Undoubtedly one of
the great voices, and one of the great
singers of the past century. Vishnevskaya’s
voice may not be to every taste – it
would be surprising if it was, as it
is so strongly individual in timbre
– but no-one with ears to hear could
miss the instinctive musicality and
powerful dramatic force of her interpretations.
She was (now in her
late 70s, her days of public singing
are sadly over) also a great stylist;
if you want to hear Russian music sung
as it should be sung, then you
need look no further. This fine collection
demonstrates this convincingly, despite
the fact that she hated the recording
studio. It is a tribute to her that
she has managed to overcome that hatred
and to inject a sense of the live performance
into these recorded tracks.
There are drawbacks;
sometimes the tone deteriorates as she
tires; sometimes the intonation is,
to say the least, suspect; sometimes
the rubato confounds even the
attentive ears of husband and accompanist
(piano and orchestra) Mstislav Rostropovich.
These however are infrequent negatives
that are overwhelmingly outweighed by
the positives.
She begins with a Mussorgsky
group, consisting of a wild Hopak,
a haunting Lullaby and the
imperious Darling Savishna. Then
come the great Songs and Dances of
Death, orchestrated by Vishnevskaya’s
close friend Shostakovich. She gives
an immensely powerful reading of these,
and Rostropovich and the LSO bring out
the wonderful colours of Shostakovich’s
scoring. The first three are superb;
in the macabre fourth, The Field-Marshal,
however, she seems to strain her voice
beyond its remarkable resources in her
almost frenzied representation of the
story. Some will find this compelling;
I found it spilled over into melodrama.
The very finest singing
is to be found in the Rimsky-Korsakov
numbers. There is a particularly overwhelming
moment in the first of these, The
Rose and the Nightingale. The piano
begins, with a winding, oriental melody,
after which the voice follows with its
two short, simple stanzas. But in the
coda, the piano’s opening phrases re-appear
at the top of the soprano range – an
outpouring of vocal sound which really
does seem supernatural in its beauty.
The three items from Rimsky operas are
of equal quality, particularly the ‘Lullaby
of the Sea Princess’ from Sadko,
while the arias from The Tsar’s
Bride remind us that this opera
is a special love of Vishnevskaya’s,
and occasioned her only attempt at opera
production.
There is an undoubted
drop in the emotional temperature for
the group of Tchaikovsky songs, but
no drop in artistry or involvement.
After the somewhat bumpy ride of the
previous tracks, it is good to be reminded
that Vishnevskaya could spin a wonderfully
sustained and restrained line. She was
a highly disciplined, cultured artist
as well as, when required, an emotional
firebrand.
Despite the occasional
lapses, the fact is that she was incapable
of producing a boring or disengaged
note, and that the best singing here
is, quite simply, very great.
Gwyn Parry-Jones
See also book
review Galina
by Len Mullenger
Great
Recordings of the Century
Vishnevskaya was incapable of producing
a boring or disengaged note ... the
best singing here is, quite simply,
very great. ... see Full Review
Galina Vishnevskaya, soprano 
