels you to come back, not for a voice, or a tune, or a message, but to be moved by the whole experience of a great performance of timeless music.
