Jane McDonald: Leading the Yorkshire celebrations of HM The Queen’s Platinum Jubilee at Scarborough Open Air Theatre
NATIONAL treasure Jane McDonald will be joined by The Barricade Boys and drag artiste La Voix at Yorkshire’s Platinum Jubilee Concert at Scarborough Open Air Theatre on Saturday.
Wakefield singer and television star McDonald will be flying the flag for her beloved White Rose county when leading the Yorkshire coast celebration of Her Majesty The Queen’s Platinum Jubilee in a sea of red, white and blue.
“Everyone knows I’m a proud Yorkshire lass, so it will be so thrilling to walk on to stage in Scarborough for these celebrations,” says Jane.
Malton singer and musical actor Scott Garnham, second from left, with fellow members of The Barricade Boys
Malton-born West End musical actor ad impresario Scott Garnham will be joined by three fellow past cast members of Les Misérables, Craig Mather, Kieran Brown and Simon Schofield, in The Barricade Boys line-up.
Formed in 2015, the quartet’s latest tour, Bring Him Home, features music from the West End and Broadway stage, including The Phantom Of The Opera, Miss Saigon, Jersey Boys and Les Misérables, complemented by songs by Queen, Elton John and The Beatles.
La Voix, the comedian and singer with the larger-than-life personality, is the redhead drag creation of Chris Dennis, who followed up reaching the Britain’s Got Talent semi-finals with an appearance in Ab Fab The Movie.
La Voix: Flagging up her appearance at Yorkshire’s Platinum Jubilee Concert
La Voix is completing the fifth year of an international one-woman theatre tour that visited the Grand Opera House, York, last October and has hosted a show on BBC Three Counties Radio for more than two years.
Headliner Jane McDonald, TV host of Cruising With Jane McDonald, Jane & Friends, Holidaying With Jane McDonald and Jane McDonald Explores Yorkshire and Loose Women regular, is promising a night of pomp and pageantry. “What an occasion this is going to be,” she says.
“It’s going to be amazing. A really rousing night, full of song. It will be a real sing-along event, so bring your voices. I expect it’ll be emotional too, but above all else we’ll have a good old party. It’s a celebration of The Queen’s life, but also all our lives and life in general after the past couple of years. A celebration of life as we know it!”
Tickets for this 6pm event are on sale at scarboroughopenairtheatre.com.
The poster for Saturday’s concert at Scarborough Open Air Theatre
Kris Drever and Rachel Baiman: “The night was more interesting as you could see they were still learning and working on the finer details” . Picture: Paul Rhodes
THE Drever mark is one that assures quality, whether as one third of Lau, at the core of the Spell Songs “supergroup” or on his one melodious solo work.
Making his first return to York since the pandemic forced him to “wind his neck in” – as he memorably sang on Hunker Down/That Old Blitz Spirit – Kris Drever was the lead in a duo with American multi-instrumentalist Rachel Baiman, hosted by York’s Black Swan Folk Club.
Where Drever’s voice is smooth, Baiman’s has more sharp edges, especially at the top end of her voice. The combination of styles worked a treat, especially so given that their planned tour rehearsals were derailed by a turned-around flight and Baiman being left in stood in the aisle as the train left Winchester.
Both artists have had tours cancelled or curtailed due to Covid, so this setback seems to have inspired them to make the very most of the opportunity to tour. Playing guitar, banjo and singing, Baiman was credited with the arrangements, which revealed new angles to even Drever’s most familiar song, If Wishes Were Horses.
Baiman’s short solo set prompted many to seek out the merchandise stand. It showed an artist who could take many paths, from the traditional Old Songs Never Die to – admittedly more outlandishly – stadium rock (Young Love, following in Patti Smith’s tracks).
Kris Drever: “Standing under the plaque to the men and boys from St Margaret’s and St Peter-le-Willows who died in the Great War”. Picture: Paul Rhodes
The rapport between the duo was easy and unforced, and the night was more interesting as you could see they were still learning and working on the finer details. Drever has sometimes played it too safe with his recorded work, so it was rewarding to see him investing in a riskier collaboration. His guitar playing was as nimble and joyful as ever, particularly on the folksier numbers.
Drever’s set was carefully chosen across his solo work. There was no space for any of his Spell Song contributions, but a new tune, at the behest of the Stonehaven Folk Club, Catterline, had the same timeless, haunting quality of Scatterseed.
His ability to absorb a subject, then convey the essence through song is one of Drever’s greatest gifts. Standing under the plaque to the 40 or so men and boys from St Margaret’s Church and St Peter-le-Willows Church who died in the Great War, Drever’s lament to the Germans who wasted away on Scapa Flow was all the more affecting. Sandy was even better.
The encore, I Didn’t Try Hard Enough, was an ironic note to end on, but closed this highly entertaining evening to rapturous applause for this hard-working pair.
Fourmidable: York children’s entertainer Josh Benson will perform four Just Josh shows a day at the York Spring Fair and Food Festival
BIG beards, food and funfairs galore, Irish whimsy, postcard art, tree theatre, Moronic music, female folk and a year’s notice of camp comedy catch Charles Hutchinson’s eye.
York Spring Festival and Food Fair, Clocktower Enclosure, York Racecourse, Knavesmire, York, running until June 5
IN its second year at York Racecourse, this event takes in the Platinum Jubilee long weekend celebrations to complement the 15 vintage funfair rides, food stalls, live music and family entertainment, highlighted by the lighting of York’s Jubilee Beacon on Thursday evening.
Look forward to 6.30pm performances by York musicians Huge, The Y Street Band, Hyde Family Jam and New York Brass Band, plus Wales’s Old Time Sailors.
Busiest of all will be York children’s entertainer, “balloonologist”, juggler and magician Josh Benson, performing his high-energy Just Josh show four times a day. Tickets: ticketsource.co.uk/yorkspringfair.co.uk.
Jorvik Viking Festival: Invading forces take over York city centre for five days. Picture: Charlotte Graham
Half-term festival of the week: Jorvik Viking Festival, York, today until Wednesday
NEARLY two and a half years after hordes of Viking warriors and settlers last descended on the city, York is ready for five days of Norse-themed fun and entertainment.
Moved from February to fit into the summer half-term holiday, the 2022 festival sees the return of a living history encampment, March to Coppergate, Strongest Viking and Best Beard contests and Poo Day at DIG, as well as a new arena event this evening, The Jorvik Games. For full festival details and tickets, go to: jorvikvikingfestival.co.uk.See full preview below.
Furious romp:The poster for Dylan Moran’s We Got This tour, visiting York tonight
Comedy gig of the week: Dylan Moran, We Got This, Grand Opera House, York, tonight, 8pm
DROLL Irish comedian Dylan Moran promises a joyously furious romp through the frustration and folly of modern-day life in his new tour show.
“These times have not been easy,” he says. “Learn how to make breakfast not even knowing you are out of bed. Diagnose the mirror, reason with the mice and boil yoghurt blindfolded. Enjoy the fruits of hurtling cognitive decline and your neighbours’ sprawling ghastliness, absence of humanity and so, so much more.” Box office: 0844 871 7615 or atgtickets.com/York.
Postcards on the edge: Rows of original postcard artworks on sale at PICA Studios
Art event of the weekend: PICA Postcard Show and Sale, PICA Studios, Grape Lane, York, today and tomorrow, 10am to 4pm
THE artists at the PICA Studios workshop are branching out into one-off postcard artworks for one weekend only. Each postcard will sell for £25 to raise funds towards improving the studio space and to create a gallery in the foyer.
Taking part will be Lesley Birch, Evie Leach, Emily Stubbs, Katrina Mansfield, Ealish Wilson, Sarah Jackson, Ric Liptrot, Jo Edmonds, Lisa Power, Amy Stubbs, Mick Leach, Rae George, Lesley Shaw Lu Mason and Kitty Pennybacker. Purchases also can be made online via instagram@picastudios.
Badapple Theatre Company’s poster for Danny Mellor’s Yorkshire Kernel at Theatre@41
Family drama of the weekend: Badapple Theatre Company in Yorkshire Kernel, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, today, 2.30pm and 7.30pm
JAMES’S Grandad is at death’s door, but he has one last mission: to find a tree. Many trees in fact, scattered around the country in memory of his Second World War comrades. So begins writer, performer and puppeteer Danny Mellor’s play for Green Hammerton company Badapple.
Divided between being haunted by his plain-speaking grandfather, his mother rekindling her romance with an old flame, and James’s pregnant partner, Rosie, thinking he is cheating on her, Mellor’s “bonkers” solo show undertakes a journey of Yorkshire wit and grit through one man’s determination to leave a long-lasting legacy. Box office: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.
The Lovely Eggs: Playing The Crescent at the seventh attempt
Cracking gig of the week: The Lovely Eggs, supported by Arch Femmesis and Thick Richard, The Crescent, York, tomorrow, 7.30pm
PROUDLY independent northern psychedelic punk rock duo The Lovely Eggs do not give up. After re-scheduling the tour to promote April 2020’s release of their I Am Moron album seven times, they play The Crescent at last this weekend.
Iggy Pop, no less, contributed to their track I, Moron. “For him just to say nothing but ‘moron’ over and over again fitted in with the sentiment of the song perfectly,” says Lovely Egg Holly Ross. “He just got it. We are all morons. In a world of moronic things. In a world of moronic ideas. You are Moron. I am Moron. We are Moron.” OK, Morons and Eggheads, tickets are on sale at thecrescentyork.com.
Rachel and Becky Unthank: York Barbican debut on Tuesday, showcasing new songs from Sorrows Away
Folk gigs of the week: The Unthanks, Sorrows Away Tour, York Barbican, Tuesday, 7.45pm; Katherine Priddy, supported by George Boomsma, National Centre for Early Music, York, Wednesday, 7.30pm
RETURNING to touring after two years off the road, Northumbrian folk musicians The Unthanks will be previewing their upcoming autumn album Sorrows Away in their York Barbican debut with an 11-piece ensemble. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.
The following night at the NCEM, finger-picking guitarist and haunting singer Katherine Priddy performs enchanting songs on the theme of childhood, distant memories and whatever will follow next from last June’s debut album, The Eternal Rocks Beneath. Box office: 01904 658338 or ncem.co.uk.
Katherine Priddy: Contemporary roots singer and guitarist, playing songs from The Eternal Rocks Beneath at the NCEM. Picture: Sam Wood
Gig launch of the week: Tom Allen, Completely, York Barbican, May 28 2023
YOU will have to wait 12 months for comedian, raconteur, arch television jester and radio presenter Tom Allen’s new show, Completely, to arrive in York. Tickets go on sale rather sooner, from 10am on Monday at yorkbarbican.co.uk.
At 38, Bromley-born Allen has finally moved out of his parents’ house, prompting his eagerness to share his life updates, gain audience opinions on his vegetable patch and delve into the protocol of inviting friends with children for dinner.
On the distant horizon: Tom Allen’s newly announced York Barbican show is a full year away
Jorvik Viking Festival returns with more fun and games…
TENTS for an encampment are being set up in Parliament Street and screens installed at the Eye of York. Traders are transporting their wares to the Guildhall and St Sampson’s Square and a faint smell of mead is wafting through the air. Welcome to the return of the Jorvik Viking Festival.
Nearly two and a half years after hordes of Viking warriors and settlers last descended on the city, York is preparing for five days of Norse-themed fun and entertainment, starting today (28/5/2022).
Postponed from February to fit snugly into the half-term holiday before the Jubilee bank holiday, this year’s festival will see the return of such favourite events as a living history encampment, the March To Coppergate and the Strongest Viking and Best Beard contests, alongside a new arena event at 6.45pm this evening, The Jorvik Games.
“In February, our evening spectacular is usually a dramatic presentation of a Viking story, but with the evenings being so much lighter in May, our event will also be a little more fun,” says event manager Gareth Henry.
Viking warriors ready for a clash of styles
“The Viking Games will pit the finest warriors from four teams against each other, with spectators invited to pick their champion and cheer them on to victory. Henry. Of course, being Vikings, they might not always play by the rules – and with their own horde of supporters behind them on the arena field, sparks will fly with skirmishes inevitable!”
Tickets for The Jorvik Games are still available, priced £15 for adults and £11 for concessions, with family tickets also available at jorvikvikingfestival.co.uk.
While Saturday will be the festival’s busiest day, visitors from Sunday to Wednesday will enjoy a host of events and activities too. On Sunday, at 29/31 Coney Street, visitors can meet Vikings from all over Europe, brought together under the Erasmus scheme, including fun crafting activities.
Young warriors can hone their skills in Have-A-Go Sword sessions on the Parliament Street stage and the Ting Tang re-enactors will bring theatre to the stage every day too.
Five go Viking in York for five days
The last few places remain on crafting workshops taking place Monday to Wednesday at York Medical Society, on Stonegate, including Nalebinding (Viking knitting), Trichinopoly (wire weaving) and tablet weaving.
On Wednesday, Jorvik’s sister attraction, DIG in St Saviourgate, will host the ever-popular Poo Day, a chance for children (and adults!) to try their hand at making a replica Viking poo, based on the world-famous Lloyds Bank Coprolite (fossilised poo, should you be wondering).
Jorvik Viking Centre’s exhibition of items from the Silverdale Hoard, on loan from Lancashire County Museums, is also expected to be popular, with tickets for the attraction selling out for many time slots throughout the half-term break.
“With good weather forecast for the weekend, we’re expecting York to be particularly busy, so would urge visitors to pre-book their tickets wherever possible to avoid disappointment,” says Henry.
Full details of all Jorvik Viking Festival events can be found at jorvikvikingfestival.co.uk.
Steven Jobson’s Edward Hyde and Nicola Holliday’s Lucy Harris
York Musical Theatre Company in Jekyll & Hyde The Musical, York Musical Theatre Company, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, 7.30pm tonight; 2.30pm and 7.30pm tomorrow. Box office: 01904 501935 or at josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk.
ON the only previous time CharlesHutchPress encountered Leslie Bricusse and Frank Wildhorn’s Broadway musical, at Leeds Grand Theatre in July 2011, this was his verdict.
“In a nutshell, it is a very good performance of a not particularly good musical adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s novella that has but one memorable song, This Is The Moment,” he wrote, before concluding: “A deliciously wicked way to spend tonight or tomorrow awaits you”.
Eleven years on, This Is The Moment continues to stand out, but once more, Jekyll & Hyde The Musical’s story of love, betrayal and murder hits the mark in performance, this time under the gothic-inspired direction of Matthew Clare.
The aforementioned 2011 touring production relied on the handsome pop star chops of Marti Pellow in the dual role of upstanding, if obsessive Dr Henry Jekyll and his vengeful, sadistic, chemically altered alter ego, Mr Edward Hyde.
Director Matthew Clare
Clare goes with freelance actor, singer and voice actor Steven Jobson, whose love of performing was triggered by witnessing The Phantom Of The Opera at the age of 14, another show that ventures deep into the dark side.
Jobson can certainly act; he sings Jekyll & Hyde’s difficult, impassioned, narrative-driven songs adroitly too, and you can hear why he is a voice actor as he switches between the urbane, educated, tenor airs of the romantic scientist Jekyll and the guttural bass growl of Hyde, ably retaining the distinction in song.
In one early moment, his agitated singing voice for Hyde becomes muffled in the sound mix, but let’s put that down to this being the first night.
Jobson is equally convincing in his physical transformations, never straying into Hammer Horror melodrama. His monstrous madman always lurks within, those inner demons brought to the surface by reckless scientific brio as much as by his experiments.
Alexandra Mather vowed to make Jekyll’s trusting, unknowing fiancée, Emma Carew, more three-dimensional than on the page, and she delivers on that promise in her characterisation, while her pure, operatic voice wholly suits the score.
Nick Sephton’s Sir Danvers Carew
Director Clare has decided to split the role of love-struck but fearful prostitute Lucy Harris between York musical theatre regular and radio presenter Claire Pulpher (next performance, Saturday matinee) and Scarborough professional Nicola Holliday in her YMTC debut. Holliday was on duty on Wednesday, growing into her performance the more she sang, conveying both Lucy’s untrusting, self-protective nature and quest for love.
Strong support comes from Anthon Gardner’s lawyer John Utterson and Nick Sephton’s Sir Danvers Carew, and the ensemble relishes Bring On The Men, choreographed sassily by Hannah Wakelam.
John Atkin’s band is in good order throughout, steering the path between big balladry in the Lloyd Webber mode and a sly wickedness more in keeping with Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street.
Costumes and wigs serve the primary role in evoking the Victorian era; the plain set design, by comparison, is a modern construction of metal stairways and a mezzanine level, more in keeping with a pop concert, but the use of blue lighting to denote Jekyll and red for Hyde is effective. Everyone stands, no-one sits, such is the restless, unrelenting, unnerving progression from Jekyll to hellish Hyde.
Director Clare had called Jekyll & Hyde a “niche musical”, but he has successfully brought it out of the shadows, and in Steven Jobson he has found just the man for the job.
RYEDALE Festival floated a powerful reminder of its status in the community with this world premiere of a new song-cycle written by a Pickering-born composer and largely performed by inhabitants of Ryedale.
Joseph Howard’s Seven Mercies was inspired by mediaeval murals in Pickering Church, which have only recently been brought back to life and decoded from beneath the whitewash of centuries.
They refer to specific acts of kindness – properly titled Seven Acts of Corporal Mercy – mentioned by Jesus in his Sermon on the Mount and illustrated here by stories from the Bible.
Howard’s music is built around Emma Harding’s poetic libretto, which at its core delivers a song-cycle for mezzo-soprano and piano. Its sections use different female characters whose hardships have been alleviated by someone else’s generosity, often put into a modern context: a refugee, for example, or a hospital patient prevented by Covid regulations from receiving visitors.
That is the backbone of the work and no doubt it could stand alone. But it is immensely coloured and given depth by several choral and brass interludes, as well as introduction, prologue and finale.
Joseph Howard: Pickering-born composer of Seven Mercies
Much of the text here has been devised by choir members themselves. Ryedale Festival Community Choir, under Em Whitfield Brooks, and Ryedale Primary Schools Choir (taken from Pickering Community Junior School and Gillamoor C of E and St Joseph’s RC Primary Schools), conducted by Holly Greenwood-Rogers, were joined by a brass quintet of junior members from Kirkbymoorside Town Band and bell ringer Pam Robb.
Kathryn Rudge was the inspired soloist. Her clean, clear, beautifully projected mezzo was exactly suited to evoking the plight of the desperate and the downtrodden, and Christopher Glynn’s fluently controlled piano gave her superb underpinning. When she took to the pulpit for the finale, she soared angelically above and through the combined forces below, as if offering divine support.
Both choirs had evidently been keenly trained. They represented the voices of the community coming to the aid of the needy. Where the adults were sympathetic and affectionate, the children were infectiously enthusiastic, an apt balance. The young brass were impressive too, in an early fanfare, a lament and a smooth duet for cornets.
Howard’s music, which was always attuned to the text, divided into two styles: a thoughtful, modal English for the soloist that was reminiscent of Vaughan Williams and a much more universal, generally major-key and strongly rhythmic approach for the ensembles. This made sense with such a wide range of talents on hand: all were shown to best effect.
We may thank the Richard Shephard Music Foundation for its association with an occasion that both highlighted an important piece of local history and underlines what a force for good the Ryedale Festival continues to be. The festival itself will run from July 15 to 31 with full details at ryedalefestival.com.
“I can’t wait to get back on stage,” says Marc Almond
TORCH singer Marc Almond is adding an October 21 concert at York Barbican to his rearranged autumn tour.
“The fans have been so understanding and patient through the endless rescheduling due to the pandemic but now we have confirmed these dates I can’t wait to get back on stage,” says Almond, 64, who made his name with Leeds synth-pop duo Soft Cell in the 1980s.
Tickets go on sale tomorrow (27/5/2022) at 10am at yorkbarbican.co.uk for Almond’s first solo appearance there since his Hits And Pieces 60th birthday tour in March 2017. He last sang at York Barbican as a special guest at Jools Holland and His Rhythm & Blues Orchestra’s November 2018 show.
The poster artwork for Marc Almond In Concert, his autumn tour
For the first time, Almond will perform songs from his March 2020 top 20 album Chaos And A Dancing Star, complemented by favourites from his extensive catalogue and his biggest hits, such as Tainted Love and Say Hello, Wave Goodbye. He is sure to have surprises up his sleeve too.
Meanwhile, Soft Cell are enjoying top ten success with their first studio album in 20 years, Happiness Not Included, featuring their Pet Shop Boys collaboration, Purple Zone.
Almond’s career spans more than four decades, bringing him 35 million record sales, a BRIT Award, an Ivor Novello Inspiration Award in 2013 and an OBE in the 2018 New Year Honours for his services to arts and culture.
AFTER 26 years of “previous”, stalwart Scottish contrarians Belle & Sebastian release A Bit Of Previous. What’s their way ahead, judging by their latest album, recorded back home in Glasgow?
Two Big Egos In A Small Car culture podcasters Graham Chalmers (their fellow Scot) and Charles Hutchinson mull it over in Episode 91.
Aled Jones and Russell Watson: New album, new tour, with a Christmas theme
ALED Jones and Russell Watson are to reunite for Christmas 2022 with a new album and tour, taking in York Barbican on December 6.
Performing together again after a three-year hiatus, the classical singers will embark on a November and December itinerary to coincide with the November 4 release of Christmas With Aled And Russell.
Available to pre-order now, the album features new recordings of traditional carols such as O Holy Night, O Little Town Of Bethlehem and In The Bleak Midwinter, alongside festive favourites White Christmas, It’s Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas, Little Drummer Boy and Mistletoe And Wine.
In addition, Jones and Watson are recording a duo rendition of Walking In The Air – first sung by boy soprano Aled in 1982 for the animated film The Snowman – specially for the new record.
Bangor-born tenor Jones, 51, says: “After a crazy couple of years for us all, I can’t wait to be reunited with my mate Russell again for our third album together! I’ll always be associated with Christmas, so it’s an honour to be working with him.
“We always have a blast on tour, so getting to sing our favourite Christmas songs together in so many stunning venues later this year will be a real treat! You never know, ‘Traffic Cone’ might even make an appearance…and hopefully Chicago has given Russ the chance to brush up on his dancing skills!”
Salford tenor Watson, 55, who has been playing slick lawyer Billy Flynn in the 2022 tour of Chicago, says: “Aled and I had a great time recording our first two albums, so I’m immensely excited to be back in the studio together working on our third. We had a really tough time choosing from so many magnificent Christmas songs, but we’ve whittled it down to a fabulous selection of tracks which truly mean something to us both.
“And to get to share a stage again during our UK tour later this year will be such a special experience after three years apart. I hope Christmas With Aled And Russell is on all of your Christmas lists, and I can’t wait to see you all on tour throughout November and December!”
Aled & Russell: Third album of duets
Christmas With Aled And Russell will be looking to match the success of 2018’s In Harmony and 2019’s Back In Harmony, after both recordings topped the UK Classical Album Chart and made the top ten of the UK Official Album Chart.
Classical crossover singer Jones has released more than 40 albums and achieved more than 40 silver, gold and platinum discs since his chorister days when Walking In The Air brought him fame at 12.
In November 2020, he released Blessings, a multi-faith album featuring songs from different religions, and in February 2022, he reached the semi-finals of ITV’s The Masked Singer in the guise of Traffic Cone.
He has pursued a career as a television and radio presenter too, at present hosting a weekly show on Classic FM and BBC One’s Sunday staple, Songs Of Praise.
Watson’s debut album, 2000’s The Voice, topped both the British and USA classical charts, making him the first British male artist to attain a simultaneous transatlantic number one.
Watson has performed for HM The Queen, the late Pope John Paul II and former USA Presidents Bill Clinton, George W Bush and Barack Obama.
He last played York Barbican in a Sunday matinee in November 2021 on his 20th Anniversary Of The Voice tour.
Tickets for December 6’s 8pm performance of Christmas With Aled & Russell are on sale at yorkbarbican.co.uk.
Jess Dandy: “That endangered species, a true contralto”
Jess Dandy/Martin Roscoe & Robin Tritschler/Christopher Glynn, Howard Assembly Room, Leeds, April 29
THOSE of us who had not encountered Jess Dandy before, your correspondent included, cannot have avoided reading that she had been likened to Kathleen Ferrier in a national newspaper.
It is an unfortunate comparison and should be dropped before it becomes burdensome. She is indeed that endangered species, a true contralto, which alone entitles her to our attention. She may in time become the one and only Jess Dandy – but she is not Ferrier.
I confess that what initially drew my attention was her accompanist: Martin Roscoe is a supreme musician and a very busy one. Anyone who claims his time deserves our respect, especially since he is most often found as a solo performer.
With that rant out of the way, we may concentrate on Dandy’s lunchtime programme, which opened with Amy Beach and Lili Boulanger before moving onto more familiar territory with Falla, Wolf and Tchaikovsky, each of her five groups therefore in a different language.
Oddly enough, her diction in Beach’s three Robert Browning songs was almost consonant-free, but her tone was richly textured which excited anticipation.
Martin Roscoe: “Supreme musician and a very busy one”
In four unrelated songs by Boulanger, three from her teenage years, she penetrated the surface better. In two Maeterlinck poems, her high ending to ‘Reflets’, finding consolation in the moon, was beautifully controlled and the illusory ‘Attente’ (Waiting) was properly bleak. The prospect of Ulysses’s return to Ithaca brought compensatory joy to her tone.
Falla’s settings of seven traditional Spanish folksongs generally needed a lighter touch to match Roscoe’s impeccable staccatos. These works look easier on paper than they really are.
It was only when Dandy came to Wolf’s Mörike settings (1888) that her diction really began to shine. ‘Er ist’s’ (Spring Is Here) was wonderfully ecstatic, rounded off by the piano’s peerless postlude. She had a real feel for the bitter-sweet ‘Verborgenheit’ (Seclusion) and danced nimbly as the water-sprite Reedfoot alongside the piano’s curlicues. Both performers revelled in the dramatic possibilities of ‘Der Feuerreiter’ (The Fire-rider), while ending peacefully.
Dandy was equally well-suited to four Tchaikovsky songs. Voice and piano neatly intertwined in a Tolstoy poem about spring. There was a wonderfully pained melisma at the end of ‘I was a little blade of grass’ (the girl had been married off against her will). Even if the final climax of ‘Can it be day?’ was not quite full enough, we knew she had these songs in her bloodstream; Roscoe’s postlude was another little masterpiece.
This young lady certainly has talent. She can now afford to be less concerned about delivering perfect tone and concentrate more on acting with her voice.
Robin Tritschler: “Particularly satisfying occasion”
The second evening supplied my fourth recital of the festival. But it was the first in which the singer used no music. Thirty years ago, this would not have been a cause for comment. But times have changed and musicians are no longer routinely learning their scores by heart. One might have thought that during the ‘downtime’ provided by the pandemic, this might have changed. But no.
The hero in question was tenor Robin Tritschler, whose first half – ‘Illuminated Music’ – was English, Britten’s own works framing his realisations of Croft and Purcell. After half-time, we had ‘Illuminating Songs’ from further afield, eight composers stretching from Schubert to Henry Mancini. His admirable partner was Christopher Glynn.
Coloratura flowed easily in ‘Let The Florid Music Praise’ (On This Island) and Croft’s A Hymn To Divine Musick turned the temperature up further. All his Purcell set was characterised by a focus and intensity that was communicated all the more directly by the absence of a music-stand between audience and singer.
‘Music For A While’ enjoyed crispness in both voice and piano, which spilled over strongly into the finish of ‘Sweeter Than Roses’. The darting sections and crazy swings of ‘Mad Bess’ were finely wrought, with Glynn injecting just the right level of fire without dominating.
Christopher Glynn: “Injecting just the right level of fire without dominating “. Picture: Gerard Collett
Britten’s Canticle I: My Beloved Is Mine was hugely convincing, a tenderly felt duet that did full justice to Quarles’s spiritual paraphrase from the Song Of Solomon. Glynn’s flowing piano alongside Tritchler’s vocal freedom came to a close of the utmost serenity.
Moonlight suffused virtually all the second half. The atmosphere was movingly set by Schubert’s incomparable setting of Leitner’s ‘Der Winterabend’: the piano’s seamless line matched the tenor’s legato.
Fauré’s ‘Clair de Lune’ conjured intimacy while Hahn’s ‘L’heure Exquise’ delivered perfumed scents. Mancini’s nostalgic ‘Moon River’, with its Beethovenian opening was nicely balanced by Howells’s setting of De la Mare’s ‘Full Moon’, which disappeared into a niente finish.
Tritschler really opened out in the climactic moments of Liza Lehmann’s ‘Ah, Moon Of My Delight’ (In A Persian Garden), after which Coleridge-Taylor’s ‘Big Lady Moon’ made the perfect encore. This was a particularly satisfying occasion, with both musicians on excellent form.
DorotheaRöschmann: German soprano, making her north of England debut
Dorothea Röschmann and Joseph Middleton; Wallis Giunta, Sean Shibe and Adam Walker,Howard Assembly Room, Leeds, April 28
LEEDS Lieder was back in its usual springtime slot and all the better for that. More to the point, the line-up was as star-studded as ever.
On the first evening of this 11th festival, German soprano Dorothea Röschmann made her north of England debut in tandem with festival supremo Joseph Middleton as her piano-partner in a programme of Schumann, Mahler, Wolf and Wagner.
There is something reassuring about hearing native Germans in lieder: whatever else, they have this repertory in their bloodstream.
Schumann’s settings of five letters and poems attributed to Mary, Queen of Scots delve into the heart of Mary’s isolation after imprisonment by her sister, Queen Elizabeth I.
They are an unusual starter for a programme, but Röschmann handled them with considerable refinement, capturing the happy reminiscences of France – Schumann’s major-minor alternations – and prayerful after the birth of Mary’s son.
There was no escaping Mary’s desolation at 19 years’ imprisonment and her final prayer before death was poignant indeed in Roschmann’s account.
Six of Mahler’s settings from Des Knaben Wunderhorn made a welcome contrast, none more so than the opening ‘Rheinlegendchen’ (Little Rhine Legend), which was turned into a cutesy dance, full of sparkle.
There was a relentless piano momentum in the tale of the starving child, ‘Das Irdische Leben’ (Life On Earth), representing the mill-stream. She cleverly juxtaposed two duets featuring young girls disappointed in love, the one flirting in vain, the other – touchingly here – discovering that her soldier sweetheart is just a mirage: he is already dead.
Wolf’s four Mignon songs, sung by the teenager abducted from Italy by Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister, are the epitome of yearning, as she longs to return home. I
n the opening one, Kennst du as Land? – which she actually sang last – there was a lovely moment where she switched mid-phrase from a fortissimo at the plunging torrent to pose the title question much more quietly, rounding off the song with a delightful portamento in the final phrase. It was typical of her attention to detail. Middleton shadowed her closely throughout.
Written in the run-up to Tristan und Isolde, Wagner’s five settings of poems by Mathilde Wesendonck, the wife of a well-heeled silk merchant (and patron of the composer), developed out of his infatuation for her.
They are essentially love-songs, whose voluptuous harmonies – twice directly prefiguring Tristan – were mirrored in Roschmann’s lush treatment. Her gear-changing into chest tone was not always entirely smooth, but she and Middleton captured their heady atmosphere to a tee, notably in the “stop the world, I want to get off” implications of ‘Stehe Still!’ (Stand Still). This was a most satisfying opening recital, if not quite a memorable one.
Mezzo-soprano Wallis Giunta’s late-night recital, given with guitarist Sean Shibe and flautist Adam Walker, was a mixed bag. She is an engaging personality, whose prowess as an actress she has already proved here, and there was no doubting the skills of her two partners – especially Shibe, in a wide variety of styles – but their protest songs from the Americas were too diffuse to make a coherent whole.
Taking their title from one of the songs, ‘The Revolution Smells Of Jasmine’, they encompassed racism, revolution, female emancipation and “patriarchal oppression”: art as politics, in other words, but this scattergun approach missed too many targets.
Nevertheless, the programme had its moments. Four songs by the Argentinian composer Ariel Ramirez had the unmistakeable tang of Portuguese fado about them, as if their essence had spilled over from neighbouring Brazil: Alfonsina’s heartache was palpable and Gringa Chaqueña evoked a smoky underworld. Juana Azurduy, the song which included the evening’s title, was more upbeat, even triumphal.
No South American set would have been complete without Astor Piazzolla. Sure enough, the instruments dipped into L’Histoire du Tango, before Giunta conjured a vivid ‘Café’ and a frisky ‘Bordel 1900’, where the syncopation was succulent.
North America was not forgotten. Giunta gave her fellow Canadian Joni Mitchell’s ‘Woodstock’ and a couple of Joan Baez numbers. All were cleanly done in good folk-style, but lacked a certain earthiness.
The most harrowing moment came in Abel Meeropol’s ‘Strange Fruit’, written in 1937 and made famous in song by Billie Holiday two years later: the ‘fruit’ was the bodies of black victims of lynching, swinging in the breeze. Not at all comfortable.
At her best, Giunta has a witty, wacky side that she kept under wraps here, in the name of protest of course, although almost as if she were under some restraint. But she is a total professional and had also chosen her accompanists wisely. They responded with lively duets as well as unfailing support.
