‘In the Still of Night’ -

Anna Netrebko, Daniel Barenboim

DG 4778589 Buy now

‘In the Still of Night’   
Dvořák Songs My Mother Taught Me, Op 55 No 4 Rimsky–Korsakov In the silence of the night, Op 40 No 3. Prosti! Ne pomni dney naden’ya, Op 27 No 4. Not the wind blowing from the heights, Op 43 No 2. Plus sonore que le chant de l’alouette, Op 43 No 1. On the hills of Georgia, Op 3 No 4. V tsarstvo rozï vina, Op 8 No 5. Zuleika’s Song, Op 26 No 4. Eastern Song: Enslaved by the rose, the nightingale, Op 2 No 2. The clouds begin to scatter (Elegy), Op 42 No 3. The Nymph, Op 56 No 1. Son v letnyuyu noch’, Op 56 No 2 R Strauss Cäcilie, Op 27 No 2 Tchaikovsky Skazhi, o chom v teni vetvey, Op 57 No 1. Zabït tak skoro (So soon forgotten). Nochy bezumnïye, Op 60 No 6. Why?, Op 6 No 5. Serenade, Op 63 No 6. Lullaby, Op 16 No 1. Was I not a blade of grass?, Op 47 No 7. Sred mrachnïkh dnei, Op 73, No 5
Anna Netrebko sop Daniel Barenboim pf
DG 477 8589GH (69’ • DDD)

As everyone knows, live recordings have their pros and cons. With song recitals the problem is often that the singer needs to project to the back rows of a big hall, while the microphone is placed only inches away. Not all voices and repertoires work equally well under those conditions. In compensation there is always the hope of sharing in a special exchange of energy between performers and a live audience. But that is not so easy to detect with Anna Netrebko in Salzburg; which in turn makes the problem of over-projection the more obtrusive.

She does of course have a wonderfully full, firm and creamy voice, and she effectively varies the emotional pressure from one song to the next, encompassing humour and ecstasy as well as warmth and sympathy. All this can be thrilling. But for me the high-cholesterol tone-colour, so effective in operatic arias, rapidly palls in the context of a song programme. Nor did I ever get the sense of things happening on the spur of the moment that Netrebko would not routinely do in the studio. To a certain extent her consistency of timbre may be a hangover from the old Russian bel canto tradition, which set less store by the words than its German counterpart, so that you would rarely feel confided in or conversed with, and more often slightly harangued or forced into passive admiration. Netrebko is nowhere near as bad as that. The trouble is that her accompanist completely outclasses her for richness of musical understanding and communication. In short, I would most likely want to keep this disc on my shelves for the sake of Barenboim’s accompaniments, but not, I fancy, for the singing.

David Fanning