Sitting in the church at the Sidwell Memorial Recital by Nicholas Mogg and James Sherlock, I couldn\’t help but remember the recent reading at a service of the Parable of the Wedding Banquet, where everybody had something else to do. It really merited more than a loyal core – a bigger audience would have been good.
I hope everyone, though probably, like me, reading these afterwards, had time to take in Nicholas Mogg\’s very intelligent programme notes. It shows what a Cambridge musical education can do for a singer who thinks. Speaking of singers who think, I think there are some things that are well worth bearing in mind. Nicholas only turned 24 a few weeks before the recital. He is extremely professional and careful about what, when and where he sings at this stage of his career and he\’s looking to the long term. It has to be remembered that all our leading baritones started somewhere and they were 24 once too. Sometimes I\’ve had an astonished reaction if I\’ve said to someone that such and such an opera role would suit him – but we\’re not talking about now. This is looking ten or more years ahead.
The development of Nicholas\’ voice over the 2 years he\’s sung at Hampstead is remarkable, and often it is hard to remember, as singers in his age group will tell you, how young he is.
The group of English songs which formed the first half of the programme demonstrated several of Nicholas\’ particular strengths, one of which does not always appear with young baritones. His soft singing is very beautiful. In the second Vaughan Williams song \”The Infinite Shining Heavens\” there was a lovely diminuendo on the last words \”To me\”.
Nicholas introduced the songs himself. He has a natural knack of communicating with an audience and you can hear everything he says. I\’ve mentioned him in an opera before, but he has a tall, elegant presence on the platform – and you can\’t teach anyone to be elegant. Either they are or they aren\’t!
\”In Flanders\” by Ivor Gurney, about whom I wrote in a recent review, caught the hopeless homesickness of a soldier stuck (almost literally in the mud) in the trenches. In pre-Eurostar days the Paris train ploughed through the area where those battles took place, and on a wet day it almost doesn\’t bear thinking about what it must have been like. One can\’t help noticing that, in virtually all the songs of the time, it\’s a pastoral England these men are missing. Nobody talks about missing the glow of the gas lamps and the clatter of the hansoms in London – or any other city.
\”Priez pour paix\” by Poulenc, and its very Poulenc accompaniment beautifully played by James, is set to a poem by Charles d\’Orléans, written during the 100 Years War, and well he might pray for peace, shut up as a hostage in the Tower of London, with not a lot to do but write poetry – and there\’s a lovely illuminated miniature of him doing it. And Nicholas\’ French came over well. His diction is excellent, and this, and the fine top voice he\’s developing showed in \”The Lads in their Hundreds\” by Butterworth.
I hold up my hand here – I\’ve held it up before. English song of the earlier part of the 20th century is not top of my list, but \”Is my Team Ploughing\” by Butterworth brought tears to my eyes. I hadn\’t really studied the text, and it was one of Nicholas\’ most moving performances. The contrast of the whispering of the dead soldier talking to his friend, who\’s survived and using the full volume of Nicholas\’ voice, couldn\’t have been more effective. And we know Butterworth was killed. Nicholas can cut an opera sized voice right down in just one bar. It turns on a sixpence.
In one of the remaining three songs \”Fear no More the Heat of the Sun \” by Finzi Nicholas showed off his diction again – and Shakespeare\’s words deserve it! Whatever volume he\’s singing he never looks as if he\’s trying.
You may have noticed I so far haven’t said much about James. That is simply because for a pianist of his quality, the accompaniments to these songs don\’t often give him the chance to show what he can really do. But now…….
The second half of the programme was Schumann\’s Liederkreis Op 39. Liederkreis means literally a Circle of Songs, and that is what it is. There is no plot, as in, for example, Schubert\’s \”Schöne Müllerin\”. In clear German Nicholas set out to demonstrate that he knows how Lieder works. And he used his acting skills, just with his face, to paint the pictures in the songs.
Since your reviewer came to live in London, at the dawn of the 1960s, there have been many changes in the music world. One is the rise of Baroque music to its present glorious zenith here. Another is that opera singers really – no really – have to act. In fact some of them are so good – tenor Jonas Kaufmann and bass-baritone Luca Pisaroni spring to mind – that they could probably have careers as straight actors if they wanted to.
But another one, particularly as far as this country is concerned, is that operatic voices can – and do – sing Lieder. Although this has always been the case in the German-speaking world, I can well remember when Lieder was what you did if you had a small voice or even not very much voice at all – \”but so-and-so is so artistic!\” – and there were certainly singers around who wouldn\’t get away with it now. Happily, fine British Lieder singers, some of whom were really young at the time of which I speak, began to develop, and we now include some of the leading Lieder singers of the world.
The poems of these songs were by a leading Romantic poet of the day, Joseph von Eichendorff, a Baron, no less, and the cycle includes most of the themes beloved by German Romanticism – forests, night, nature in general, love, both happy and unhappy, ancient castles, and so on.
The \”big\” song in this cycle is \”Waldesgespräch\” which rather primly translates as Conversation in a Forest. But do not be deceived. This is a favourite theme in medieval lore – the Young Knight Encounters the Bad Girl. Swirling through the mists of lay and legend, Kundry, Mélusine, La Belle Dame sans Merci, Morgan le Fay (she had brains, that one) and the Lorelei, are examples of this glamorous figure, much loved, later in the century by the pre-Raphaelites, who tended to paint super chaps looking, when challenged by such a seductress, as it they\’re thinking \”Gosh, my Housemaster never told me about this!\”
When Nicholas reached the point of realizing it was the Lorelei, after skilfully negotiating His and Hers voices, he actually shrank back and gripped the piano behind him, and quite right too.
All through the cycle, Nicholas demonstrated his remarkable command of line. In the exquisite \”Mondnacht\” the song spun out like a thread of silk (it is very soft) which would have been a credit to any Lieder artist. And he doesn\’t lose the colour.
Whether fast or slow, delicate or dramatic, James was absolutely there. He is now working with top-class Lieder singers, and I\’m not surprised. Some of his speeds in these songs were very smart, and the piano part sparkled. These songs include a number of very quick mood changes, and Nicholas was alive to them all. This certainly should become a key item in his repertoire, and let\’s hope he will do the other Liederkreis, Op 24. Very sensibly, he has learnt, and tried out, \”Winterreise\”, perhaps the greatest Lieder cycle ever written, and put it on hold till a bit later on. Something to look forward to!
And then we had pure fun. As his encore, Nicholas sang Papageno\’s last aria from \”The Magic Flute\” which he\’s never sung before. In a few square feet round the piano, he used all the space he had, and his natural sense of fun, to show us what a great role this will be for him. It gave, I hope, those people in the audience who hadn\’t seen him in opera a chance to see what a real theatre animal he is!
I said Nicholas had an elegant presence – some of us think he\’d be a great Onegin. But he only just had it! We know a working singer\’s day is busy – but please don\’t leave your tails on a London bus! A credit is due to TfL for tracking their progress and getting them back to him!