Traditional / Arvo Pärt and others: Ninna Nanna, Lullabies

Soprano Montserrat Figueras has made her name almost entirely in the early-music field, focussing on Hispanic baroque and traditional music. In this fascinating disc of lullabies from many traditions and eras, she extends her repertoire to include songs from the 19th and 20th centuries, plus two lullabies composed for this album in 2002 by Estonian composer Arvo Pärt. The traditional songs hail mainly from the Mediterranean countries, Greece, Portugal, Spain, North Africa and Israel, and are performed most effectively and atmospherically, accompanied by instruments ranging from psaltery, bells and recorder to guitar and viol. Two English lullabies are featured. The simple song, My little sweet darling, in a hypnotic triple time, dates from 1580 and benefits from Figueras’s slightly ethnic performance style. However, William Byrd’s serene Come, pretty babe does not fare so well, quaint pronunciation and typically Spanish vocal inflections leave one longing for a purer-toned classical performance, and I felt similarly about the Reichardt song (in French) based on a Scottish lullaby. However, the remaining songs are fascinating, cradle songs by Reger, Milhaud and Mussorgsky accompanied on piano, folk songs by Falla and Lorca with romantic guitar, and the two Arvo Pärt lullabies. Pärt captures perfectly the melancholy and sweetness of typical folk lullabies in his Russian Christmas lullaby, a setting of a verse from the Gospel according to St Luke. In Pärt’s folky Estonian lullaby Figueras is joined by her daughter, Arianna Savall, in a very simple but effective duet whose only words are Kuus, kuus kallike, the Estonian equivalent of Lully, lullay. Mother and daughter also feature together in what for me is the highlight of the disc, the Catalan lullaby Mareta, Mareta, an exquisite duet accompanied by baroque flute, guitar, viola and bells. I have to admit that I’ve become hooked on this disc, despite my reservations about the Byrd and the rather excessive sense of melancholy engendered by the mournful Italian canzonetta which follows it. Soothing, interesting and imaginatively compiled and performed, Ninna Nanna deserves a wide audience.