Channa Malkin: This is not a lullaby
TRPTK

After debuting at the age of sixteen in Le Nozze di Figaro at the Dutch National Opera, Amsterdam-born soprano Channa Malkin has established herself at home and abroad in a wide variety of orchestra and solo recital contexts. She's also become known for her command of a broad repertoire, from Italian baroque opera and Sephardic chamber music. Malkin was born into a musical family, and in fact one of the three song cycles on This is not a lullaby, Five Russian Songs, was written by her Tbilisi, Georgia-born father Josef (b. 1950). While she's performed many times with orchestras, including the Netherlands Philharmonic and Royal Concertgebouw, her 2019 debut Songs of Love and Exile and recent This is not a lullaby feature her in intimate chamber contexts, the former with guitarist Izhar Elias and the latter pianist Artem Belogurov and cellist Maya Fridman. Framing the work by her father on the new release are Rocking the child by Polish-Jewish composer Mieczyslaw Weinberg (1919-1996) and Akhmatova Songs by John Tavener (1944-2014).

Malkin receives extraordinary support from Belogurov in the first two pieces and Fridman the third. As much as it's the singer's release, the instrumentalists are critical to the music's impact and help draw from her world-class vocal performances. Testifying to that, she states, “I only had to close my eyes and listen to Maya's dreamy, fiery, or mysterious introductions to the Tavener songs to feel exactly how to sing them.”

As diverse as the three works are, each in different ways relates to the profound impact having a child had on Malkin, with Weinberg's, for example, a piece the new mother came upon during a sleepless night with her baby boy. Why call it, however, This is not a lullaby? To accentuate that the primary focus is the mother's experience, not the child's. Sung in Russian, the texts by Chilean poet Gabriela Mistral in Weinberg's eleven-song cycle exemplify that idea in their emphasis on the caregiver's emotional experience and honest examinations of the mother-child bond. Malkin's impeccable vocal control is evident the moment “The child was left alone” introduces the work until the riveting “My song” concludes it ten songs later. Unerring pitch and articulation coupled with intense emotional expression enable the listener to connect deeply with the material and the singer's sensitive renderings thereof. A constellation of emotions is encompassed as the cycle progresses, from desperation and sorrow to serenity and peace, and the music's tone changes in accordance with the text's. Children are portrayed both sleeping safely in a night-time nursery (“And I am not alone”) and as beggars cold and hungry (“Little feet, little hands”). Some songs are ponderous, but “Meekness” adds levity for balance. As infants sleep or are encountered in the world, mothers reflect on their lives and the hopes and fears they have for their children.

Rocking the child transitions effectively into Five Russian Songs, which extends the motherhood theme to fatherhood and the family in general. In this premiere recording of five of Josef's Russian songs, texts are drawn from multiple poets, with the music's moods again corresponding to the character of the writings. Things begin lightheartedly with "A Letter," whose text by Crimean poet Ilya Selvinsky (1899-1968) presents the innocent babble of a five-year-old. Tenderness informs the dreamlike “To Polinka," which Amsterdam-based poet Vladimir Riabokon-Ribeaupierre (b. 1957) wrote for his daughter when she was a little girl. Malkin takes assured vocal flight in the dramatic “Don't leave me” and “The Fortune Teller,” the latter particularly cryptic in focusing on death when the text's author, Russian poet Boris Ryzhy (1974-2001), took his own life at the age of twenty-six. Facilitating the transition into the recording's closing work is Josef's setting of Russian poet Anna Akhmatova's “Lullaby,” whose words are anything but comforting (“Trouble's coming, trouble's staying / Troubles never wane”).

Probably like many, I think of soprano Patricia Rozario at the mention of Akhmatova Songs; after all, Tavener wrote them with her in mind. Yet the association quickly fades once Malkin gives exquisite voice to the words by Akhmatova (1889-1966) and the composer's haunting music. The emotional intensity the singer brings to “Pushkin and Lermontov” and “The Muse” shows how superb a match she is for the material, especially when Fridman partners with her. The singer acknowledges that the texts have little do with motherhood, but that's precisely the point: in Malkin's words, a mother “is never just that: she is a woman with her own identity, her own interests and ambitions, whatever they may be.” The songs instead reference literary figures—Dante, Pushkin, Lermontov, and Boris Pasternak—plus creative inspiration and death. For Malkin, Tavener's work represents a critical third of the motherhood equation in recognizing the value of the mother's identity as a person and not just mother, as important as that is.

The sound quality of the recording merits mention, with Malkin and company benefiting from the magnificent acoustics of the Philharmonie Haarlem, and no account of the album would be complete without noting TRPTK's deluxe physical presentation, which enhances the release significantly. The CD is housed within a three-panel vertical case that itself fits snugly inside an attractive slipcase, and a booklet's also included that features in-depth background to the project by Malkin and the texts in their original language and in English. Malkin is fortunate to have had her work presented so splendidly.

July 2021