‘Ev’ry Time We Say Goodbye’ was the encore, and the
casual concert-goer, if such beings exist, might be forgiven for wondering
how many goodbyes William Lyne is going to be saying this year – his
‘final’ one supposedly takes place on May 10th with the ‘Gala
to end all Galas’ but one can safely assume that Bill won’t turn his
back on ’36 Wigmore West One’ after the final speeches on that momentous
day. Tonight was the turn of the Handelians to bid him a musical farewell,
and it was as affectionately conveyed as it had been sensitively planned.
Both The King’s Consort and the team of soloists are
Wigmore regulars, and the singers provided a pleasing balance between
the very experienced and the recently emerged, with an understandable
bias towards the former. James Bowman has been singing here for around
thirty years, and the voice is not – cannot be – as mellifluous as once
it was, but he still has a rare ability to engage one’s attention with
the intensity and dramatic understanding of his interpretations. His
was the first vocal solo, and ‘As with rosy steps the morn advancing’
was as beautifully sung as I have heard it, giving a vivid portrayal
of the grandeur of the advancing dawn which Handel so lovingly delineates.
We continued with ‘Theodora’ for the next two pieces: sadly, Lynne Dawson
was not quite up to the vocal challenges of ‘With darkness deep,’ but
Carolyn Sampson gave a wonderfully fresh, elegantly phrased account
of ‘O, that I on wings could rise.’
Bowman again took centre stage for one of the great
‘Hunting Horn’ arias, ‘Va tacito e nascosto’ from ‘Giulio Cesare,’ an
interesting choice for him, and one which took me back to his fabulous
ENO Ptolemy alongside Janet Baker’s Caesar. Again, the voice was not
quite up to every demand made upon it, but the interpretation was fascinatingly
edgy and driven. The very challenging horn part was brilliantly played
(the programme did not make it clear whether the major solo was taken
by Andrew Clark or Martin Lawrence) – Bowman cannot be an easy singer
to ‘accompany,’ but the playing was more than a match for him.
The first part of the concert closed with a poignant,
tenderly shaped account of ‘Dull delay, in piercing anguish’ from Michael
Chance, and a superbly sung ‘Mi lusinga il dolce affetto’ from Ann Murray:
I have not heard her sing Ruggiero on stage (although I have heard her
in virtually all her other roles) but this brief extract showed how
ideally she has the measure of these parts – nothing could be faulted,
from the italianitá of the diction to the expressive quality
of the tone and the finely suggested detail in the characterization.
The overture to ‘Serse’ was a slightly perplexing beginning
to the second half; maybe it’s just me but I can never hear it without
expecting ‘Frondi tenere e belle…’ although it was played with plenty
of spirit. Lynne Dawson then gave an affecting account of Cleopatra’s
aria ‘Piangerò la sorte mia’ although I felt once more that she
was not at her best – maybe a rough patch vocally, or a cold. The highlights
of the evening were Bowman and Sampson in ‘Welcome as the dawn of day’
and Murray’s ‘Verdi prati.’ The former was absolutely delectable, the
two singers weaving in and out of the vocal lines with a real sense
of enjoyment, and the latter another testament to how the art of this
great mezzo has matured without tarnish, Handel’s mesmerizingly beautiful
melody traced with such loving skill and such exact attention to language.
The closing trio ‘Consolati, o bella’ was not quite a match for this,
but it still served to remind us of the wondrous variety of this music,
and of how fortunate we are to have been able to hear it so often in
these perfect surroundings.
Melanie Eskenazi
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