DSeptember is the most reliable month of the year when the weather is nice, but as soon as it comes, you also know: the days are getting shorter, every moment is a precious reprieve from the dark and cold. Kurt Weill’s “September Song” from the musical “Knickerbocker Holiday”, written in exile in America in 1938, tells the exact story. Camilla Nylund, who has now recorded this song, savors the reprieve up to the last millisecond: in the line “when you reach September” she delays the word “September”, the occurrence of which always marks something musically definitive for as long as possible , stretching the word as far as the meter will allow. Then comes the last line: “these precious days I’ll spend with you” – “I want to spend these precious days with you”. And Nylund has such staying power for the last “you” that the ORF radio symphony orchestra, conducted by Marin Alsop, has time for a harmonically sophisticated final cadence, which almost grows into a coda, while the gentle and warm vocals slowly fade away.
Camilla Nylund’s ability, which is shown here, is immense, because the freedom of rhythm with which she sings is not what is usually demanded of her as a classical opera singer. But the big breath, the stretching of time, the enabling of a change of meaning of a single, long-sung note through several harmonic changes in the accompaniment, she can do all this so well because she has experience with the other famous “September”. , namely the one composed ten years after Weill from Richard Strauss’ “Four Last Songs”, where a voice with warmth and breadth, with great breath and courage is needed for long sailing at great heights.
Between Vienna and New York, Nylund is currently one of the world’s top Strauss singers. And while working on his “Rosenkavalier” at the Berlin State Opera, where she sang the Marschallin, she cast a spell over director André Heller in 2020 that he conceived a homage to her and her voice: he commissioned Florian Sitzmann, Christof Unterberger and Leonard Eröd, musicians with great knowledge of style and sure taste, rearranged thirteen songs from the “Great American Songbook” especially for Nylund and the peculiarities of her soprano, in order to make the voice and charisma of the singer he admired accessible to an audience that perhaps less fond of going to the opera.
The arrangements range from the piano solo with intimate string solos in Cole Porter’s “Ev’ry Time We Say Goodbye” to the orchestral opulence including organ, trumpet and Vienna Boys’ Choir in Stephin Merritt’s “The Book of Love”. badly oversweetened piece within this otherwise exquisite selection. In Sammy Fain’s gorgeous slow fox “I’ll Be Seeing You” from 1938, the arrangement with harp, piano and harmonica transforms the promenade between Parisian cafés under the chestnut trees, which the text tells about, into a maritime pier walk and thus ensures that between text and music, for an attractive overlay of described and perceived landscape. In its lavish orchestration, the “September Song” adheres to the habits of arrangers in exile for American radio orchestras acquired through Russian late romanticism in the late 1930s, as we know them from the hits for Jo Stafford. Again and again it is the carrying capacity and stamina of Nylund’s voice that firstly enables slow tempos and secondly, within these tempos, a rich instrumental development.
Bild: Naxos
Nylund himself hovers safely between intimate singing for the microphone and operatic projection for the large space, wherever appropriate. Her crescendos without vibrato extension in Michel Legrand’s “What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life” and the superb decrescendo on the final ninth above the minor chord in the line “all in my life is you” betray classically trained finesse. But she can just as happily slip into the syncopation of George Gershwin’s “They Can’t Take That Away From Me” and remain off-beat for bars, or sensuous the blue notes in Jerome Kern’s “Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man”. vibrate.
In Friedrich Hollaender’s “Falling in Love Again” the broken octaves of the vocal line seem somewhat embarrassed when you have Marlene Dietrich in your ear, where it is difficult to get them out. Nylund’s voice is not a Diseusen contralto. She wants to go up. Because in Victor Young’s “When I Fall in Love” she declares her love with youthful, shy infatuation that sounds more like May than September.
Nat King Cole once sang “For All We Know, We Will Never Meet Again” with tender deadly seriousness. Camilla Nylund heads towards the final tomorrow that may never come with a confidence that is as radiant as it is believable.
Camilla Nylund sings Masterpieces from „The Great American Songbook“. ORF-Sinfonieorchester Wien, Marin Alsop.
Blu-Ray/DVD. Naxos