Ravel: Cinq mélodies populaires grecques (5 popular Greek songs)

“After acclaimed recordings of Barber, Ives and Schumann, baritone Gerald Finley and pianist Julius Drake pull off another success with this disc of Ravel songs. These are for the most part works of cool restraint, with passion hidden beneath a jewelled surface, and Finley’s wonderfully flexible voice achieves maximum effect with minimal means.” The Telegraph, 10th June 2009 ****

“Finley sings with the art that conceals art — relishing but never overpointing the texts, and using a wide palette of dynamic and colour to underpin his musical insights. Other highlights are the inward-looking Ronsard à son âme, the passionate Les grands vents venus d’outremer and the lamenting Deux melodies hébraïques. A superb disc.” Sunday Times, 28th June 2009 ****

“Gerald Finley and Julius Drake's survey gathers all his major songs together. It's a beautiful disc that startles in ways you don't always expect.” The Guardian, 12th June 2009 ****

“It feels inadequate…just to describe this enchanting new collection from Gerald Finley and Julius Drake as the best modern recital devoted to the wonderfully varied world of Ravel's songs. Finley gives the melancholic affirmation of 'Kaddisch' its full weight of understated nobility, and is clearly having fun in the drinking song from Don Quichotte à Dulcinée.” BBC Music Magazine, July 2009 *****

“…the mood might be robust or rarefied, but Ravel's sense of colour and atmosphere is infallible. Drake draws the ear ineluctably into Ravel's imaginative world… Finley's mellifluous, malleable baritone is similarly an ideal match for this repertoire, with lines eloquently floated, nuances subtly voiced and character sensitively defined. This is a beguiling programme, beautifully performed.” Gramophone Magazine, August 2009

“There is a vast gulf between the bibulous bravado of the 'Chanson à boire' that Ravel included in his Don Quichotte à Dulcinée songs and the bleak, dark despair of his Verlaine setting Un Grand sommeil noir. Placing them next to one another in this fine selection of over two dozen songs emphasises the broad expressive range that Ravel was able to embrace. It also throws into focus the way that Gerald Finley and Julius Drake can so evocatively tap their emotional substance.
These exquisitely crafted miniatures, whether in the folk-inspired Chants populaires and Cinqmélodies populaires grecques or in the tender Noëlsdes jouets to a text of Ravel's own, show his creative fastidiousness in a consistently positive light: the mood might be robust or rarefied, but Ravel's sense of colour and atmosphere is infallible.
The imagery of the Histoires naturelles, for example, testifies to Ravel's intuitive response to poetry and to his precise placing of the tonal brushstrokes. In this respect, the piano is an essential collaborator, etching in the background for the gliding grace of the swan or the chirping of the cricket.
Drake draws the ear ineluctably into Ravel's imaginative world, as he does elsewhere in the cool restraint of Ronsard à son âme or the turbulence and shifting currents of Les Grands Ventsvenus d'outremer. Finley's mellifluous, malleable baritone is similarly an ideal match for this repertoire, with lines eloquently floated, nuances subtly voiced and character sensitively defined.
This is a beguiling programme, beautifully performed.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

“An engaging set of French language orchestral songs, the juxtaposition of Berlioz's Les nuits d'été and Britten's Les Illuminations being especially rewarding. None of the performances are weak, but all are surpassed elsewhere.” BBC Music Magazine, January 2009 ****

“[Gilchrist] is now unsurpassed among lyric tenors in sweetness and technical security, and for his musical intelligence” The Independent

“Repeated hearings may harm the artful simplicity of the title cycle by Alec Roth, but the Britten folk-song settings should never die. If Gilchrist’s French is too muscular overall, he tiptoes delicately through the final song by Marcel Tournier.” The Times, 8th August 2008 ***

“James Gilchrist is one of the most expressive tenors of the day, his timbre soft-grained, his diction immaculate, his lack of mannerism gratifying and his choice of repertory, on this disc of songs and song cycles with harp, interesting.” Sunday Times, 10th August 2008 ***

“…an interesting and intelligent singer, well served by his distinguished accompanists.” BBC Music Magazine, August 2008 ****

“Bernarda Fink's strong, flexible voice is well matched to all that Ravel asks of her, from the lively snapshots of the Greek folksongs to the long, languorous lines of Shéhérazade.” Gramophone Magazine, September 2007

“Fink attacks [Shéhérazade] with a surprisingly girlish tone, suggesting innocence teetering on the brink of corruption as Ravel's eroticised Orient unfolds before her. The instrumental mixture of glitz and savagery is beautifully illuminated by Kent Nagano and his Berlin-based orchestra, too.” The Guardian, 10th August 2007 ***

“A very beautiful and very enjoyable recital of French orchestral songs, sensitively accompanied. The coupling has this justly adored singer, in excellent form, in further songs by Ravel and Debussy with Soriano as the sympathetic piano accompanist.” Gramophone Magazine

“A rich ripe peach of a recital, and in case that suggests something altogether too sweet and lush to satisfy a fastidious taste it should immediately be added that the soprano's tone is fresh, her responsiveness to words keen, the pianist's touch very evidently guided by a refined, lively intelligence, and the programme a delight in the variety as well as the generous melodic appeal of its contents” Gramophone Magazine

“The French lyric baritone in a fragrant Liederabend from the 1960 Schwetzingen Festival which includes soft-focus Schubert and Strauss, and Frank Martin's Siz Monologues for Everyman.” BBC Music Magazine, June 2012 ***

“One of the many joys of this fine disc is the absolute refusal of either singer or accompanist either to wallow in sentiment or to indulge in wayward self-promotion. Karina Gauvin's voice is one of rare beauty, with a high register fully integrated with the middle...Not all virtuoso pianists can accompany sensitively, but Marc-André Hamelin is superb - technically impeccable and with a wide tonal range.” BBC Music Magazine, May 2011 *****

“Karina Gauvin is a remarkable Canadian soprano with a wonderfully fresh and firm voice. Francophone herself, she is ideally suited to sing this ambitious collection of French songs, perfectly supported by pianist Marc-Andre Hamelin...Altogether a most satisfying recital, not just superbly performed but very well recorded, if with the balance slightly favouring the singer.” Gramophone Magazine, July 2011

“If this disc is something of a calling-card...then it highlights on the part of the singer both an evident sympathy with this French repertoire and a sharp musical intelligence at work...hardly surprisingly, Marc-André Hamelin dispatches even the trickiest of all the accompaniments with ease, even nonchalance: this is luxury casting.” International Record Review, April 2011