The
‘Song on the South Bank’ series is a noble
attempt to perform the near – impossible:
that is, to attract lovers of vocal music
away from the obvious perfections of the Wigmore
Hall to a place memorably described by Thomas
Quasthoff as ‘ideal for the development of
photos.’ It’s amusing to recall that when
the QEH was first used as a recital hall,
the prediction was that it would soon put
the Wigmore into the shade, and it is not
only due to William Lyne’s brilliance that
this forecast proved a false one, since going
to the QEH involves not just grappling with
the insulting surroundings of the so-called
‘South Bank complex’ but also grinning and
bearing the unwelcoming foyer / bar area where
smoking is rife, not to mention sitting in
a super-heated auditorium so murkily lit that
one can’t even spot friends at three rows’
distance. This series got off to a less than
promising start with a couple of not exactly
stellar evenings, featuring notable singers
who, for varying reasons, were some way from
their best, but on this occasion it was worth
straying from Wigmore Street to experience
a performance of Britten’s ‘Canticles’ of
such authority and dramatic power that it
is hard to imagine it being bettered.
The
success of this evening was partly due to
the coherent planning of the programme: eschewing
the notion that audiences prefer ‘a bit of
this and a bit of that,’ we got a pretty relentlessly
serious couple of hours, with just two closely
linked composers involved and only a whisper
or two of anything approaching levity. The
rather brief first half was less engaging
than the second, since Britten’s arrangements
of Purcell were at times performed earnestly
rather than with the wit they require. ‘Let
the dreadful engines of the eternal will’
is one of those semi-demented rants with which
Purcell excelled in providing his comic baritones
(think the Drunken Poet in The Faerie Queene)
but it is not an easy piece with which to
begin an evening: Leigh Melrose coped fairly
well with the frequent key changes involved
in suggesting the character’s emotions but
his voice as yet lacks colour and variety
– one suspects that he was a little exposed
in this context and in this vocal company,
since it has only been a few years since he
was a ‘Cardiff Singer of the World’ finalist.
His burgeoning operatic career stands him
in good stead when it comes to stage presence,
but one wants a little more individuality
in the voice to support this kind of music.
Individuality
is certainly Michael Chance’s calling card,
and he did all he could to present ‘Pious
Celinda’ and ‘Sweeter than roses’ in as winning
a manner as possible: his tone quality remains
a fine one, but at present his pitch is not
quite certain at crucial moments, and of course
he uses much of his artistry to circumvent
this, with a consequent loss in terms of vivid
vocal presentation. My own first experience
of these songs was hearing them sung by the
tenor Nigel Rogers, in so florid and enthusiastically
lubricious a manner that I was quite astonished
by them, and by his style of vocal production:
Chance is more subtle, and although I doubt
if many of the audience were surprised by
his performance, they will have enjoyed, as
I did, his fluency in the ornate passages
and his obvious desire to bring home the message
of the words, with Roger Vignoles his equal
in relishing the music of such passages as
‘Then shot like fire…’ even though pianist
and singer were not always totally in harmony.
Britten’s
Five Canticles are infrequently given
as a whole, and, quite apart from the fact
that they were not written as one piece or
even projected as a unit, it’s not hard to
see why: they seem to require an unusual commitment
on the part of the singers, their vocal and
histrionic demands are stringent, and they
present challenges in staging, all of which
difficulties were triumphantly solved in this
remarkable performance. ‘Semi – staged’ is
a loaded term, with uncomfortable overtones
of penguin suits and silk dresses semaphoring
embarrassingly: here, it meant presented with
the utmost simplicity, beautifully lit (yes,
it’s possible in the QEH, but to whom do we
give the credit, since s/he was not listed
in the programme?) and with effective yet
minimal movement which served to contextualize
both music and words. Of course, none of this
would fully succeed without the involvement
of a central singer possessed of unusual vocal
prowess and stage presence, and we had that
in the person of John Mark Ainsley, a tenor
who genuinely does fit the description of
‘a British singer on the world stage,’ and
whose singing of Britten is now without equal.
The
tenor soloist holds the individual works together
in much the same way as a Bach Evangelist,
here too narrating stories of elemental suffering
and divine forgiveness, and Ainsley’s performance
was a model of verbal clarity, noble restraint,
most moving depiction of dramatic passages,
and vocal distinction of that rare kind entirely
devoid of hooting, preciousness or blandness.
This is perhaps the most truly literate
singer around today, and I know that’s
mainly why I admire him so much, but no one
in this audience could do other than respond
with delight to the singing he gave us in
‘My beloved is mine’ and ‘Still Falls the
Rain.’ Quarles’ ‘A Divine Rapture’ is overtly
religious in subject matter but Britten’s
setting of it is clearly expressive of the
love between man and man: the wonderful beginning,
with the piano’s distinct parts for each hand
finally merging into one, was superbly performed
by both singer and pianist, and lines such
as ‘He’s my supporting elm and I his vine’
given with absolute directness and subdued
passion as well as crystal clear diction.
Sitwell’s
poem ‘Still Falls the Rain’ is one of Britten’s
most eloquent and also most Purcellian settings:
here, Richard Watkins’ horn provided the vocal
line with rather reticent support in contrast
to the intensity of the vocal performance,
which appropriately rose to a searing, but
not over-stated pitch at ‘See, see where Christ’s
blood streams in the firmament!’
‘Abraham
and Isaac’ was the evening’s central performance,
and it was superb: this most operatic of pieces,
so often recalling Britten’s other vocal works,
most movingly Billy Budd, is simply
constructed of a duet between tenor and alto
voices to depict the instructions of God,
and the persons of Father and Son presented
by tenor and alto respectively. I don’t know
how Peter Pears and Kathleen Ferrier interpreted
the work at its 1952 premiere but I cannot
imagine any finer rendition than that which
Ainsley and Chance gave us on this occasion:
Chance’s assumption of the role of the innocent
child was absolutely perfect, his tone and
manner unforced yet utterly convincing, and
he blended exquisitely with the tenor in their
unison passages. Ainsley’s singing of the
father was masterly: the voice is so beautiful
in itself that it must surely be a temptation
to simply ride with it, but he is consistently
responsive to every vocal and verbal nuance
and subtlety: always the figure of authority,
he was nevertheless quite heart-breaking at
such lines as ‘Make thee ready, my dear darling’
and especially ‘Come hither, my child, thou
art so sweet, / Thou must be bound both hands
and feet.’ This was highly charged yet never
over-stated singing of a kind which I am sure
Britten would have loved, as indeed he would
have approved of Vignoles’ liquid accompaniment.
The
final works were a powerful ‘Journey of the
Magi’ and a very much less reserved performance
than the usual of ‘The death of Saint Narcissus’
in which the eloquence of the singing was
beautifully echoed by the harp of Lucy Wakeford.
It’s two very starry names for the remaining
recitals in this series, Dmitri Hvorostovsky
on February 17th and Renee Fleming
on March 25th – if they’re not
already sold out, it’s worth braving the concrete
blocks to go and hear them.
Melanie Eskenazi
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