The last recordings Chaliapin made before his move to the West date from 1913 (in London) and 1914 (St. Petersburg). After that, with the coming of World War 1, the Russian recording studios were closed, Chaliapin remained in Russia for the war and the upheaval of the Revolution, and did not record another side for seven years. While his extraordinary physical resilience and superb technique make for a remarkable consistency of tone and command throughout his 34-year recording career, the combination of his vocal estate, fully matured but still fresh, with the improvements in the acoustical process made since his earliest efforts, make these among the finest of all his studio performances. They are mostly of songs, though these now incline toward composed art songs, with only a few of the true Russian and Ukrainian folk songs remaining.^(I) These include some (Grieg’s En svane, Rachmaninov’s When Yesterday We Met, Rimsky’s On the Hills of Georgia—try this last; it made me cry) that have become familiar, and others that are not so (at least to me) save through Chaliapin’s versions. One of my favorites is Tchaikovsky’s charming Solovey (The Nightingale), on a verse by Pushkin in which the singer confesses to the bird three cares, the last of which is that his “fair maiden” has been taken from him by malicious folk, and that he longs now only for a grave over which beautiful girls will weave garlands and old passersby will draw up water. This is the second of Chaliapin’s three recordings of the song, and each time it sounds different—a different tone of address toward a different bird, and perhaps at a different distance from the singer. And the differences don’t sound premeditated.

These last prewar sessions also include The Varangian Guest’s song from Sadko, imposing on all his recordings of it but perhaps especially so here, and affording another fine chance to confirm my observation about the “gathering” of the upper notes. In this case it’s the long sustained full-voice D on the first syllable of “mor(y)e” at the song’s close: hear the way the tone keeps its energy closed, concentrated till the last couple of beats, where Chaliapin adds a bit of opening and intensification, but just as we think he may be going to Battistini’s extremes (see the last post), he brings the voice crashing down the octave for the final syllable—the Mother of All “Buttons.” Here, too, are his first recorded ventures into Lieder, with Brahms’ Sapphische Ode and Schubert’s Aufenthalt. These are still in Russian, and with any of the Brahms’ optionally Sapphic sentiments unmistakably hetero, but the song intoned as if by the deepest of stringed instruments, and the Schubert dramatically profiled. Everything from these sessions up to this point, including the Sadko aria and another masterful rendering of the Ruslan monologue, is piano accompanied, by D. I. Pokhitonov (in London, firm and present) and by an unnamed musician in St. Petersburg (more feebly played and more dimly recorded).