Jonathan Lemalu has enjoyed as swift a rise to fame
as any singer I’ve come across, and this is partly justified, since
his bass-baritone is genuinely beautiful and he is clearly a real stage
animal, with plenty of personality ideally suited to many operatic roles.
His MSND Bottom and his Gianni Schicchi, both at the Royal College,
showed tremendous promise of great things to come, and a recent recital
with Sarah Walker and RogerVignoles was almost equally impressive. However,
I have uneasy feelings about him, mainly stemming from the sheer volume
of high-profile work he has taken on, and the fact that he seems to
be under-prepared at times; Boston friends tell me that at a recent
Tanglewood Festival concert he seemed to be either coasting or simply
overwhelmed, and this Wigmore Hall recital may well have come too early
for him. Everyone wants to discover a great new star, and the absurd
adulation given to his (really only promising) debut disc by ‘Gramophone’
is clear evidence of that fact; is he being pushed too far, too fast?
Only time will tell, but his own website sadly does not portend too
well; for connoisseurs of such things, be warned that it is right up
there with, say, Susan Graham’s in ‘Yuk’ factor terms, but she at least
has already had a stellar career to counteract the nausea. In passing,
Lemalu’s site credits someone called ‘Sir Thomas Hampson’ (sic) with
having influenced his career; oh dear.
Back to the music. Any singer who manages to get through
this ‘cycle’ without depending on a score, and without any textual errors
save the common one of reversing the order of the stanzas in ‘Abschied,’
gets a big tick and a star from me, just for starters, and Lemalu not
only managed that but also sang much of it quite beautifully. Someone
once described another singer to me as having ‘a really lovely voice,
but one that’s not terribly well connected to her head,’ and that phrase
might equally well apply to Lemalu at the present time, both technically
and physically. The voice is rich, sonorous and used with taste and
musicality, but as yet the interpretation is barely formed, and he seems
to sing many of the words with lovely tone but without convincing us
that he really understands what he’s singing about.
He has clearly studied both past and present masters
of the genre, and one day his own singing may well stand alongside that
of his major influences, who I would say at present are Ainsley for
the Rellstab settings and Hotter for the Heine. He has clearly been
listening very intensely to the Hyperion recording, since for songs
such as ‘Liebesbotschaft’ he does, or tries to do, everything Ainsley
does, but without that tenor’s unforced charm and naturally ardent manner;
thus ‘Eilst zur Geliebten’ had the ideal slight pressure on the first
word, but ‘Wiege das Liebchen…’ missed the last ounce of tenderness.
Slightly more worrying is Lemalu’s indefinite diction at present, and
this is an area where further study of his English colleague would be
well worth his while, since at present he frequently sings words such
as ‘mich’ and ‘dich’ without their endings, and some such as ‘du’ are
omitted altogether. There was plenty of ardour in ‘Ständchen,’
but neither he nor his worthy accompanist really made you feel that
they had looked at the song afresh. The latter’s sometimes rather leaden
accompaniment made ‘Abschied’ rather heavy weather, but Lemalu did relax
a little during this song, whilst maintaining his concept of it as a
melancholy rather than jolly piece, again echoing the Hyperion version.
Hotter’s influence is readily apparent in the Heine
songs, and here Lemalu seemed more at home, perhaps because their generally
more sombre nature is more in keeping with the colour of his voice.
I kept wishing that he would ‘open up’ a little, since I know he has
it in him to produce the forward tone needed in ‘Ihr Bild’ and ‘Am Meer,’
but both were on the reticent side. ‘Der Doppelgänger’ had moments
of great intensity, but there was little sense that he knows the meaning
of phrases like ‘Und ringt die Hände’ and ‘Mir graust es,’ and
the tremendous power he has at his command remained latent rather than
frankly released, as I think it needs to be in this song. ‘Die Taubenpost’
was beautifully sung, with just the right sense of aching tenderness,
and the proper acknowledgement of the centrality of that key word ‘Sehnsucht!’
yet without leaning on it too much. The audience was warm but not ecstatic,
and that just about sums up my own feelings: this is a real talent who
will have a great career, but at present he needs to slow down a little,
since he has everything to look forward to in the years ahead.
Melanie Eskenazi
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