SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

SEEN AND HEARD CONCERT REVIEW


 

Edinburgh International Festival 2010 (8) – Simon Keenlyside sings Rorem, Butterworth and Schumann : Simon Keenlyside (baritone), Malcolm Martineau (piano). Queen’s Hall, 23.8.2010 (SRT)

Rorem: Songs

Butterworth: A Shropshire Lad, Bredon Hill

Schumann: Dichterliebe

 

No-one attending this morning’s recital could doubt Simon Keenlyside’s emotional involvement with this music: as if to emphasise his identification with the subject material he spoke, briefly, at the end of the concert about the waste and futility expressed by Butterworth in his Housman songs. This cycle has been taken much more seriously of late, most recently in a superb recording of the complete Butterworth songs by Mark Stone. The elegiac nature of the songs, with their sense of loss and pastoral nostalgia, is only enhanced by knowledge of the composer’s early death at the Battle of the Somme. Too often this means that the songs can feel overly nostalgic or cloying. Not here: while Keenlyside gave us pastoral simplicity when needed he wasn’t above relaxing into the jolly nature of the first few songs of the Shropshire Lad set. However when called for, such as the poignant Is my team ploughing or Bredon Hill, there was wistful elegance, combined with an actor’s gift for role-play, though at times this came close to sounding forced. The more angular sound-world of Ned Rorem formed a good curtain-raiser with four utterly different songs covering subject as diverse as love, loss and a drunken father!

 

Keenlyside’s tone remains as golden as ever, particularly in the middle and lower register. In the first half I wasn’t quite so convinced by his upper voice which felt stretched and even a little forced in places. This disappeared for Dichterliebe, however, a cycle with which he is closely associated. He knows this music intimately and he displays the greatest skill of a lieder singer: the ability to take the audience on a journey. The poet’s hope, however faint, came through in the opening songs but desolation gradually took over until the ending. Great as this cycle is it can run the risk of being repetitive in its subject matter, but the artistry of this singer meant that each song came alive in its own way: Ich grolle nicht was a pinnacle, searing pain intermingled with stout resilience (or is it just an act?). Martineau remains one of the finest lieder accompanists: the postludes that Schumann includes to most songs kept the drama moving after the singer had stopped, and his rumbling march of the soldiers’ feet was very atmospheric in On the idle hill of summer. Schubert’s bouncy Einsame was a well-won encore.

 

The concert was recorded by BBC Radio 3 to be broadcast on Wednesday September 1^st. The Edinburgh International Festival runs until Sunday 5^th September in venues across the city. For full details and to book tickets go to www.eif.co.uk.

 

Simon Thompson

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