A Picture - A Story (1): Lily Pons
- wadevoogd
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Sergei Rachmaninoff's love of the human voice shines through in his groundbreaking choral works and songs. Even when he was no longer setting poems to music in the West, the human voice could still move him profoundly. Biographies often mention how the exiled Rachmaninoff would listen in tears when Féodor Chaliapine sang Russian folk songs. But apart from nostalgia, it was first and foremost the human voice itself that struck a chord with him. The composer could just as easily be moved to tears listening to non-Russian repertoire in performances by non-Russian vocalists as diverse as John McCormack, Marian Anderson or Paul Robeson.
Among the singers the exiled Rachmaninoff particularly admired was the French coloratura soprano Alice Josephine Pons (1898-1974) better known as Lily Pons. Pons possessed an incredibly agile and accurate soprano – in many ways comparable to that of Rachmaninoff's favorite Russian coloratura soprano Antonina Nezhdanova.
Several recordings of Pons, including that of Rachmaninoff's Vocalise Opus 34 No.14, document that the admiration was mutual.
The most telling souvenir of the musical bond between Rachmaninoff and Pons, may well be the poignant encore that the soprano gave at her last performance in 1972, preserved in television recording.
In Zdes' khorosho Opus 21 No.7 (the song that Rachmaninoff dedicated to his wife), Pons' soprano glides like a swan over the water. At the age of 74, she still effortlessly manages to bend her voice into a free rubato.
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