Folk Songs

Our rating

3

Dr Natasha Loges

Published: November 20, 2023 at 10:38 am

Our review

Folk songs are supposedly characterised by simplicity, but there is nothing unsophisticated about the high-end arrangements of Bartók, Berio, Ravel or Montsalvatge. Each finely crafted song glows with orchestral colour from subtle to brash. The opening song, ‘In Prison’ is a heart-wrenching lament of the incarcerated, while ‘Virágéknál ég a világ’ is downright thrilling. Ravel’s Cinq mélodies populaires grecques – the best consecutive set – show off the kaleidoscopic orchestral colours. Berio’s Folksongs are musically more uneven. ‘Black is the Colour’ lacks conviction, while the gorgeous Armenian melody ‘Loosin yelav’ could be more guileless. An odd detail: the title of the Sicilian song ‘A la femminisca’ is mistranslated and Kožená uses a confusingly harsh sound for this prayer for good weather for the beloved at sea. But others work well, including the perfectly rendered ‘Motettu de tristura’. Montsalvatge’s 5 Canciones negras are both appealing and deeply conflicting documents of Cuban colonisation. The texts are redolent of the injustices of slavery, but this performance polishes the edges off these sharp words. The texts need to cut through the musically sensual surface more for these deceptively charming, carefully crafted songs to speak. Natasha Loges

Folk Songs – Works by Bartók, Berio, Ravel and Montsalvatge

Magdalena Kožená (mezzo), Czech Philharmonic/Simon Rattle

Pentatone PTC 5187 075 53:04 mins

Folk songs are supposedly characterised by simplicity, but there is nothing unsophisticated about the high-end arrangements of Bartók, Berio, Ravel or Montsalvatge. Each finely crafted song glows with orchestral colour from subtle to brash.
The opening song, ‘In Prison’ is a heart-wrenching lament of the incarcerated, while ‘Virágéknál ég a világ’ is downright thrilling. Ravel’s Cinq mélodies populaires grecques – the best consecutive set – show off the kaleidoscopic orchestral colours. Berio’s Folksongs are musically more uneven. ‘Black is the Colour’ lacks conviction, while the gorgeous Armenian melody ‘Loosin yelav’ could be more guileless. An odd detail: the title of the Sicilian song ‘A la femminisca’ is mistranslated and Kožená uses a confusingly harsh sound for this prayer for good weather for the beloved at sea. But others work well, including the perfectly rendered ‘Motettu de tristura’.
Montsalvatge’s 5 Canciones negras are both appealing and deeply conflicting documents of Cuban colonisation. The texts are redolent of the injustices of slavery, but this performance polishes the edges off these sharp words. The texts need to cut through the musically sensual surface more for these deceptively charming, carefully crafted songs to speak. Natasha Loges

Dr Natasha Loges

Journalist and Critic, BBC Music Magazine

Natasha Loges is the head of postgraduate programmes and professor of musicology at the Royal College of Music. She is a regular critic for BBC Music Magazine and broadcaster on BBC Radio 3 and BBC TV. Her research interests include German song, concert history, 19th-century performance practice and gender studies, with a particular focus on the lives and music of Brahms and the Schumanns. Her PhD, undertaken at the Royal Academy of Music, was titled 'Text and Context in Brahms's Lieder'. Her books include Brahms in the Home and the Concert Hall: Between Private and Public Performance (Cambridge University Press, 2014), Brahms and His Poets (Boydell, 2017), Brahms in Context (Cambridge University Press, 2019), Musical Salon Culture in the Long Nineteenth Century (Boydell, 2019) and German Song Onstage (Indiana University Press, 2020).