With the exception of The Nursery, Mussorgsky’s songs have traditionally been the province of male singers. The dark and uncompromising subject-matter of his other cycles would seem to call for equally dark-voiced singers and it is no surprise that the major sets of his songs to date have come from a pair of implacable basses, Boris Christoff (EMI, 8/89) and Aage Haugland (Chandos, 4/95). The women, however, are starting to make their mark. Last year Eva Podles offered a recital disc that included The Nursery and the Songs and Dances of Death and now Marjana Lipovsek has recorded all three of the cycles, making a substantial addition to the handful of Mussorgsky recordings by female voices that we have already.
This new disc offers the best-known songs in unusually subtle performances, mainly thanks to the influence of the accompanist, Graham Johnson. He and Lipovsek are freer with rubato than most of their rivals and, aided by an atmospheric recording, regularly make use of half-lights in their colouring of the music. Lipovsek’s mezzo is also richer and steadier than most of the Russian female voices heard in this repertoire in the past. For The Nursery she lightens her tone very effectively, taking the songs in higher keys than other mezzos. A comparison with Margaret Price’s recording, reissued last year as part of a two-disc set, shows two singers at opposite extremes: Price is clear-toned and rhythmically exact, Lipovsek affectionate and flexible. Price sees the songs through the eyes of a naughty little brat who is rebelling against a strict nurse, whereas Lipovsek’s child sounds quite a bit younger, a wide-eyed infant, who gets quite tearful when he is told off.
If that suggests a softer edge, it is felt too in Lipovsek’s performance of Sunless, Mussorgsky’s darkest cycle of all. The main comparison here is with Vishnevskaya (on a three-disc set), always a formidable song interpreter. As a soprano, she is good at catching the highly-strung pain in the music, even to the point of deadening her voice to any feelings of warmth. Heard alongside, the mezzo Lipovsek is more the healer, not only finding consolation in the music, but also sounding vocally more comfortable, which listeners may prefer. What makes her performance so enriching is the close rapport she has with Johnson, which keeps yielding moments of the subtlest insight. Their performance of the Songs and Dances of Death is similarly thoughtful, avoiding histrionics and patiently creating a palpably morbid atmosphere; and the cycle is crowned by Lipovsek’s lustrous top at the climax of the final song. Johnson is also the accompanist on Podles’s disc, but that feels heavy-handed by comparison. Anybody not wanting to invest in Christoff’s magisterial complete set (three CDs) may find this single disc a more welcoming introduction than usual to the bleak world of Mussorgsky’s songs.'