Magdalena Kožená’s fourth Pentatone album Folk Songs brings together folk-inspired song cycles from across the globe. Ranging from Berio’s Folk Songs to sets by Bartók, Ravel and Montsalvatge, this collection provides a kaleidoscope of twentieth-century orchestral song composition. Kožená performs them together with the Czech Philharmonic under the baton of Sir Simon Rattle.

Folk Songs is star mezzo-soprano Magdalena Kožená’s fourth album as part of her exclusive collaboration with Pentatone, after having presented the baroque cantatas recital album Il giardino dei sospiri and the songs in chamber-musical setting project Soirée in 2019, as well as Nostalgia together with Yefim Bronfman in 2021.

Sir Simon Rattle conducts the world’s greatest orchestras and, since 2019 has returned annually to conduct the Czech Philharmonic. He made his recording debut as pianist on Pentatone alongside Magdalena Kožená on Soirée (2019). In 2022-23 Rattle and Magdalena Kožená were the Czech Philharmonic Artists in Residence.

The Czech Philharmonic is one of the world’s orchestral gems, recognised for its rich tradition with the Czech masters as well as European repertoire. Since 2022, the orchestra has released Mahler’s Fourth, Fifth, Second and First Symphonies on Pentatone as part of a complete Mahler cycle to appear on the label.

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Bartók: 5 Hungarian Folk Songs, BB108, Sz.101 (1929): 1. A tömlöcben (In Prison)
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Bartók: 5 Hungarian Folk Songs, BB108, Sz.101 (1929): 2. Régi keserves (Old Lament)
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Bartók: 5 Hungarian Folk Songs, BB108, Sz.101 (1929): 3. Sárga csikó, csengő rajta (Yellow Pony, Harness Jingling)
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Bartók: 5 Hungarian Folk Songs, BB108, Sz.101 (1929): 4. Panasz (Complaint)
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Bartók: 5 Hungarian Folk Songs, BB108, Sz.101 (1929): 5. Virágéknál ég a világ (Virág’s lamps are burning brightly)
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Berio: Folk Songs (1964): 1. Black is the Color (United States)
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Berio: Folk Songs (1964): 2. I Wonder as I Wander (United States)
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Berio: Folk Songs (1964): 3. Loosin yelav (Armenia)
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Berio: Folk Songs (1964): 4. Rossignolet du bois (France)
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Berio: Folk Songs (1964): 5. A la femminisca (Sicily)
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Berio: Folk Songs (1964): 6. La donna ideale (Italy)
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Berio: Folk Songs (1964): 7. Ballo (Italy)
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Berio: Folk Songs (1964): 8. Motettu de trisura (Sardinia)
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Berio: Folk Songs (1964): 9. Malurous qu’o uno fenno (Auvergne)
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Berio: Folk Songs (1964): 10. Lo fiolairé (Auvergne)
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Berio: Folk Songs (1964): 11. Azerbaijan Love Song
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Ravel: 5 Mélodies populaires grecques (1904–1906): 1. Chanson de la mariée
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Ravel: 5 Mélodies populaires grecques (1904–1906): 2. Là-bas, vers l’église
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Ravel: 5 Mélodies populaires grecques (1904–1906): 3. Quel galant m’est comparable
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Ravel: 5 Mélodies populaires grecques (1904–1906): 4. Chanson des cueilleuses de lentisques
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Ravel: 5 Mélodies populaires grecques (1904–1906): 5. Tout gai!
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Montsalvatge: 5 Canciones negras (1945): 1. Cuba dentro de un piano
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Montsalvatge: 5 Canciones negras (1945): 2. Punto de Habanera
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Montsalvatge: 5 Canciones negras (1945): 3. Chévere
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Montsalvatge: 5 Canciones negras (1945): 4. Canción de cuna para dormir a un negrito
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Montsalvatge: 5 Canciones negras (1945): 5. Canto negro

Europadisc Review

From medieval works by Hildegard and Machaut, via arrangements by Haydn, Beethoven, Grieg and Vaughan Williams, to national-themed dances by Schubert, Chopin, Brahms and Dvořák, the influence of folk music on art music has always been a fruitful one. During the 20th century the boundaries became yet more porous as composers came up with ever more sophisticated means – harmonic and timbral – to evoke, harness and transcend the earthy origins of folk genres, in the process moving far beyond the often-sanitised examples of the 19th century. Having previously visited the rich folk/classical heritage of her Czech homeland – notably on the 2008 Deutsche Grammophon album ‘Songs My Mother Taught Me’ – mezzo-soprano Magdalena Kožená now casts her net geographically wider with her latest disc for Pentatone, entitled simply ‘Folk Songs’.

Teaming up with the Czech Philharmonic under the baton of her husband Simon Rattle, Kožená serves us a beguiling quartet of folk-inspired 20th-century works which eloquently demonstrate the variety of possible approaches to a supposedly ‘simple’ origin genre. They start with music by one of the great folk music collectors of the early 20th century: Béla Bartók. His 5 Hungarian Folksongs – 1933 orchestrations of a handful of settings from his 20 Hungarian Folksongs of 1929 – go much further than ‘mere’ arrangements, surrounding the folk melodies with haunting harmonies and counterthemes, and supported by Bartók’s years of experience with both collecting and arranging. The first song, ‘In Prison’, recalls in its claustrophobic third and fourth strophes the dark, expressionist colouring of Bluebeard’s Castle, and both it and the following ‘Old Lament’ are here delved into deeply by both Kožená’s finely-nuanced singing and the wide-ranging tonal resources of the orchestra. The third song, ‘Yellow Pony, Harness Jingling’, brings spiky glimmers of light, veering off harmonically towards the end before just as suddenly returning to the home key. After a more introspective ‘Complaint’, the set ends in playful mood with the jocular ‘Virág’s lamps are burning brightly’, and as throughout the performers’ minute attention to detail in both text and music pays rich dividends.

That flair for detail is also abundantly to the fore in Luciano Berio’s 1964 Folk Songs: 11 settings of music and texts ranging from Azerbaijan and Armenia via Italy and France to the United States, composed as a vehicle for Berio’s muse (and one-time wife), Cathy Berberian. One of Berio’s most enduringly popular works, Folk Songs is performed here in Berio’s own 1973 orchestral version, yet loses nothing in immediacy thanks to the tight rein and often bracing tempi deployed by Rattle, and Pentatone’s closely focused recording. Whether in the American-English of the opening songs (‘Black is the Color’ and ‘I Wonder as I Wander’), the more ‘classical’ French and Italianate dialects of the majority of the succeeding numbers, or the exuberant closing ‘Azerbaijan Love Song’, Kožená revels in the vitality and communicativeness of these settings. Rattle and his musicians reveal an enchanting abundance of detail often glossed over in other recordings (even Berberian and Berio’s), while Kožená’s lower register comes into its own in a performance of the Sicilian ‘A la femminisca’ every bit as spine tingling as the lively ‘Ballo’ (dating back to Berio’s student years in the post-war 1940s). The spooky instrumental textures of the Sardinian ‘Motettu de trisura’ can rarely have been realised so vividly as they are here.

On the surface, Ravel’s 5 Mélodies populaires grecques may seem rather more straightforward, originating as piano accompaniments for a lecture on Greek folk songs, yet in their orchestral guise (the first and last arranged by Ravel himself, the others with his approval by his pupil Manuel Rosenthal) they brim with the colourful touches that are this composer’s hallmark. Set in French translation, there is little that is distinctively ‘Greek’ in the results (hardly surprising given the speed with which they were commissioned and written), yet much to captivate the ear. Both Kožená and Rattle are steeped in Ravel’s music, and these performances ooze with the composer’s distinctive mix of Gallic sensuality and carefully balancing coolness.

More unbuttoned are the 5 Canciones negras (1945) by the Catalan composer Xavier Montsalvatge, a marvellously spirited tribute to the cultural melting-pot of Cuba and the West Indies. As much as the music of the three more ‘canonic’ composers on this disc, Montsalvatge’s settings luxuriate in a kaleidoscope of instrumental colours, and it’s a huge tribute to Rattle’s work with an orchestra until recently associated chiefly with the Central European repertoire, that these performances are as viscerally compelling and vibrant as they are. The best-known of the set, ‘Canción de cuna para dormir a un negrito’, receives a luxuriantly dreamy performance, with Kožená’s voice velvety-smooth, while the concluding ‘Canto negro’ is just the sort of Latin American dance music at which Rattle – originally a percussionist – has always excelled. It’s an appropriately upbeat way to close a disc where inventiveness and enjoyment, sophistication and earthiness, micro-nuance and windswept freedom go hand-in-hand. Enthusiastically recommended!

Reviews

Kožená is on gleaming form in music that largely suits her voice well, and the orchestra plays fabulously for Rattle. ... a throaty and fearsome-sounding Sicilian plea for those in peril on the sea, [is] dispatched by Kožená with relish. ... In [Berio’s 11 Folk Songs], and in Ravel’s atmospheric but straightforward Cinq Mélodies populaires grecques, Kožená sounds entirely at home. Erica Jeal

The Guardian 12 October 2023