The Golden Succession – Schubert and Britten – was a very interesting concept for a song recital – and a very interesting recital was what we had. We had four gentlemen – Paul Robinson, tenor, Robin Tyson, counter-tenor and Nicholas Mogg, baritone, all well-known to us – and someone we didn’t know – 17 year old French horn player, Ben Goldscheider. There had been a problem because James Sherlock is unable to play for several weeks yet, due to a neck injury, so we had someone even better know to us – Jonathan Beatty. And it’s part of the plot of this musical drama that Jonny and Nicholas had never even met till the day of the concert. Bear that in mind.
We began with “Auf dem Strom”, actually heard at a public concert of Schubert’s music while he was still living his short life. To contrast Schubert’s Lieder with Britten’s Canticles is an unusual idea, as their emotional and sound-worlds are so different, but it worked. Among many achievements, Ben is Principal Horn of the National Youth Orchestra and it was hard to believe, when you heard his full-bodied tone and agility, that he is so young. As an unashamed brass fan, I much enjoyed hearing him. For a city boy, if I may say so, Schubert seems to have boundless imagination for representing water and here it was in all its moods. Paul has always been a stylish Lieder singer and his role here was to keep the vocal line flowing while the piano and horn wove under and around it to show the changes of tides and so on. And of course he did.
We then had the first of the Britten Canticles in the programme “My Beloved is Mine”. Britten more than most composers was very into writing for specific people. He was equally likely to drop them if he wanted to. It is not surprising that this piece was written for Peter Pears – indeed English tenors should hold a Thanksgiving or something – on Britten’s birthday, perhaps? As Britten, an outstanding accompanist, would have played it himself, he set the bar high for his successors, but Jonny was up to the challenge. He always is. Some parts of the vocal line had a definite flavour of “Peter Grimes”. Paul was particularly effective in the recitative sections. You couldn’t mistake this piece for any other composer – it had Britten’s handwriting all over it.
Next up was a well known canticle “Abraham and Isaac”. Here we had a transposition which really came off. Abraham was of course, a tenor, but the original Isaac was the great contralto, Kathleen Ferrier. We had a counter-tenor, Robin Tyson, instead. A success! An appealing detail, even if a bit odd, was that the voice of God was two people. The blend of Paul and Robin was spot on. The text was from the Chester Miracle Plays, and included the charming anachronism of Abraham giving Isaac “the blessing of the Trinity”. Rather avant-garde!
After the interval we had Schumann’s Adagio and Allegro for Horn. This is what inspired the comments I’ve made about Ben already. I’ve always noticed how lovely brass instruments look – brass players are lucky as they can always get a good publicity photo! But oh, so expensive – and Ben has had financial aid with the one he plays. (Slight digression – one of the R.A.M students told me recently that a contrabassoon costs as much as a small car!) It’s already obvious Ben should have a good career – he plans to study in Germany. And of course it was all from memory.
Nicholas now stepped forward to give us some outstanding Lieder singing by any standards. All the three songs he sang had poems by Matthäus Collin, a Viennese, like Schubert. The first song “Wehmut” had a fairly standard gloom-in-the-woods romantic text, but Schubert’s magic touch – and I believe he never wrote a ‘bad’ song – can create atmosphere in a few bars, and make any poem sound like a masterpiece. Nicholas and his excellent Welsh pianist, Jâms Coleman, are the current Oxford Lieder Young Artists, with two other Lieder prizes to their credit, and it doesn’t take long to see why Nicholas won. Jonny has always been a fine Lieder pianist, and we were about to find out just how fine. “Der Zwerg” (The Dwarf) is a very big, very difficult piece of Lieder, not done often, and it does need a baritone to make it work. Bear with me while I explain the back-story to Collin’s long poem, a fine example of the Gothic Horror genre.
Long ago and far away there lived a King whose wife had died and left him with an only daughter. He wished to have her well-educated. We do not, hopefully, like to use the word “dwarf” nowadays but at this time large sums of money were paid to have one at court, perhaps as a sort of little pet, perhaps as a resident comedy act. When one arrived after the King had sought him out because he had heard a lot about him he turned out to be a very intelligent and interesting person, and the king arranged for him to tutor his daughter. They grew close, very close. And then a king from a stony island asked for the daughter’s hand. She dutifully agreed, and when she was leaving for her new home her father handed two of her ladies-in-waiting and the dwarf to her, as though they were pieces of property, as her wedding present.
At the wedding festivities the new Queen, who had never seen the dwarf expected to amuse the court till now, felt that the situation was impossible. She met the dwarf secretly – and now we come to the song. They had gone out together, she in her most magnificent clothes, and stepped into a boat. In the song the dwarf sings bitterly “You left me for the king” and he tells her how much he hates what he is going to do. But she is ready, and has agreed. He strangles her with a red silk cord and throws her body over the side of the boat. Then, in despair, he sails away “and he will never land on any coast again.”
Nicholas has the great gift of being able to rivet his audience’s attention. I have seen him perform in all the fields he does and it always happens. He changes his voice to suit the characters and their situation – at one point, and without damaging his voice, he made it sound as if the dwarf were almost crying. The Queen brought the power and beauty of his voice down to a near-murmur, and his expressive face mirrored what was happening. A class act.
The last song “Nacht und Träume” showed off the long line which he has always had, and it must have made an impression on the audience because there was quite a long silence when he finished, before the applause. I’ve seen this happen at the R.A.M. with a tragic Fauré song.
We returned to the Canticles for the rest of the evening. “Still falls the rain” was an interesting combination of tenor recitative, and horn solo, rather than together. Jonny had done a brilliant job with “Der Zwerg” and he showed his mettle again, and of course the piano is right through. Paul has always had very good diction but this being a text by Edith Sitwell he even had to talk a bit! I am sure she would have been pleased!
And then Canticle No 4 “The Journey of the Magi”. All hands returned for T. S. Eliot’s poem with the well-known opening lines “A cold coming we had of it”. There again, Britten had written for specific people, but we could put that out of our heads. They are rather British Magi, with Paul and Robin grumbling about the Camel Men (an insubordinate lot!) and Nicholas pointing out gloomily that the Camels were Refractory (I rode a camel once and it was refractory too!) I particularly liked Jonny’s interpretation of “that old white horse galloping away in the meadow.” And so, like the Magi, we came to the end of our journey. No encores – just a lot of vivid impressions to carry home.