Szymanowski : Swiety Boze Op.5-1, Wagner: Wesendonck Leider, etc (2/2007) / Malgorzata Walewska(S), Oskar Jezior(p)

Polish mezzo-soprano Malgozata Walewska has established a substantial international career that includes a number of roles at the Met. In this album she turns her focus to Romantic and post-Romantic songs, including Wagner's Wesendonklieder and a career-spanning selection of works by Szymanowski. Some of his early songs, written around the turn of the twentieth century, are genuinely eccentric and stylistically all over the place from section to section -- they would never be mistaken for lieder that just happen to have been written in Polish. The later songs, from the late teens and the '20s are far more assured; they're formally more conventional, but Szymanowski's unique compositional voice makes them distinctively his own. He chooses an intriguing assortment of texts, including settings of Joyce in English and Tagore in German. The Tagore songs, written at the same time Szymanowski was working on King Roger, are easily the most successful and intriguing of his songs recorded here -- the composer seems to have opened up an extremely rich vein of inspiration during this period of his life. Walewska has some technical weaknesses that keep her interpretation of the songs on the album from being outstanding. She has a warm, rich, deep mezzo, but it's not always under control, particularly in the quieter passages, and her vibrato is sometimes distractingly wide. Pianist Oskar Jezior is especially effective in the livelier songs, but he doesn't bring the rhythmic fluidity to the Wagner to make the music melt. Dux's sound is a little distant, but it's clear and the balance is good.