Page 309 - Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Coverage Book 2023-24

Forget this Night Katherine Dain (soprano), Sam Armstrong (piano) (7 Mountain Records)
This song collection’s title comes from a poem by the Indian writer Rabindranath Tagore.
Intriguingly, two settings are included, one (in Polish) by Grażyna Bacewicz, the other (in
German) by Karol Szymanowski. Bacewicz’s is terse and declamatory, Szymanowski’s tender
and ruminative. Soprano Katherine Dain’s recital disc contains some exquisite music, and you’re
continually wondering why so many of these songs aren’t better-known. The Bacewiecz and
Szymanowski numbers are heard alongside numbers by Lili Boulanger, whose song cycle
Clairières dans le ciel is the most substantial work included. Boulanger completed the work in
1914, setting thirteen texts by the poet Francis Jammes on themes of love, loss and regret. The
smallest details are mirrored in the music; we hear a heart fluttering “like an exhaustible
fountain”, and a lover’s “passionate gaze” is set to rapturous, dreamy music. None of which
prepares us for the devastating closer, an eight-minute lament compared by Dain to an operatic
mad scene, her narrator “with nothing more” to sustain her. Dain, idiomatically accompanied by
pianist Sam Armstrong, is magnificent, alternately consolatory and stentorian, her voice never
sounding strained when she’s at full tilt. Sample her in the album opener, Boulanger’s “Attente”, a
sensual Maeterlinck setting. Or in the heart-breaking closer, a previously unrecorded late
fragment found in a Boulanger sketchbook, an unaccompanied Dain bemoaning the physical
pains she’s suffering, asking “why do I always feel bad/it’s not fair”.
The four Bacewicz songs make for an interesting contrast, their language clear, sharp and direct
(Bacewicz studied with Nadia Boulanger in the 1930s). Dain and Armstrong bring them to life –
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“Mamido”, setting a 10 century Arabic text, is irresistible. Five numbers by Szymanowski are
lush, perfumed treats, the final “Lean silently over the cradle” the most striking, seductive lullaby
you’ll hear. A marvellous recital, in short. Texts and translations are included (those from French
and German made by Dain, who also contributes a fascinating sleeve note. Good sound too.
• Forget This Night on Amazon