On Track: Sentimental journey to heartland America
5:00AM
Thursday April 10, 2008
By William Dart
Canadian baritone Gerald Finley and English pianist Julius Drake are building up a much-appreciated Great American Songbook on Hyperion Records.
Gershwin, Kern and Rodgers may be yet to come; but, for the moment, there is ample reason for contentment with a marvellous set of Samuel Barber songs and a second instalment of Charles Ives, with 30 songs reaffirming Ives' unpredictable lyrical genius.
It would be difficult to imagine two more diametrically opposed men. One was gay, the other a resolute homophobe; one has maintained a firm place in the concert hall through his neo-romantic concertos, the other can still terrify with his bristling idiosyncratic avant-garderie.
Both, however, had a unique gift when it came to setting words. I should imagine that Barber, a baritone himself who recorded his own Dover Beach, would be totally won over by Finley's passionate singing of the piece, to the exemplary and sympathetic strings of the Aronowitz Ensemble.
This most cosmopolitan of composers would also be charmed by the Canadian's suave French in his Melodies Passageres, and the witty delivery of medieval texts in the Hermit Songs.
