Leiferkus so much enjoys singing. That's evident from first to last on this, the second instalment of his absolutely riveting account of Mussorgsky's songs. His success here, even more than in Vol. 1, is based on his amazing variety of tone colour and textual inflexion. The singer who is so embittered, so biting in a big, baritonal manner for projecting the harshness in "Not like thunder" dissolves into the warm, all-enveloping, bass-like interpreter of "Softly the spirit flew up to heaven," one of the composer's most melodically inspired songs. Then in the next song, another voice, another character is met as Leiferkus catches to perfection the heroic irony of Pride.
In "The vision," and again in the Schumannesque "From my tears," we hear a lyrically vibrant baritone, dispensing an appropriately erotic charge so strongly contrasting with the deliberately light, almost mincing tone employed to convey the sharp satire of The classicist. The grand passion of that Cossack lament, "On the Dnieper," and the extrovert good cheer of "The feast" are further triumphs – and all that is before we reach his reading of the Sunless cycle, where Leiferkus sounds suitably world-weary as he plumbs the depths of this profoundly depressing work.
In everything his confident and pointed delivery of the text is exemplary yet verbal histrionics never get in the way of good singing. With Skigin once again a wonderfully responsive partner and a recording that improves, in terms of intimacy, on that of Vol. 1, no more need be said except to recommend this disc unreservedly and urge you to acquire it.
