Cover image for Aida Garifullina via Decca.
At the very start of her operatic career, after she had won the world-wide Operalia competition in 2013 and joined the Vienna State Opera in 2015, Decca signed soprano Aida Garifullina. There is no doubt that this voice will soon be widely known internationally. Blessed with radiant beauty, Garifullina was born in 1987 in Kazan the capital of Tatarstan, later studying in Nürnberg and Vienna. Early in her career she attracted the attention in London of Valery Gergiev, director of the Mariinsky Theatre, Saint Petersburg leading to a recital in Wigmore Hall.
Garifullina has an impressive range, but her voice is too grand an instrument for coloratura work, as Delibes’s Bell Song from Lakmé demonstrates. Gounod’s Ah! Je veux vivre is a lively rendition, though her French needs attention. What matters is that here is a fresh, exciting and enthusiastic voice from an artist who clearly relishes singing, something clearly felt from the recording. It is in the Russian arias that follow that the voice comes into its own. Rimsky-Korsakov’s Song of India throbs with a melancholic longing for the exotic. Tchaikovsky’s exuberant lullaby Serenada and Rachmaninov’s Lilacs enchant. Allüki is a delightful Tatar folk song and a highlight of the album in a fine arrangement by Paul Campbell that nods to Canteloube. For me Rachmaninov’s wordless Vocalise was the standout track, clearly very close to this artist’s heart.
Let’s hope a recording of Ravel’s Shéhérazade and Berlioz’s Les nuits d’été is not too far away.
Highly recommended.
Rating: 4 1/2 stars out of 5
Aida Garifullina
ORF Radio-Symphonieorchester Wien
Cornelius Meister, conductor
Decca
478 8305
Released 3 February, 2017
