Wigmore Hall, London

2 October 2000

Gerald Finley
Julius Drake

Carl Loewe:
Erlkönig Op. 1 No. 3
Die wandelnde Glocke Op. 20 No. 3
Der Papagei Op. 111

Hugo Wolf:
Fußreise
An die Geliebte
Mausfallensprüchlein
Der Feuerreiter

Mark Anthony Turnage: Three Songs
The Singing Cat
Mourning
Last Words

Maurice Ravel: Histoires Naturelles
Le Paon
Le Orillon
Le Cygne
Le Martin-Pecheur
La Pintade

What the critics say

Andrew Clements for the Guardian, October 5, 2000

http://arts.guardian.co.uk/reviews/story/0,,702780,00.html

Rating: Four stars ****
In the premiere of Mark-Anthony Turnage’s The Silver Tassie at ENO in February, the baritone Gerald Finley sang the main role of Harry Heegan, the footballer who goes off to the first world war and returns in a wheelchair. During rehearsals for the show Finley asked Turnage if he would consider writing something for a recital programme that he was building around Ravel’s Histoires Naturelles; the result was the Three Songs that formed the centrepiece of Finley’s Radio 3 Lunchtime Concert with pianist Julius Drake at the Wigmore Hall. These were followed by the Histoires Naturelles themselves.

The Ravel songs are vivid portraits of animals; Turnage has taken up that theme in his miniature cycle, setting two poems about cats, Stevie Smith’s The Singing Cat and Thomas Hardy’s Mourning, and following them with Last Words, a section of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass in which the poet imagines that he could “turn and live with animals”. They are beautifully judged pieces – the Smith spun out over piano tracery in a way that recalls some of Britten’s late songs; the Hardy a sombre elegy; the Whitman an eloquent declaration tinged with blue notes, to which the piano adds spare yet telling punctuation.

Finley delivered them exquisitely, as totally absorbed in Turnage’s world as he had been in the opera. The rest of his recital was equally compelling. Whether in Loewe’s version of The Erl-King, or the four numbers from Wolf’s Morike Lieder, his presentation was absolutely attuned to the text and the implicit drama, while the way in which he gently, affectionately brought Ravel’s little vignettes to life was masterly. Nothing was overstated or contrived, and Drake added equally tactful support.