The record companies
are always on the look-out for the latest
'hook' on which to hang the revival
of their back catalogues. Decca have
here chosen to reissue a selection of
albums, some dating back to 1979, that
have attracted prizes in the annual
Gramophone Awards. I wonder if they
are doing anything similar for Fanfare
in the USA?
While the occasional
music-lover may tire of the annual ‘same-old
same-old’ glad-rags photofest and portentous
media write-ups for the prize ceremony
there is good reason to plough back
through the Gramophone prize-winner
discs. All the more so since this four
disc set has not yet been replaced by
the competition.
The Krause/Söderström
set is the most extensive survey of
Sibelius's songs for voice and piano
and in one case (Two songs from Shakespeare's
Twelfth Night Op. 60), guitar. It
has the sort of eminence commanded by
Söderström’s Rachmaninov songs
(also Decca), Thwaite's Grainger (Chandos)
and Graham Johnson's Schubert lieder
series (Hyperion).
Sibelius's 93 songs
were written over the period from 1892
to 1917. A handful of noble stragglers
(also included here) come from later
including the deeply serious exalted
Narciss from 1918 and Hjalmar
Procopé's Små Flickorna
from 1920.
Here are a few sampled
impressions of what is a treasury that
will yield a lifetime of pleasing serendipity.
It's the kind of set where, if you have
a four CD changer and use the 'random'
setting, you will find new friends each
time.
The Serenad by
Runeberg and Nu så kommer julen!
(Topelius) offer rounded and sweet
flowing melody. Runeberg draws a variety
of response from Sibelius: for example
the surprisingly dissonant starriness
of Arioso.
There are occasional
mis-hits like the gluey reverence of
Giv mig ej glans but in fairness
there are not many of these.
Some songs are scenas
as in the case of rumbling and rolling
heroism of Under strandens granar
with a surprisingly nightmarish
piano line like a German expressionist
film from the 1920s. The same occluded
black-cloud mood carries over into Hjärtats
morgen. It can be heard again (a
little diluted) in Vain Hopes (CD3
tr. 25) where it tracks through the
Lisztian wave imagery conjured by the
piano - more Runeberg again.
In Våren flyktar
hastigt we get the equivalent of
Who is Sylvia? - time is passing
grasp it - Carpe diem - a message without
frontiers. Vilse is, by contrast,
a whirlwind.
En slånda
marks the first appearance by Söderström.
It is a punishingly challenging song
in which she sings unaccompanied for
great stretches.
Krause, the numerically
dominant voice here, is very good at
the sustained line and his tawny leonine
tone is always agreeable. Try him in
Segelfahrt (CD2 tr. 1) where
there is a hymnal quality to the melodic
contour. The First Kiss and Did
I just Dream are other more popular
Sibelius songs with a similarly heroic-sadness.
They are superbly telegraphed by Krause.
More personal and inward is the Souda
souda sinisorsa just after Segelfahrt.
Söderström
sings Jubal, the story of the
warrior who kills a swan whose spirit
returns to convince him to string his
bow so that it can be played as a musical
instrument - Jubal's lyre. A case of
swords into ploughshares again. The
music is rather expressionist with stern
and gaunt chords in the piano line or
mosaic decoration. There are also predictable,
but extremely skilled, harp-like suggestions.
You can find similar allusive writing
in The harpist and his son (CD2
tr. 19) and Erloschen (CD3 tr.
7).
This sort of illustrative
writing is not restricted to the harp.
The piano evokes the turning Mill-Wheel
in Sibelius's dour setting of Ernst
Josephson's lyric (CD3 tr.11).
A Schubertian carefree
smile dances through May (CD3
tr.12), again a Josephson setting (Söderström)
contrasting with the pessimism and Swedish
gloom of The Nix (the spirit
of the waterfall) conjured by the lonely
wanderer's mood. The happy 'strain'
also can be heard in My thoughts
have a hundred ways (CD3 tr. 26),
A singer's reward (CD4 tr. 9)
and in Der Wanderer under der Bach
(CD4 tr.3). Not quite Schubertian
but certainly happy is the late song
Young Girls (CD4 tr. 24) in which
Söderström and Ashkenazy neatly
trip the waltz to Hjalmar Procopé's
words. These trace the arc of time’s
passage from young girl to granny.
The Two Shakespeare
Songs are guitar-accompanied. Come
away death is bleak - no easy serenades
here. When That I was and a little
tiny boy is a mite lighter but it
is still fairly stern. These sessions
must have been an early opportunity
for Carlos Bonell who is given little
in the way of ingratiating bait in Sibelius's
writing.
In When I dream
(setting K A Tavastjerna) the oppressive
depression is gradually dispelled by
a chiming piano. The voice rises to
a nightingale line for Krause who caresses
every moment.
There is a calypso
or Neapolitan flavour to Dolce far
niente perhaps this would have attracted
Bjorling or Gigli - it has that sort
of line to it. Krause makes hay with
the piece. It is an Italian serenade
without sentimentality - well, not much.
Strange rhythmic edges,
illustrating the spinning wheel and
in turn the passage of time, protrude
through O sisters O brother O loving
couples. It is almost jazzy. This
is another Söderström song.
The piano writing here sounds rather
like Ravel.
The lengthy scena Teodora
is a setting of Gripenberg. The
vocal part is awed and gripped with
fear as befits the poem’s bloody cocktail
of sex and sadism. It is sensational
but the music is more akin to early
Schoenberg than to the Sibelius we think
we know. Just as bleakly tragic, complete
with sadistic imagery (bloody hands,
red lips, raspberry juice) and ursine
writing for the piano, is The Girl
returned from meeting her lover.
Rydberg's Autumn
evening is just as famous (in fact
CD2 has the majority of the songs that
have found individual fame) but is stronger
on autumnal atmosphere than on the sort
of heroic melodic gesture that you find
in Did I just Dream. On a
veranda by the sea is another gloomy
poem by Viktor Rydberg. Sibelius does
nothing to defeat the mood. This moody
line can be traced as far as Op. 90
No. 1 The North (CD4 tr.17).
Svarta Rosar is
famous and we can well imagine Jussi
Björling’s singing such is the
song’s buoyant character.
The Ballgame at
Trianon is a care-free little piece
which for me belongs in the same company
as Gurney's setting Where is the
landlord of old Hawk and Buckle.
It glints and lilts in equal measure
in the voice and hands of Söderström
and Ashkenazy. Krause has a similar
honour in the song Morning from
Op.90 at CD4 tr. 18.
In Säv Säv
Susa (Sigh rushes sigh) Krause
handles the tragic drowning of the maid
Ingalill with a staunchness that reminds
us of Kullervo's lament.
I had wondered if Fröding's
poem I wish I were in Indialand would
be from the genre of pictorial exotica.
Not a bit of it. There is a touch of
eroticism here, much dark mystery only
dispelled by the exalted climactic words
I wish I were a son of the land of
dreams, a native of Indialand.
The six German songs
of Op. 50 include several grim songs
such as Aus banger brust and
Sehnsucht.
Nine of the songs are
taken by Söderström with Ashkenazy
while Krause does duty for the rest
with seasoned lieder campaigner Irwin
Gage.
None of the songs are
grouped in cycles. Their opus number
allocation follows publishing pragmatism
with groups of five or six songs making
a worthwhile volume. There are exceptions
to this pattern such as isolated songs
like the Runeberg Arioso Op.
3, The Serenad, pairs of songs
on CDs 2 and 3 and the four late stragglers
at the end of CD 4.
This set won the Solo
Vocal Award in 1985. It was first issued
on LP (Argo Decca) in the very early
1980s and then on CD in 1984, the year
after the launch of the new medium.
Many will have missed it. No excuses
now.
The Decca booklet cuts
no corners and contains three pages
of genuinely readable notes by Sibelius
doyen Robert Layton, the full original
language texts of the songs plus translations
into English - poetically done by Jeremy
Parsons.
The lion's share of
the songs are to poems in Swedish (the
language of Finland's cultural elite
at the time). Nine are in German, one
in French and only five in Finnish of
which Lastu lainehilla (Driftwood)
is a cantabile treasure as also is Kaiutar
(Echo) at CD4 tr. 2. There
is even one in English, Thais,
setting the sort of poem that would
have been selected by Granville Bantock
(the dedicatee of Sibelius's Third Symphony)
if only he had known about it.
Sibelius's home language
was Swedish, the medium of the educated
classes, administrators, lawyers and
artists. The Finnish language at that
time was seen as the preserve of the
masses. At the age of eight, however,
Sibelius began to learn Finnish in order
to qualify for the country 's first
Finnish language school. This makes
for a fascinating balance since the
choral symphony Kullervo (written
slap-bang in the middle of his song-productive
period), Ukko, Luonnotar and
many others use Finnish texts.
This Decca set reflects
a noble recording enterprise both in
conception and execution. Its fame has
not dimmed over the years. Would that
such excellent and systematically fine
endeavours were extended to the songs
of Medtner, Yrjö Kilpinen, Ivor
Gurney, Yuri Shaporin, C.W. Orr and
Michael Head.
Rob Barnett
Tom Krause (bar)/Irwin Gage (piano) 