Artist: Riitta-Maija Ahonen
Title: Samuil Feinberg: Songs
Year Of Release: 2019
Label: Altarus Records
Genre: Classical
Quality: FLAC (tracks)
Total Time: 76:33 min
Total Size: 286 MB
Tracklist:01. Incantation, Op. 4 No. 1
02. Snowy Night, Op. 7 No. 2
03. In Youthful Indolence, Op. 7 No. 3
04. My Beloved, Op. 16 No. 2
05. Three Springs, Op. 26 No. 5
06. The Burned Letter, Op. 26 No. 7
07. The Imprisoned Knight, Op. 28 No. 2
08. The Dream, Op. 28 No. 3
09. Hebrew Melody, Op. 28 No. 4
10. The River Sprite, Op. 28 No. 5
11. No it's not You I Love so Hotly, Op. 28 No. 6
12. Onto the Highway on my own I Walk, Op 28 No. 7
13. Maritsa, Op. 47: I. Maritsa
14. Maritsa, Op. 47: II. First love
15. Maritsa, Op. 47: III. The girl and the horse
16. Maritsa, Op. 47: IV. Conversation with death
17. Maritsa, Op. 47: V. The Macedonian girl
18. Maritsa, Op. 47: VI. Ah, how fell the snow
19. Maritsa, Op. 47: VII. Lullaby
20. Maritsa, Op. 47: VIII. Waiting
21. We're Living in a Story, Op. 14 No. 1
22. Beyond the Distant Mountains she Grew Up, Op. 14 No. 2
23. Sapho
24. When....The Voice of Wind, Op. 14 No. 4
25. In Vain I Hasten onto the Heights of Sion, Op. 16 No. 3
26. Hebrew Melody, Op. 27
27. Evil
The pianist and research scholar Christophe Sirodeau is the mover and shaker behind Altarus's far too tactfully promoted Feinberg series. He shares the twelve sonatas with Nikolaos Samaltanos on two Bis discs.
Here we encounter 23 of the songs written between 1913 and 1941. We are told that this is the bulk of the Feinberg vocal output. The style is caught enthrallingly between a sort of blitzed late Scriabin and the hooded dream-worlds of Duparc and Chausson. The singers are well chosen with Luttinen's steady haughty bass as smoothly produced as the voices of the best of baritones. Ahonen has something of a vibrato and an obsidian edge but represents a voice by no means in extremis - on the contrary.
These songs, often grand and sometimes tender, drift through perfumed tendrils of incense and fragrance. Often they proceed slowly and are seemingly cloyed by the slow motion of the surreal. The pearly raindrops of Three Springs is an exception as are the hoof-beats of The Girl and the Horse and the swirling The Voice of the Wind. I thought The Dream might also have been more candidly melodic but it soon succumbs to the predominant instinctive thought-drift. The same goes for the similarly initially melodic chime of Waiting. Alexandrov, Medtner, William Baines and Sorabji are style-brethren to this composer though it seems Feinberg is unlikely to have known anything about the latter two. He would however have known of many of the Medtner songs when Scriabin, Medtner and Rachmaninov were the golden children of Moscow's artistic life. The final Evil impresses with its oppressive awe and angular iron bell tones.
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