Here offering brand
new recordings is a disc of wonderful
Slovak songs performed by one of the
most feted Slovak sopranos of recent
times. Gabriela
Beňačková has for many years
been a great favourite of mine, first
and foremost in Czech opera. Her Supraphon
recordings of Mařenka in The
Bartered Bride,
Rusalka and several Janáček roles
are definitive readings. Let’s not
overlook her in Italian and Russian
repertoire where she was in the front
rank as shown in a couple of recital
records. Now here she is, well past
60, in a lovely programme of unknown
songs. Her beautiful voice is still
in fine fettle. Of course the years
haven’t passed unnoticed. This is evident
from a wider vibrato, noticeable mostly
in the middle and not so high register,
while her top range is largely unaffected.
In these intimate songs she shows, even
more than in opera, her care with nuance.
Her pianissimo singing is a thing of
great beauty; time and again she finishes
a phrase on the thinnest thread of tone.
Admirable!
Of course one can hear
a difference when listening to the two
bonus tracks, recorded in 1986. At that
stage her voice was in its absolute
prime but it was always vibrant and
apart from that middle register vibrato
- it’s definitely not a wobble! - she
has lost surprisingly little. It is
still a youthful voice but with some
becoming maturity added.
Mikuláš Schneider-Trnavský
was a schoolmate and friend of Zoltan
Kodály. On the evidence of these
songs he was less adventurous than his
one-year-younger colleague and firmly
rooted in a traditional tonal language.
Many of these songs could just as well
be folk-songs, but so ravishingly beautiful
are they in their simplicity that one
does not mind the absence of bolder
harmonies and elaborated accompaniments.
The melodic freshness goes straight
to the heart and most are imbued with
Slavonic melancholy. They are from different
periods of Schneider-Trnavský’s
life. The first three are from his last
collection, Songs about Mother, dating
from 1940, while the next three were
written in 1905, although not grouped
together as Little Flowers until
1922. The four Student Period Songs
are even earlier, dating from 1902 and
1904. Your Shy Eyes seems to
be one of the composer’s earliest surviving
works. Maybe the most individual of
his songs are those from the collection
From My Heart, written about
1918. They are settings of poems by
Ferko Urbánek. The first two
have a charmingly syncopated rhythmic
lilt, The Cuckoo showing that
the eponymous Slovakian bird sings the
same interval as cuckoos everywhere
else. The longest song on the whole
disc, Roses, may also be the
lyrical highpoint. I couldn’t withstand
the temptation to replay it at once.
When we come to Sylvie
Bodorová we are treated to real
folk-songs. The cycle The Setting
Sun was actually written for this
recording and specifically with these
two singers in mind. They are more daring
harmonically. Several of them are lively
and thrilling, the short Not Ploughing,
Nor Sowing, for example and the
somewhat longer Why? The swinging
Ask Balazs brings the cycle to
an exciting end, while as a contrast
Sundown is really beautiful and
"catchy". The use of both
piano and harp creates ingenious sonorities
to the accompaniments. Sometimes the
two voices are left on their own to
intertwine a cappella. Ms Beňačková
is here partnered by tenor Štefan Margita,
who has a bright attractive voice, capable
of really beautiful soft singing. I
look forward to hearing more from him.
As a bonus we are treated
to two extremely beautiful folk songs,
arranged for orchestra
by Jaroslav Krček. They were recorded
in 1986 in quite different acoustics.
Both are more distant and with more
space around the voice and this lends
it an even fuller and rounder quality.
The 2005 recordings on the other hand
are made with the voice almost
on top of the microphones, which may
boost the vibrato unnecessarily. The
piano is recessed; ideally they should
have been more evenly balanced, but
this is a minor criticism. It does not
detract from listeners’ enjoyment of
these lovely songs. Whether Ms Beňačková’s
vibrato will be an irritant is a matter
of personal taste – I am fully aware
of it but I can overlook it.
The booklet has good
essays on the composers and artists
but no texts or translations, something
I regret ... but I can overlook that,
too.
Göran Forsling
Gabriela Beňačková
(soprano); Štefan Margita (tenor) (Bodorová);
Katarína Bachmannová (piano); Kateřina Englichová
(harp)(Bororová); Czech Philharmonic Orchestra/Bohumil
Gregor (bonus tracks) 
for
details
