‘With Immortal Fire’,  A celebration of W.H. Auden:  John Mark Ainsley (tenor) Roger Vignoles  (piano) Kwame Kwei-Armah, Simon Armitage, James Fenton, Jo Shapcott (poets / readers). Queen Elizabeth Hall, South Bank Centre, London. 3.7.2007 (ME) 
 

The London Literature Festival is of course ‘a very good thing’ if you share the SBC’s Artistic Director’s view that Literature is ‘at the heart of the centre’s activities.’ Personally I have a problem with this: I love Poetry, but must confess to a loathing for ‘Poetry Readings,’ especially when they are done as they nearly always seem to be, that is to say with superannuated vaguely ‘leftie’ bores droning on in what they appear to think are ironic tones, but in fact come across as simply bored and arrogant. Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote of his own poetry that one should ‘Take breath and read it with the ears… and my verse becomes all right’ but then Hopkins really was a master of prosody, which I don’t believe is true of Auden, to me the most over-rated of all English poets. Did I like anything about this evening? Of course I did – the singing and playing were in another world to the readings, and the whole certainly beat the alternative of yet another Dichterliebe.

We began with a recording of ‘Look, Stranger,’ one of Auden’s most attractive poems if you don’t mind the half rhymes and all the rest of it, and the evening included many of the most well known works of the great networker, including ‘Musée des Beaux Arts’ and ‘O What Is That Sound?’ Amongst the poet / readers, only Kwame Kwei-Armah managed to inject his performance with something like enthusiasm, some of the other readings representing the very worst mixture of pseudo-academic droning and ‘right-on’ flat vowels. Cringe. I frequently wanted to get up there, grab the book from someone’s hand, and read the poem with some projection and passion, although given my feelings about Auden, the latter might have been difficult.

Passion was in abundance in the singing of John Mark Ainsley and the playing of Roger Vignoles, who are both at the absolute peak of their powers, and they showed in these mainly Britten settings, that even if Auden’s poetry does not inspire great reading it certainly inspired great music. ‘Let the Florid Music Praise’ shows the influence of Purcell on the composer and was performed with the kind of technique for which the word ‘florid’ was invented. In quieter mode, singer and pianist offered superb performances of ‘Night Covers up the Rigid Land’ and ‘Now the Leaves Are Falling Fast’. Even these paled into insignificance beside the brilliantly characterised singing of ‘Tell Me The Truth About Love’ and the no holds barred drama of ‘Stop All The Clocks’ – Ainsley has always been a singer who goes the extra mile without ever going too far, and these performances showed why he is the pre-eminent Britten singer around today.

 

Melanie Eskenazi