Planet Hugill: Reclaiming Love: An Various Valentines

We started with all 4 singers leaning on the piano and giving us an enthralling joint model of Britten’s Inform me the reality about love, the 4 totally different voices every contributing a way of character. Then Thomas Litchev sang Grieg’s Elsk (Love) from Grieg’s 1895 track cycle Haugtussa (the one track cycle he wrote). The track is a declaration of affection for a younger man (within the cycle the shepherd that the younger girl is in love with). Right here, singing in splendidly clear Norwegian, Litchev gave a vivid, virtually compelling efficiency with a robust sense of the track’s narrative. It made you surprise why the complete track cycle just isn’t executed extra and we maybe hoped that Litchev may be performing the entire in some unspecified time in the future. Then Sam Cobb gave us Ethel Smyth’s Possession, one Three Songs, printed in 1913. A track about setting the cherished one free, given a touching but intense efficiency by Cobb. The music has fascinating chromatic hints within the melody, this is a long way from the English parlour while the piano accompaniment appeared to trace at French inspirations.

Sam Cobb and Charlie Morris joined forces for Mendelssohn’s duet, Ich wollt’ meiner lieb’ ergösse (I’d that I may pour my love), a Heine setting that was engagingly impulsive with pleasure overflowing from all three performers. There was extra Mendelssohn with Morris’ efficiency the Eichendorff setting Nachtlied and right here the night time was darkish and critical, solely getting hotter in direction of the tip as morning is promised. There was one other duet with Schumann’s In der nacht from his Spanisches Liederspiel. This began as a solo from Cobb, with Schumann very a lot in Bach mode as Cobb’s lengthy chorale-like line unwound over the extra Bachian counterpoint within the piano to fantastic impact after which tenor Jonathan Handel joined in to create actual magic. As a change of texture, Gavin Roberts was joined on the piano by Anna Reiley for a participating piano duet model of Cole Porter’s Within the nonetheless of the night time.

Jonathan Hanley returned for Britten’s My beloved is mine, with Roberts on the piano. This setting of Francis Quarles is astonishing in so some ways, notably for the mixture of subject material and date, coming because it did at a interval when homosexuality was nonetheless unlawful, but Britten and Pears carried out it in public. Roberts stored the advanced piano half gentle and relaxed in order that Hanley’s lyric tenor may float over with stunning tone. Hanley made the melismatic sections suitably ardent with the sooner episodes vivid and equally ardent, however then the ultimate part noticed issues quietening down, each performers making the music finely concentrated, ending in hypnotic style.

The primary half ended with Hanley and Litchev in a pleasant rendition of RVW’s duet, It was a lover and his lass, not significantly well-known but that includes some pretty writing for the 2 voices. And the 2 singers clearly loved themselves.

After the interval the 4 singers plus Roberts and Reiley carried out Brahms’ Love Tune Waltzes, Op.52 utilizing Neil Jenkins’ English translation. Two songs from Brahms’ Neue Liebeslider, Op.65 have been included, thus guaranteeing every singer had a solo quantity, and the vocal numbers have been interspersed with actions from Brahms’ Waltzes, Op.39.

There was one thing subtly subversive about programme Brahms alongside Smyth. After all, the 2 knew one another however Smyth in her autobiography had some reasonably tart issues to say about Brahms’ angle to ladies on the whole, and girls composers particularly!

“As the good Brahms not too long ago proclaimed:
‘A intelligent girl is a factor of naught!’
So allow us to diligently domesticate stupidity,
That being the one high quality demanded
Of a feminine Brahms-admirer!”
            Ethel Smyth Impressions that Remained (1919)

Brahms’ Liebeslieder Waltzer Op.52 stay one thing of a problem to deliver off in efficiency. For a begin there’s the composers ‘advert libitum’ towards the voices, although few are daring sufficient to overlook the voices off. The songs work finest as chamber music, 4 singers and two pianists, however we require one thing greater than 4 tremendous solo voices; an excessive amount of mix and we veer in direction of choral bland, not sufficient and the 4 voices compete reasonably than cohering. The 4 singers at St Giles Cripplegate have been clearly skilled consort and ensemble singers, so the efficiency featured 4 contrasting voices coming collectively as a really tremendous ensemble, characterful and expressive. Add into the combo Neil Jenkins’ clearly and admirable English translation, offered with splendidly understandable diction, and also you had one of the vital satisfying performances of the work that I’ve heard in a very long time.

Every singer acquired their solo second, however what the piece was actually about was the pleasant interaction between totally different teams of voices. The 4 singers right here have been having enjoyable, the music by turns flirty, critical, or melancholy, however all the time a way of interplay between the 4. And whether or not sluggish and charming or vivid and quick, their phrasing was superbly apposite.

Dare one say it, an entire efficiency of the items will be in peril of being a bit samey, with Brahms exploring comparable textures, however right here the inclusion of the Op. 39 piano-duet waltzes supplied punctuation factors, grouping the songs into coherent paragraphs.