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Poor females, already London
Wigmore Hall
01/05/2001 -
Henry Purcell: What can we poor females do?, No, resistance is but vain, Shepherd, leave decoying
Ivor Gurney: I will go with my father, By a bierside, Sleep, Desire in spring
Frederick Delius: Summer landscape, Twilight fancies, In the garden of the seraglio
Herbert Howells:Blaweary, Lost love, A rondel of rest, Flood
Arr. Marjory Kennedy-Fraser: Songs of the Hebrides
Ralph Vaughan Williams: Four Last Songs
Peter Warlock: Sleep, Rest, sweet nymphs, Jillian of Berry
Ralph Vaughan Williams: Orpheus with his lute
Roger Quilter: My life's delight, Now sleeps the crimson petal
Edmund Rubbra: In dark weather
Edward German: Orpheus with his lute
Noël Coward: World weary, Twentieth Century Blues, Alice is at it again, Nina from Argentina
Lisa Milne (soprano), Sarah Connolly (mezzo-soprano), Julius Drake (piano), Sioned Williams (harp) Lisa Milne and Sarah Connolly began their recital of mainly twentieth-century British songs with Purcell's "What can we poor females do?", which was especially funny because neither of them is remotely helpless or fragile. Connolly, six feet tall in her dress pumps, is for many the mezzo of choice in Handel's castrato roles, because of her robust stage presence and swagger as well as because of her stunning singing. Milne, shorter, younger, and exuberantly healthy looking, is well on the way to being established as a big-league Handel soprano. Both also have distinguished track records in tough contemporary music, but neither has yet explored the romantic repertory very far.
So this programme, built around the late romantic English song writers of the earlier part of the century, was to some extent new ground for both of them (though Milne has recently recorded the Songs from the Hebrides which formed the sets just before and after the interval). As the songs moved forward in time, Germanic tendencies were replaced by Celtic fringe and Elizabethan retro after the second world war, and there was a touch of Coward for fun at the end. The last composed items were Vaughan Williams' Four Last Songs, completed in 1958, an English mirror of Strauss'. At first glance, this programme should be easy going for a London audience, since many of them grew up with much of it. But of course it is often difficult to keep a straight face when you hear things you sang at school. Milne and Connolly on the whole pre-empted gurns and giggles by their insight and commitment, though there were a few naff moments and overall the material didn't exactly exploit their respective strengths.
Connolly was outstanding in her first set, the Ivor Gurney songs. She was robustly lyrical in "I will go with my father", an intricate hymn to the cycle of nature with words by the nineteenth-century Irish poet Joseph Campbell, and powerfully elegaic in "By a bierside", with words by John Masefield. Her voice has a rough edge, in striking contrast to the rounded voices which usually perform this sort of music, but that contributes a moving rawness to her expression. Nothing like Bryn Terfel or Ian Bostridge, but possibly as rewarding to listen to.
Milne's performance focussed on the Songs of the Hebrides, accompanied on the harp by Sioned Williams. These songs and their arrangements are twee soi-disant romantic pastiches (that's the Latin for "ghastly"), probably familiar to anyone over forty who made it into the school choir. Milne and Williams made the best of them by keeping everything clear and simple, and as fast as possible. You couldn't fault their performances, though you might wish they hadn't bothered. The Delius set -- all based on lugubrious translations from the Danish -- was almost as painfully romantic-cod-naive, including Twilight fancies, a toe-curling effort about a princess in a tower and a cowherd's horn aroused she knows not what yearnings
Mercifully, Sir Noël rode to the rescue at the end. Connolly made a fair fist of World weary, with piano obbligato, and Alice is at it again -- definitely an opera singer doing crossover, but very entertaining -- and Milne did a terrific version of Twentieth Century Blues. They ended with a shared version of Nina from Argentina.
One problem with this programme might have been that none of the twentieth-century texts set were much good, with the exception of Masefield's By a bierside, and Coward, who wrote his own. After Gurney, to judge from this programme, the English art song went off with the antiquarian fairies. Discuss, wonder where Britten was, or listen to Coward and Cole Porter, as you prefer.
H.E. Elsom
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