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Antonín DVOŘÁK (1841-1904)
Biblical Songs op. 99 [26:33]
Gypsy Songs op.55 [13:54] Piotr Ilyich TCHAIKOVSKY (1840-1893)
In the midst of the noisy ball op.38/3 [2.02]
It was in the early spring op. 38/2 [2:41]
None but the lonely heart op. 6/6 [2:48]
Once again, as before, I am alone op. 73/6 [2:20]
Bless you, forests op. 47/5 [4:28]
Whether day dawns op. 47/6 [3:39]
Don Juan’s serenade op. 38/1 [2:43]
Yoram Chaiter
(bass); Irena Zelikson (piano)
rec. November 2007, Classical Studio, Herzilya
Czech and Russian texts included with English translation ROMEO RECORDS 7262 [62:22]
Though Dvořák has never been especially highly rated as
a song composer, the Burghauser catalogue nevertheless lists
around
a hundred songs, ranging from the early “Cypresses” – love
songs that he didn’t publish but quarried from all his
life – to some miniatures from his very last years. That
being so, it is strange that not even Supraphon has ever
recorded them systematically – or, at any rate, I don’t
recall any such project ever reaching the UK. Here we have
another recording of the two most commonly heard cycles.
If you don’t have any Dvořák songs these are certainly
the ones to start from, and if you fancy them sung by a
low male voice the obvious alternative is Supraphon SU
3247-2 231, where these two cycles are sung by the baritone
Ivan Kusnjer who adds, maybe more logically, another short
Dvořák set, the Three Modern Greek Poems op. 50.
In reality the alternative is a genuine one, since if you wanted to
demonstrated to anyone the difference between a real bass
voice and a real baritone one, you couldn’t do better than
put these two side by side. Yoram Chaiter was born in the
Ukraine when it was still under Soviet domination and has
been living in Israel since 1973. Alongside a career as
a singer he is active as a physician and his cancer research
has been published in international journals. He has a
strong, resonant and evenly produced voice – only occasionally
bullish on top notes. His phrasing is natural and musical.
Kusnjer has a tighter, more concentrated sound – a viola
as opposed to a double bass. It is a more obviously “cultivated” sound
and to these ears a more beautiful one for most of its
range; his low notes are sometimes granular and his top
notes are not always above reproach.
If you have a strong preference for one or other voice-type you can
choose on that basis and be assured of some fine singing.
In the last resort I find Kusnjer a little more penetrating
as an interpreter, more detailed in his response to the
music. He takes generally faster tempi in the Biblical
Songs, avoiding the slight feeling of lugubriousness which
sometimes besets Kusnjer. In the first of the Gypsy songs
it is Kusnjer who is slower, but he and his pianist are
more careful over the rhythms. The fourth of these songs,
once almost indecently popular under the title “Songs my
mother taught me”, is surprisingly tricky rhythmically
and neither of them get it right – and they are not alone
in this. In the third bar of the melody, singers seem to
find it impossible not to move together with the piano,
when the two-against-three rhythm requires that they should
be not quite together, an effect that lends the song considerable
fascination on the rare occasions that it is actually done
properly. In the sixth song, too, Chaiter sings a couple
of notes a third higher than written, unless the old Simrock
edition I have has been supplanted by more recent scholarship.
But in that case it would be surprising if Kusnjer didn’t
know and he sings what I have in my score.
Apart from these details, I don’t think either singer fully gives
Dvořák his head. The soaring lyricism which is what
most people love above all in Dvořák, together with
his pastoral poetry, does not entirely emerge, though Kusnjer
at least hints at it. Maybe, you will be thinking, the
Dvořák brew is not at its most potent in these works
anyway. But no, I think more can be extracted from them
than these versions manage.
If the Tchaikovsky coupling appeals to you, I hope little details
like opus numbers don’t worry you. If so, make sure you
copy them from the above header. This is not such a minor
matter when there seems to be no general agreement as to
the titles of these songs in English. What is called here “I
bless you forests” was called “To the forest” in the old
Boosey English-only edition and appears under the title “I
greet you all, you woods and forests” in the more recent
Boosey and Hawkes 2-volume selection edited by Roger Vignoles.
And if you say these are just about recognizable as the
same song, then the one called “Whether day dawns” here
was called “Only for thee” in the old Boosey and many English
listeners may still think of it as that. The only way I
could find it in my score was to play the first few seconds
of the CD and then stop it to thumb through the volume
till I found the music I had just heard. With opus numbers
it would have been so much simpler. The documentation might
have named the poets, too, some of whom are important figures – for
example Tolstoy.
Chaiter again sings well and musically but seems unwilling to push
the music to the stage where it might actually become involving.
It doesn’t help that the pianist launches the most famous
of all – “None but the lonely heart” – at an unusually
fast tempo and sounds to be rather cross at having to play
such hackneyed old stuff at all. She also ploughs through
the postlude of “To the Forests” without any apparent awareness
that some considerable dynamic contrasts were marked by
the composer and may be to blame if “Whether day dawns” doesn’t
get up much of a head of steam. Rather curiously, a bar
for piano only has been omitted from the middle of “None
but the lonely heart” – unless both my editions are wrong
in including it. This maybe be a faulty edit rather than
a decision – or accident – on the part of the performers.
Since I’m getting grouchy, I’ll add at this point that, though you
do get original texts and translations into English, these
are not side by side but one following the other, song-group
by song-group. So if you want to follow the original with
an eye on the translation, you can’t. Also, the Russian
texts are in European transliteration, not Cyrillic. It
makes no difference to me since I don’t know Russian; those
who do tell me it’s not very helpful. The brief presentation
states that the Gypsy Songs were “set to the original texts
of Adolf Heyduk in Czech”. No; they were written for a
Viennese tenor and the composer set German translations
of the texts by Heyduk himself, while making allowance
in the music for performance using the Czech originals,
which are what he obviously preferred. But the “original” of
this cycle is the German version; the first Simrock edition
had both languages plus English.
Despite a splendid voice, then, which some might enjoy collecting
for its own sake, I’m afraid I can’t get up more than moderate
enthusiasm for this.
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