Over twenty years have
passed since Karita Mattila won the
1983 "Voices of the World"
competition in Cardiff, since when she
has become a much loved figure with
the public, at least in Great Britain,
but rather less so with the critics,
the implication being that she is a
sort of Finnish Kiri Te Kanawa, blessed
with a wonderful voice (no one denies
this) and an engaging personality which
somehow does not transform into an equally
engaging musical personality;
rather, she is content to stand there
sounding (and, if the photographs tell
a true tale, looking) beautiful without
attempting any deep penetration of the
music she is singing.
And I’m afraid this
disc does nothing to suggest the critics
have got it wrong. Maybe if you don’t
make comparisons you will just bathe
in the golden stream of sound – though
you might note that, like Te Kanawa,
she tends towards a too-tubular "O"
on the high notes no matter what vowel
she is supposed to be singing, and also
that her intonation is suspect in the
unaccompanied passage in "Höstkväll"
– and my own first reaction was, if
you have a voice this beautiful, why
labour the point? And indeed, in "Luonnotar"
Mattila’s operatic amplitude may arguably
be preferable to Berglund’s thinner,
if purer-toned, Taru Valjakka.
But Katarina Karnéus
and Anne Sofie von Otter have very beautiful
voices too, and how different they are
in the brief "Våren flyktar
hastigt". With Karnéus we
have a sense of foreboding, leading
to a sudden moment of passion on the
climactic high note while the final
phrase "let us now kiss" is
whispered but cherished. Von Otter is
more intimate, finding an irony in the
final pay-off. Both in their ways provide
a specific point of view, each has interpreted
the scene according to her own personal
outlook and has (I imagine) put something
of herself in it. What does Mattila
bring? Nothing very much, quite honestly,
with a somewhat over-hefty operatic
high note into the bargain. And it has
to be said that, though Sibelius’s magical
ear for orchestral colour is everywhere
in evidence, these songs are no less
magical in their original piano garb.
In Grieg we have to
make comparisons with the orchestral
versions recorded under Neeme Järvi
with Barbara Bonney as soloist. In "En
Svane" Mattila is sumptuous as
ever and Bonney has a different, lighter
sort of voice, equally beautiful and
more suited to the intimate nature of
the music. She and Järvi have noticed
that Grieg has marked a "poco animato"
in bar 9 and they let the music move
ahead to a passionate but not heavy
"agitato" at bar 17. Mattila
and Oramo evidently think that such
markings, like speed limits and no parking
signs, are there for others to observe,
and try to build up the song by sheer
weight of tone. Unfortunately Grieg
is not Wagner and they just get bogged
down. How much more affective, too,
is Bonney’s rapt but swifter reading
of "Det første mode",
how much clearer are her grace-notes
at bar 12 and how lovely her alternative
high notes in the second stanza (ignored
by Mattila) sound.
I could go on, for
I had alternative versions of most of
the pieces. But since the comparisons
pointed the same way in every case,
I feel I have said enough. In short,
it’s a very beautiful voice singing
some very beautiful music, but it’s
not the whole story. There are good
notes, texts and translation, the recording
is excellent and Oramo obtains suitably
Nordic timbres from the Birmingham orchestra.
Christopher Howell
Karita Mattila (soprano)