Customer Reviews

Homage To Jennie Tourel - Rossini / Liszt / Debussy / Dvorak / Rachmaninov

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I'd like to begin this review by saying that this mixed song recital is a tribute to the great Jennie Tourel, but it would be more accurate, sadly, to call her the almost forgotten Jennie Tourel. born in Russia in 1900, her career was largely over by the time I started to listen to classical singing in the 1960s, but for a generation of New Yorkers, particularly those immigrants from Eastern Europe, the beloved mezzo was an icon, and she sang a wide range of relatively obscure music outside the mainstream of German lieder. Hendricks represents that side of Tourel's artistry here. The only two numbers that are widely familiar are Liszt's "O, quand je dors" and Dvorak's "Songs my mother taught me."

Tourel had a voice that was immediately identifiable and not why you would call beautiful; it was full of character and personality. Hendricks's bright lyric soprano isn't that kind of a voice, although with its fast beat and personal charm it, too, is immediately recognizable. She is hampered at times by Stafan Scheja, a lumpy, uninspired accompanist, so on purely musical grounds I don't think this recital takes flight until the end, when we reach the grouping of Dvoraks gypsy songs (sung in German) and the Rachmaninov group, although in the latter my experience is quite limited. the Liszt songs come off a bit generically, as do Debussy's Chansons de Bilitis, while quite lovely, have been done by singers who had much better accompanists. The recital was recorded in 1997, when Hendricks was in fine voice and fully mature as an interpreter. I doubt under present market conditions that any singer aside from Renee Fleming and Cecilia Bartoli could persuade a record label to put out such a recondite program, but I'm glad that EMI gave Hendricks the chance.