Fans of the great Polish contralto/mezzo Ewa Podles should race to get this CD. Her voice is remarkable: dark, rich, huge, multifaceted in its expressivity, capable of caressing a phrase or booming in an almost baritonal way–and always in the service of the music. She (with Garrick Ohlsson) has recorded all the Chopin songs wonderfully before (Arabesque); here, in live performance, there are only five, but they’re performed more urgently. The down-to-earth-ness of “Lithuanian Song” is as noteworthy as the naiveté of “Girl’s Desire” and the sheer warmth of “My Sweetheart.”
The five songs are followed by Mussorgsky’s Songs and Dances of Death–a positively terrifying performance. The Lullaby alternates lolling and manic, from ppp to fff; Serenade comes to a spine-chilling conclusion, the Russian Dance is intensely cruel and the weird Field Marshall can make the skin crawl–Podles lets out a low G that would make Boris Christoff envious. There is some overstatement here and there, but what’s wrong with an operatic treatment of songs in which the main character is Death?
Ohlsson plays the Scriabin Études handsomely as an interesting interlude, and Podles returns for six songs by Rachmaninov ranging from the passionate piety of “Christ is Risen” to the sensitivity of “In the silence of the night” to the lush “Spring Streams,” with its staggering high B-flat. Throughout, Ohlsson is considerate and plays simply beautifully; the voice-piano balance is fine. A treat for fans of Podles or this repertoire.
