RECITAL – MILANO
Hùsz magyar népdal, BB98 (Sz92 / W 64)
I. Szomorú notak (Sad Songs)
II. Táncdalok (Dancing Songs)
III. Vegyes dalok (Diverse Songs)
IV. Új dalok
CORRIERE DELLA SERA
LEYLA GENCER RECITAL
Alfred Cortot crossed Leyla Gencer's path as a lieder singer; he accompanied the young soprano in melodies by Fauré, Duparc, and Debussy at the home of the director of Ankara Conservatory. Cortot exhorted her to persevere in her choice to sing. She had studied those precious lyrics at the Istanbul Conservatory with a French teacher and her relish for phrasing (stolen from her solfeggio teacher, the violoncello player Muhiddin Sadak) along with her fantasy as a curious reader of everything, had already made her into an interesting performer back then. Then Georg Reinwald came to the theatre of Ankara to teach her the rigors of German Lieder and a few other composers.
Opera however, prevailed with its grand heroines and grand theatres, the historical rediscoveries of Leyla Gencer’s career. In the 1970's her desire to perform chamber music emerged once more with the aid of director and pianist friends, especially Dino Ciani. Intellectual curiosity and flexibility made her a partner in great demand for special projects. She sang Chopin with Magaloff, as well as Beethoven and Liszt in Strehler’s “Faust” (1987), cycles of queens, sorceress and turquoiseries for the Venetian Carnival. She evoked the decadent creatures of Poulenc and Louise de Villemorin in the "Cocteau” Ballet with Fracci and Menegatti (1989).
There are two “Sad songs,” the story of the woman "ln prison” uncoils, humbled by the spoken section (Lento, parlando). Her mobility of tempos continually changes in an uninterrupted course from pain to anxiety (Poco agitato; Agitato) to the hope for freedom to die (rallentando... al Molto tranquillo). Her pianos and pianissimos range down to the final decrescendo held and stretched out at the end. The “Pastoral Song” is coloured with elegy (Andante, parlando): green pastures, falling asleep in the grass near the herd, awaking at night and not finding the cattle any more.
Two "Songs for Dancing” contain the majestic “Slow Transylvanian Dance” which chains the dancer to his loved who does not, alas, belong to him. There is the cheerful “Fast Transylvanian Dance,” with aquavit that adds merriment and exorcises the devil and the grumpy old neighbour woman.
Four “Mixed Songs” begin with the shepherd’s melody (Andante) that protects the sheep from the wolf, its last verse fading off into a piano. Two wedding songs follow: the playful first one (Moderato scherzando) has the brilliant timber of cavalcade and the beckoning tableau of the betrothed. The second is a rapid nursery rhyme (Allegro), unleashed on a feast of frogs and allusions, sparkling with the performer’s innate comic flair. The gentle “Lament” (Andante) is sung for the loved one who suffers and the desire to share the pain.
The five "New Songs” form a continuous stream of rapid images from life in the country. A mother is invited to put her departing son's clothing away (Allegro); cherries are gathered for the beloved (Piu allegro). Snow falls in the Dobos (Moderato) and the loved one still has not come, perhaps his arm is wounded and he cannot embrace her. The lively rhyme (Allegretto) speaks of yellowing corn, dried out like young do not make love. The intense image of the field of wheat (Allegro non troppo) calls for solid accents, a somber rhythm and melancholy "Who will reap the wheat if I go to war? My dear, do not leave me.” Without a break, (Piu allegro) it leaves room for the image of woods in the wind and the song of birds. They will sing sweetly for the loved one. The prolonged note sung piano renews the melancholy of separation.
In Franz Liszt (1811-1886) song becomes the wing of poetry, even if the writing lies halfway between the melodic lied of early German Romanticism and a more theatrical one. The "Angiolin" lullaby, cradled with delicacy on an image, introduces us to that world. The “Three Sonnets by Petrarch” (composed in 1838-39, second version 1883) ascend to a zone of high poetry and fervour of the spirit. The composer isolates three different situations (Three Sonnets) of amorous passion-torment from Francesco Petrarch’s "Canzoniere" (1304-1374), and pushes us to contemplate ecstasy and feel pain almost to the point of losing life. Liszt identifies with this and unwinds verses in discursive ease: respecting the perfect, finished structure, he freely recreates it. He intones the precious and intense language of the greatest love poet of Italian lyrics and Liszt's romantic sensitivity makes the words more extreme and piercing. He guides them up on chaste writing and it bursts forth until it skims secret shadows or soars into the dizzying realm of the spirit of ecstasy and torments.
Gencer loves to speak of poetry with poet and writer friends such as Bacchelli, Gavazzeni or Contini, and brings her own noble awareness of words making them resound in the most aesthetic and ideal spirituality. She recounts the ecstatic meeting (“I” vidi in terra angelici costumi - I saw angelic raiment on the earth”), with a passage prescribed as “Molto lento and placido”, her “dolcissima” mezza-voce chisels words with their semantic pregnancy, and then she becomes as light as “dreams” or as dense as “pain.” Expressive tension spurs her on, embraces her passionately or loses itself in the ecstasy of the unspeakable.
The Sonnet of gratitude is a very genteel one once again (“Benedetto sia il giorno, e’l mese, e l’anno – Blessed be the day and month, and year”), though it pushes further and deeper to encompass contrasts (“E i sospiri, le lagrime e’l desio - And sighs and tears and desire”) as well as ideal exaltation. The singer unites the agility of virtuosity with the strength of tragic pathos.
The sonnet of the war of love is dramatic and classically dominated (“Pace non trovo, e non ho da far Guerra - l have no peace and l must not make war”). The performer restrains herself with the symmetrical structure of the initial verses until the vocal gesture erupts (“E tutto il mondo abbraccio - And l hug the whole world”). Then she melts the story into song with naturalness and confides suffering and the contradictions of love (“E non ho lingua e grido: e bramo di morir e chieggo aita - And I have no tongue and shout: I want to die and ask for help”).
This live performance brings back the ambiance of that evening at the Scala on April 16, 1978: the applause at the entrance of the beloved prima donna, the reception of the single pieces, the click of the door in a box that perhaps closes on pianissimos (that has not changed despite the restoration of 2004). It closes with the voluptuous encores of a prima donna who has sung the grand roles at the Scala since 1956. With coy charm, she offers three, awaited by her fans as classics. Queen Elizabeth’s aria (“Vivi, ingrato”) is sung from "Roberto Devereux", the opera that Gencer rediscovered in Naples in 1964 and gave a surge to the Donizetti renaissance; this is almost the anthem of Gencer fans. Amina’s final aria from Bellini’s “La Sonnambula”, is next; Leyla Gencer had performed it only at the San Carlo in Naples in March 1958 and again the following season. That rare pearl is preserved in this unique recording. Once again here is the last conquest of the pioneer of the Donizetti renaissance: Pauline's prayer on the tomb of her mother from “Les Martyrs", which she rediscovered in Bergamo’s Teatro Donizetti, 1975. The response is unbridled enthusiasm of the audience for a legend of the Scala.
COMPLETE RECORDING
