Zankel Hall, New York

Saturday 20 March 2010 at 7:30 PM

Gerald Finley (bass-baritone)
Julius Drake (piano)

This concert is part of the Great Singers II: Jula Goldwurm Pure Voice Series series.

Programme

Robert Schumann: Heine settings
I
Tragödie I, II Op. 64 No.3
Der arme Peter I, II, III Op. 53. No. 3

II
Lehn’ deine Wang’ Op.142 No. 2
Es leuchtet meine Liebe Op.127 No.3
Dein Angesicht Op.127 No. 2
Mein Wagen rollet langsam Op.142 No. 4

III
Belsazar Op. 57
Die feindlichen Brüder Op. 49 No. 2
Abends am Strand Op. 49 No. 3
Die beiden Grenadiere Op. 49 No. 1

Interval

Maurice Ravel: Histoires naturelles
Le Paon
Le Grillon
Le Cygne
Le Martin-pêcheur
Le Pintade

Samuel Barber: Four Songs
The Daisies
Solitary Hotel
Bessie Bobtail
Nocturne

Charles Ives: Four Songs
West London
In the Alley
Charlie Rutledge
Slugging a Vampire

Encores

Maurice Ravel: Chanson à boire ‘Foin du bâtard, illustre Dame’ from Don Quichotte à Dulcinée
Benjamin Britten: Bird Scarer’s song
Maurice Ravel: Chanson écossaise ‘Ye banks and braes o’ bonnie Doon’

http://www.carnegiehall.org/article/box_office/events/evt_11897.html?selecteddate=03202010

★ GERALD FINLEY (Saturday) Although this suave baritone is probably best known here for his work at the Metropolitan Opera, he is also a consummate song recitalist with a string of superlative recordings on the English label Hyperion to show for it. Mr. Finley’s program, featuring music found on his fine Schumann, Ravel, Ives and Barber CDs, amounts to a greatest-hits compilation; his accompanist, as on those discs, is the attentive pianist Julius Drake. (www.nytimes.com)

Allan Kozinn, New York Times, 21 March 2010

The Canadian baritone Gerald Finley spent the first half of his recital on Saturday evening celebrating the bicentenary of Schumann’s birth, and he did it in style: instead of offering one of the big cycles, or groups of favorite songs, Mr. Finley and Julius Drake, the pianist, performed infrequently heard works. Among them were the trenchant “Tragödie” (Op. 64, No. 3) and “Der Arme Peter” (Op. 53, No. 3), as well as the four songs Schumann deleted from the song cycle “Dichterliebe.”

Mr. Finley is a personable singer with a deep, focused, flexible voice, and he conveyed Schumann’s extremes of gentleness and ebullience with an appealingly rich tone that projected fully, even in the gentlest passages. He was at his best in “Belsatzar” (Op. 57), a setting of Heine’s rendering of Belshazzar’s feast; he sang the final section in a haunting pianissimo.

In the second half of the program Mr. Finley and Mr. Drake were ideally subtle collaborators in Ravel’s “Histoires Naturelles,” a set of five comic animal portraits. Mr. Finley paid tribute to another anniversary celebrant, Samuel Barber (whose centenary is commemorated this year), in four disarmingly simple songs, the most striking of which was “Solitary Hotel,” Barber’s introspective setting of a section from Joyce’s “Ulysses.”

A concluding Ives group drew fully on Mr. Finley’s expressive range: he began with an intensely focused reading of “West London,” then lightened the mood with “In the Alley,” slipped into an Old West accent for “Charlie Rutlage” and closed with the zesty violence of “Slugging a Vampire.”