Tim Ashley 

Nora Gubisch: Folk Songs review – nicely sung programme from a streetwise mezzo

Gubisch's lived-in, streetwise mezzo sounds good in Berio and Falla, but is graceless in Obradors, writes Tim Ashley
  
  


The slightly misleading title of Nora Gubisch's new recital, with her conductor-pianist husband Alain Altinoglu, comes from Luciano Berio's 1964 Folk Songs for mezzo-soprano and seven instruments, which forms its centrepiece. The rest of the "patchwork" programme (Altinoglu's description) consists of folk-influenced Spanish art songs (De Falla, Granados, Obradors) and Brahms's Op 91 Gesänge for alto, viola and piano, which don't have much to do with folk music. Gubisch's lived-in, streetwise mezzo sounds good in Berio and Falla, but is graceless in Obradors and too self-consciously raunchy for Granados, who aspires to discretion and respectability. Altinoglu is a terrific pianist and a no-nonsense conductor for the Berio. The ensemble for the latter includes viola player Gérard Causée, who took part in the French premiere under Berio himself. His presence is the reason for the inclusion of the Brahms – nicely sung, but not on the same level as Kirsten Flagstad or Brigitte Fassbaender.

 

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