# Single Round: Sibelius: Hostkvall: Nilsson, Flagstad



## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

Please read my introduction below.


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## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

I think this could prove a challenge to judge. Many people have expressed the opinion that Nilsson's very best singing is her Scandinavian songs and this song by Sibelius is my favorite. Even if you don't normally like Nilsson you might like this. The question is, is Nilsson's best good enough to beat Flagstad singing the same thing? The beauty of tone and interpretive ability of Flagstad is a tough challenge.I leave it to you decide. Either way I think you will find this to be very dramatic, mysterious music. Enjoy

The sun goes down, and the clouds walk with a full mind
over the foaming lake, over the twilight of rushing forests.
The seagull is screaming on a desolate island
the falcon dwells in the shadow of the gorge
tired of chasing he hid his beak
the wing of the shed weighs down.

The sun went down, it darkens more and more over the pines of the moon,
darkens the mountains, where the gutter sighs in heather and moss.
Tvinsjukt lingers a pale yellow glow
over the edge of western hills,
today's whispering farewell tones
sadly in sealing shadows away.

The fall of the rain on the slabs is buzzing with melancholy legends
born of the earth's weaving gloomy thoughts of the clouds;
lake against the shore broken wave
roars of the course of dark fate;
voices, trembling terribly of pain,
shout in the storm from the depths of the forest.

Alone out in a deserted area, against a damp cliff
leaning, enchanted a hiker, listening and enjoying.
Feels his soul a harmony with
the song that is raised by starless night?
His woe dies like a slow tone in
this autumn's great mourning poem?
https://lyricstranslate.com


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## nina foresti (Mar 11, 2014)

Must I vote? They are both so close that it comes down to whose sound I like better. And that answer is Flagslad's but Birgit sang it beautifully too.
I feel like Sophie's Choice.
Flagstad.


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## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

nina foresti said:


> Must I vote? They are both so close that it comes down to whose sound I like better. And that answer is Flagslad's but Birgit sang it beautifully too.
> I feel like Sophie's Choice.
> Flagstad.


I told you it would be hard. I like that Birgit nails the high note Kirsten avoids, but otherwise they are neck and neck in this beautiful piece. They both have different but rich lower registers which you need for this piece. K Mattela also sang this but even though she is a fine singer, it is hard to compete against these two ladies.


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## MAS (Apr 15, 2015)

One would think an _Autumn Evening_ would be a little more restful than the mood Sibelius's song provides. It is intense. Sibelius was Finnish Swedish, as described by Wikipedia. Father was Swedish, as is the text of *Höstkväll*.

Nilsson by virtue of being Swedish, has dibs on this song. But, Flagstad's Norwegian ancestry has the root of her language in common with Sweden's. So there. Karita Mattila is Finnish, so she has some claim as well. I listened to her version as an adjunct.

Lieder is not my thing. Nevertheless, I listened to these songs carefully. Not having the original texts, I sought them out but they proved elusive as the words meant nothing, as I have no Swedish! So my choice is going to be blind.

Nilsson sounds healthier of voice than Flagstad, whose recording was made in late career and she occasionally sounds uncomfortable with the _tessitura_. But for some reason her version is what attracted me the most. Flagstad for me (sorry, Birgit!).


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## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

MAS said:


> One would think an _Autumn Evening_ would be a little more restful than the mood Sibelius's song provides. It is intense. Sibelius was Finnish Swedish, as described by Wikipedia. Father was Swedish, as is the text of *Höstkväll*.
> 
> Nilsson by virtue of being Swedish, has dibs on this song. But, Flagstad's Norwegian ancestry has the root of her language in common with Sweden's. So there. Karita Mattila is Finnish, so she has some claim as well. I listened to her version as an adjunct.
> 
> ...


Aside from being written for a character I am ignorant of the difference between a song with an orchestra and an aria. I don't really hear any difference. Both are poetry set to music. To me if I didn't know anything about The Four Last Songs of Strauss and were told they were from an opera I would not have any evidence from the sound of the music to say they were just "songs" and not from a Strauss opera.


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## MAS (Apr 15, 2015)

Both lied and song are words set to music, usually to be sung by a single voice. A song in "Classical music" is usually set to piano or a single instrument rather than orchestrated. Richard Strauss's lieder were first set to piano and then orchestrated - at least there are versions with piano. I don't thing he set all of his songs for orchestra.

An aria is self contained just like a song would be, and it is sung by a single voice, existing within a larger construct or work ("opera," as you know means a work). Strauss's *Vier Letzte Lieder* was not originally composed as a set, but published as such posthumously.


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## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

MAS said:


> Both lied and song are words set to music, usually to be sung by a single voice. A song in "Classical music" is usually set to piano or a single instrument rather than orchestrated. Richard Strauss's lieder were first set to piano and then orchestrated - at least there are versions with piano. I don't thing he set all of his songs for orchestra.
> 
> An aria is self contained just like a song would be, and it is sung by a single voice, existing within a larger construct or work ("opera," as you know means a work). Strauss's *Vier Letzte Lieder* was not originally composed as a set, but published as such posthumously.


Thanks a lot. I am self taught and there are gaps in my education LOL
Arias definitely predominate in my offerings for you fans. The non aria offerings like this piece are going to be very very beautiful! One thing I do like in songs is sometimes the artist has more leeway to personalize the song than you often find in arias. You will see an example of this soon with great singers. One of the singers sings the selected song an octave higher!


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Many thanks for choosing this magnificent piece of music. Flagstad's LP of Sibelius was my introduction to his songs decades ago. At that time I was a huge fan of Nilsson in Wagner and Strauss, and I bought her disc of Scandinavian songs with much anticipation. Although I enjoyed it, I felt immediately that she was unable to capture the haunting quality that Flagstad's deep voice and subtle art brought to the music. 

Hearing the two side by side here, my feeling remains exactly the same. Flagstad was in her sixties, and this was one of her last recordings, but if we can accept the effortful high notes (and the omission of the highest note in this song) we will hear a mature artist addressing music of profound poetry with a voice unique in its rich overtones and capable of the most delicate shadings. I would venture that no one can equal this performance, even considering the frailties of vocal age. Along with the many other songs on this recital (which I believe is still available), this is essential Sibelius, and they make up a disc to set alongside a very different but equally splendid collection of Sibelius songs, in their original form for voice and piano, by the Finnish baritone Jorma Hynninen, accompanied by Ralf Gothoni.


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## Op.123 (Mar 25, 2013)

Both are wonderful, but gave Nilsson the vote because she deserves at least one!


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## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

Both singers do the song justice, but Flagstad does rather more than that. Hers seems to be a much more detailed, more layered performance.

I suppose it was predicatable that I would vote for the older singer, as most of you know I don't much like the sound of Nilsson's voice, despite her superbly secure and gleaming top notes, and I was no doubt swayed by the fact that I prefer Flagstad's warmer timbre. I suppose you can hear that this is no longer the voice of youth, but, though we hear a hiint of strain in the higher notes, the voice is still admmirably firm and secure with absolutely no trace of wobble or excessive vibrato. Really it's quite a miracle that such a huge voice could survive so well preserved after a career of singing some of the heaviest operatic roles in the repertoire. Mind you, you could proably say the same about Nilsson, whose voice also retained its firmness throughout her career.


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## wkasimer (Jun 5, 2017)

> Many people have expressed the opinion that Nilsson's very best singing is her Scandinavian songs and this song by Sibelius is my favorite. Even if you don't normally like Nilsson you might like this. The question is, is Nilsson's best good enough to beat Flagstad singing the same thing?


Exactly. For me, this was actually closer than it should have been - Flagstad is among my favorite singers, and Nilsson really isn't. But as you say, "Songs from the Land of the Midnight Sun" is one of Nilsson's best records. This contest puts Flagstad at a disadvantage, as this recording is from quite late in her career - as far as I know, it's the only time she recorded it. Nilsson's version is also better recorded.

But even so, I think that Flagstad is preferable - there's a solidity to the lower half of the voice that Nilsson lacks, and the latter's very bright, focused sound often sounds not-quite-centered on the pitch, a problem that Flagstad's more voluminous, vibrant sound avoids.


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## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

Flagstad moved to Decca when she was 59 and this Scandinavian disc came out soon after. Yes she was older, but her voice was without any wobble whatsoever and managed to beat Nilsson in her prime, not a small accomplishment as this is Nilsson at her best. Typically this crowd does not like Nilsson. No one but me mentioned the rich beauty of Nilsson's lower notes. I think one is at a disadvantage with Nilsson not hearing her live with the darkness heard in her singing live and the great thrust of both her huge voice and her huge personality. Imagination has to figure in with her like it does with early sound recordings. She has my favorite personality of any singer other than Callas. It is not my favorite voice, though. If you watch her sing Isolde's Curse at 65 at the Met Gala she gave you DIVA like few singers were ever able to pull off and the crowd went insane!!!!! The force of her personality put every other singer at that gala except perhaps a very grand Sutherland to shame.


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## MAS (Apr 15, 2015)

Op.123 said:


> Both are wonderful, but gave Nilsson the vote because she deserves at least one!


Thank you, Op.123!


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Seattleoperafan said:


> Flagstad moved to Decca when she was 59 and this Scandinavian disc came out soon after. Yes she was older, but her voice was without any wobble whatsoever and managed to beat Nilsson in her prime, not a small accomplishment as this is Nilsson at her best. Typically this crowd does not like Nilsson. No one but me mentioned the rich beauty of Nilsson's lower notes. I think one is at a disadvantage with Nilsson not hearing her live with the darkness heard in her singing live and the great thrust of both her huge voice and her huge personality. Imagination has to figure in with her like it does with early sound recordings. She has my favorite personality of any singer other than Callas. It is not my favorite voice, though. If you watch her sing Isolde's Curse at 65 at the Met Gala she gave you DIVA like few singers were ever able to pull off and the crowd went insane!!!!! The force of her personality put every other singer at that gala except perhaps a very grand Sutherland to shame.


Actually I'm still something of a fan of Nilsson, even if not to the degree that I can wax poetic about her. I think of her as one of those artists whose peculiar distinctions are remarkable enough to make her an exception to the rules, and indeed to my usual preferences. I tend to like deeper, fuller voices, and am generally a stickler about intonation, which she admitted was one of her weak points. I'd also admit that the repertoire in which she was competitive with the best was quite narrow, confined mainly to music that requires great declamatory force and the ability to surmount a huge orchestra. She had a wide effective vocal range, with well-developed if not booming chest tones seamlessly attached to her middle voice, and of course top notes that seemed to materialize without effort and fill the sky like flashes of lightning (OK, so I'll wax slightly poetic for a moment). She was also an admirable vocal actress who worked tirelessly to develop her interpretations, as we can hear by comparing her two recordings of Isolde; the second, from Bayreuth in 1966, is considerably sharper and more detailed than the earlier one on Decca, with line after line delivered with specific intention and always exemplary verbal clarity. Isolde's narrative, and the complex, cryptic thrust and parry of her exchange with Tristan leading up to the drinking of the potion, are continuously absorbing. Needless to say, the music's demands for uninhibited power are met fully; as Conrad Osborne observed in his review of the recording years ago, Nilsson delivers a curse of such cold concentration that Tristan's subsequent appearance seems an act of considerable courage. Her distress over Tristan's death is powerfully conveyed, and with a voice that seems if anything freer and more beautiful than before - not an illusion, as evening-long operas were warming-up exercises for her - and she and conductor Bohm achieve a climax to the Liebestod that I can't imagine bettered. I wouldn't be without this performance, along with her Brunnhilde, Elektra and Turandot.

Aside from the matter of vocal timbre - largely a matter of taste - where I find Flagstad bests Nilsson is in her ability to file her huge instrument down to the intimate scale of song. Nilsson works at it admirably, but her big, inflexible voice often sounds slightly uneasy, as if she'd love to just let go and let 'er rip. Flagstad's clear tone, rock-steady emission and legato way of connecting notes sound as natural and lovely in an intimate song about a Norwegian mountain girl as they do in a valkyrie battle cry. As her voice aged and she couldn't comfortably surmount Wagner's climaxes, she still gave much-loved concerts of song and found a last operatic role as Purcell's Dido, in which she sounds every inch a queen and achieves an uncanny poignancy - and uncanny breath control! - in "When I am laid in earth," enunciated in beautifully clear English.


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## MAS (Apr 15, 2015)

Nilsson at her best, *Turandot*, *Elektra*, and Brunhilde in *Die Walkure*, *Götterdämmerung*, *Siegfried* the Dyer's Wife in *Die Frau Ohne Schatten*, where she could unfurl that magnificent voice and thrill us with those top notes, which she'd hurl like lightning bolts.


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## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

Woodduck said:


> Actually I'm still something of a fan of Nilsson, even if not to the degree that I can wax poetic about her. I think of her as one of those artists whose peculiar distinctions are remarkable enough to make her an exception to the rules, and indeed to my usual preferences. I tend to like deeper, fuller voices, and am generally a stickler about intonation, which she admitted was one of her weak points. I'd also admit that the repertoire in which she was competitive with the best was quite narrow, confined mainly to music that requires great declamatory force and the ability to surmount a huge orchestra. She had a wide effective vocal range, with well-developed if not booming chest tones seamlessly attached to her middle voice, and of course top notes that seemed to materialize without effort and fill the sky like flashes of lightning (OK, so I'll wax slightly poetic for a moment). She was also an admirable vocal actress who worked tirelessly to develop her interpretations, as we can hear by comparing her two recordings of Isolde; the second, from Bayreuth in 1966, is considerably sharper and more detailed than the earlier one on Decca, with line after line delivered with specific intention and always exemplary verbal clarity. Isolde's narrative, and the complex, cryptic thrust and parry of her exchange with Tristan leading up to the drinking of the potion, are continuously absorbing. Needless to say, the music's demands for uninhibited power are met fully; as Conrad Osborne observed in his review of the recording years ago, Nilsson delivers a curse of such cold concentration that Tristan's subsequent appearance seems an act of considerable courage. Her distress over Tristan's death is powerfully conveyed, and with a voice that seems if anything freer and more beautiful than before - not an illusion, as evening-long operas were warming-up exercises for her - and she and conductor Bohm achieve a climax to the Liebestod that I can't imagine bettered. I wouldn't be without this performance, along with her Brunnhilde, Elektra and Turandot.
> 
> Aside from the matter of vocal timbre - largely a matter of taste - where I find Flagstad bests Nilsson is in her ability to file her huge instrument down to the intimate scale of song. Nilsson works at it admirably, but her big, inflexible voice often sounds slightly uneasy, as if she'd love to just let go and let 'er rip. Flagstad's clear tone, rock-steady emission and legato way of connecting notes sound as natural and lovely in an intimate song about a Norwegian mountain girl as they do in a valkyrie battle cry. As her voice aged and she couldn't comfortably surmount Wagner's climaxes, she still gave much-loved concerts of song and found a last operatic role as Purcell's Dido, in which she sounds every inch a queen and achieves an uncanny poignancy - and uncanny breath control! - in "When I am laid in earth," enunciated in beautifully clear English.


I have arranged for a Shakespearian witch at your festival to send you a special blessing for this much needed praise of a great artist. She was not the perfect singer but no one since she retired equaled her Wagner, Turandot and Elektra in my opinion. We are talking decades now. This crowd doesn't value high notes, but Nilsson had little competition at hurling C6's at you with a force you could almost feel. She also completely relearned Elektra and Isolde at the end of her career and got one of the greatest if not the greatest ovation in history. The Vienna orchestra went out to eat and when they came back for their instruments the audience was still at it. Tell me anyone who gets applause like that today. I have a question gang: could an abundance of squillo, which Nilsson had in spades, cause her to sometimes sound sharp or was she in reality sharp?


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Seattleoperafan said:


> I have arranged for a Shakespearian witch at your festival to send you a special blessing for this much needed praise of a great artist. She was not the perfect singer but no one since she retired equaled her Wagner, Turandot and Elektra in my opinion. We are talking decades now. This crowd doesn't value high notes, but Nilsson had little competition at hurling C6's at you with a force you could almost feel. She also completely relearned Elektra and Isolde at the end of her career and got one of the greatest if not the greatest ovation in history. The Vienna orchestra went out to eat and when they came back for their instruments the audience was still at it. Tell me anyone who gets applause like that today. I have a question gang: could an abundance of squillo, which Nilsson had in spades, cause her to sometimes sound sharp or was she in reality sharp?


It wasn't the squillo. Her intonation wasn't always precise, and she acknowledged a tendency to go sharp. Not on the high notes though; as far as I can recall, those were always dead center. She had the idiosyncratic habit of picking those notes out of the air rather than pushing up to them, which gave the uncanny impression that they just materialized somewhere outside her body. Remarkable.

The worst instance of off-pitchness I can recall from her was near the end of the Liebestod of her first _Tristan_ recording (with Solti). She's excruciatingly flat on the d# ending the climactic phrase "in des Welt-Atems wehendem All." I can't understand why they didn't retake it. But that's only one of a number of reasons why that _Tristan_ is unsatisfying, most of them concerning the contributions of her colleagues and the singer-unfriendly engineering.

I agree with you. Nilsson has had no worthy successor in her biggest roles, and it's been over 40 years now - exactly 50 since I heard her Isolde in New York, when she was already 54 and still in her prime. But it seems like opera lovers have been waiting a long time for a lot of things, doesn't it?


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## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

Woodduck said:


> It wasn't the squillo. Her intonation wasn't always precise, and she acknowledged a tendency to go sharp. Not on the high notes though; as far as I can recall, those were always dead center. She had the idiosyncratic habit of picking those notes out of the air rather than pushing up to them, which gave the uncanny impression that they just materialized somewhere outside her body. Remarkable.
> 
> The worst instance of off-pitchness I can recall from her was near the end of the Liebestod of her first _Tristan_ recording (with Solti). She's excruciatingly flat on the d# ending the climactic phrase "in des Welt-Atems wehendem All." I can't understand why they didn't retake it. But that's only one of a number of reasons why that _Tristan_ is unsatisfying, most of them concerning the contributions of her colleagues and the singer-unfriendly engineering.
> 
> I agree with you. Nilsson has had no worthy successor in her biggest roles, and it's been over 40 years now - exactly 50 since I heard her Isolde in New York, when she was already 54 and still in her prime. But it seems like opera lovers have been waiting a long time for a lot of things, doesn't it?


I hope she has gotten better but Goerke sang Norma here before she became a full fledged dramatic soprano. She was for the most part really good but she also had problems staying on pitch at times. She had just lost around 30 pounds which have returned and maybe her diaphram hadn't recovered.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Seattleoperafan said:


> I hope she has gotten better but Goerke sang Norma here before she became a full fledged dramatic soprano. She was for the most part really good but she also had problems staying on pitch at times. She had just lost around 30 pounds which have returned and maybe her diaphram hadn't recovered.


Goerke? She's way beneath Nilsson technically, and not even in the same universe as Flagstad or Leider. Tensions I can't imagine have made her upper register and vibrato weird, for starters. I've heard little of her early work; I know she was better, but I can't take her now, and given her age I'm not expecting any improvement.


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