Songs

The respected musical sage Tovey described Ravel as `eclectic'. Tovey used the term in a sniffy sort of way: myself, I would agree with it as a description, but from me it would be a term of praise. Ravel is nothing if not internationally minded for one thing. Should we think of him as French or as Basque? Like most French (?) composers he was fascinated with the music of Spain, but one thing that makes this particular recital interesting is that it restricts the Spanish element to three rather lightweight songs about Don Quixote. The cultural diversity takes in Greece Italy and Scotland, plus `Hebraic' numbers in both Yiddish and Hebrew (if I'm not mistaken), and on top of the genuine French element there is one French song to a poem by Ronsard that is actually adapted from Latin - `Amelette Ronsardelette', from the dying Emperor Hadrian's little address to his own soul `animula vagula blandula'.

I would recommend any purchaser of this disc who is not already an expert in Ravel's songs to study the liner note thoughtfully, however much effort that takes. It's like ploughing through treacle as the author communes with himself about arcane musicological details to the exclusion of the rest of us, but it is genuinely illuminating in tracing the sequence and order of the composition of these songs. Ravel's eclectic taste went this way and that way, and if we want to appreciate his genius we have to follow him as best we can. Compared with Faure or Brahms, to say nothing of Schubert, Ravel did not turn out all that many songs. However their variety is astonishing. One number strikes me as verging on ridiculous, namely `Ye banks and braes', sung in the authentic Burnsian English to the original sentimental tune composed by whoever composed it and with a token amount of French fannying about by Ravel himself. At the other end of the scale is the setting of Verlaine's Un grand sommeil noir, which is about exactly what you think it is about, and which recalls nothing less than Schubert's Der Doeppelgaenger.

That particular song benefits from a voice like Gerald Finley's, and so does the powerful penultimate Kaddisch, adroitly sequenced just before the lighter-weight number that concludes this fascinating series of 26 songs. You can read about both Finley and his piano partner Julius Drake in the liner, and it is no surprise to learn that they are experienced in working together. I had become familiar with Finley from Gardiner's great `Pilgrimage' series of Bach cantatas done in the year 2000, and what I had become familiar with was a superb resonant baritone and an equally superb technique and discipline. Finley seems just as at home in early 20th century French music as in the German school of two centuries earlier, and I am no more inclined to look for faults in his work here than there. It is all `French' enough for my taste, he seems to me to be alert to the kaleidoscopic variety of moods that these songs express, his voice suits all of them well enough although probably the more powerful ones best, and his piano colleague is with him all the way.

We demand a high standard in recorded quality these days, we demand it rightly, and we are given it here, or at least to my own satisfaction. There is not all that much music by Ravel - someone has totted up about 16 hours of it altogether. So far as I am concerned that gives me no excuse for staying ignorant of any of it, this particular recital has advanced my own insight, and I recommend the experience to as many as I can.

This is one of the best purchases I've ever made. Gerald Finley is fabulous and so is the accompaniment of Julius Drake on the piano. I can't remember two performers ever impressing me so! Gerald Finley's voice is so beautiful, so pitch-perfect and so soothing and perfectly complimented by this wonderfully talented pianist. I can't seem to get enough of this winning combination.

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