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Brahms
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Mädchenlied op 95 no 6
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Mädchenlied op 85 no 3
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Das Mädchen op 95 no 1
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Mädchenlied op 107 no 5
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Das Mädchen spricht op 107 no 3
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Mädchenfluch op 69 no 9
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Ravel
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Histoires naturelles
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Dvorák
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I dreamt that you were dead op 3 no 2 from 'Evening
Songs'
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4 Songs op 2
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Janácek
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Selection from Moravian Folk Poetry in Songs
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Magdalena Kožená
has winning appearance and platform manner, and a very a lovely voice.
A sequence of Brahms 'Maidens' songs' was well chosen, their
many moods ending with a curse upon the young man who had 'muddied the
water'. Beauty of tone took precedence over diction, and her German
pronunciation was not beyond reproach.
The dead-pan French prose poems of Jules Renard for
Ravel's Histoires Naturelles were given with every point in these
evocative and witty texts, with deflating put-downs in the last lines,
everything brought out well by singer and the exemplary, precisely detailed
accompaniments of Malcolm Martineau. It was perfect accord throughout,
the two perfectly attuned, with split second timing in a unique work
in the song repertoire which I consider amongst the highest peaks of
Ravel's too small output. The Kingfisher brought a stillness
and hush; we held our breath as did the narrator of this special experience.
In her own language, Magdalena Kožená
was in her element for Dvorak & Janacek, who was represented by
five of the Moravian Folk Songs which he had collected an published,
some with Bartok, during the extensive research which Kodaly, Bartok
and Janacek did to preserve a disappearing heritage. Janacek's settings
are spare and deceptively simple, but really very subtle, and of a type
better known in Ravel's Greek Songs. Martineau evoked the hoofs
of galloping horses and other countryside scenes to bring a splendid
hour to a close. (42 of the Janacek Moravian Folk Poetry in Song
can be heard in authentic performances by Czech singers with Radoslav
Kvapil (Unicorn-Kanchana DKP 9154).
This was a concentrated and rewarding BBC lunch time
concert, sold out as is often the way at Wigmore Hall, and well worth
the journey to attend live. It was broadcast at the time (in emergency
lighting because of a power cut) and is to be repeated on BBC R3, 7
January at 1.00p.m.
Peter Grahame Woolf
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