SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Richard Lewis Award Winners’ Recital: various singers and accompanists. Duke’s Hall, Royal Academy of Music, London. 12. 6.2008. (ED)


This year’s Richard Lewis Award Winners’ recital featured no less than three baritones, who shared the Award in 2007, each of a different vocal type from the others. They were accompanied by three pianists who have already started to achieve some success in their field and each pairing was represented by a short yet varied programme.

Korean bass-baritone Kong-Seok Choi started with Schubert’s An die Leier and Gruppe aus dem Tartarus, both of which displayed impressive vocal tone and strong characterisation of the piano part from James Baillieu. Verdi’s Ella giammia m’amo from Don Carlo usefully explored the nuances of his lower range with  a well placed sense of intimacy in the recitative before opening up the voice fully for the aria. Dong Soo Shin’s San-A, a song centred on longing for the mountainous countryside of Korea, did indeed find Kong-Seok Choi very much on home territory. He sang with such expressive freedom that it made me wish audiences had more opportunity to hear Korean song than we do.  A great contrast was to be had in Rossini’s Miei rampolli femminini from La Cenerentola, which brought characteristics of pomposity and self-parody effortlessly to the fore.

British baritone Gerard Collett opened with a group of four Schubert lieder: Sprache de Liebe, Im Abendrot, Nachtviolen and Nachtstück. Throughout,  he showed restraint in interpretation, an airy lightness of timbre and fine attention to the texts as well as careful attention to the internal dynamics of each lied. Most immediately pleasing was the sense of narrative he brought to Nachtstück, following the gloomy and pensive introduction, most atmospherically played by Robin Davis. Poulenc’s Le bestiaire was delivered from a high stool, as if narrating a series of miniature tales. The oddity of Apollinaire’s poetry, captured effortlessly in Poulenc’s writing, was relayed with dry wit by both performers. Three songs in English by Frank Bridge closed the programme, with expressive passions felt in the setting of James Joyce’s Goldenhair, before the tenderness of thought in Where she lies asleep and the vocal richness exhibited in Love went a-riding.

David Butt Philip’s recital began with a group of four Brahms lieder. An ein Veilchen made good use of a vibrant upper register, although something about his posture seemed initially a bit tight, thereby affecting the tone elsewhere. An die Mond had a  natural and sure sense of phrasing. Excellent English diction was also on offer in three songs, one each by Howells, Jeffreys and Dilys Elwyn-Edwards. The first benefited from the consummate touch of Simon Lane’s accompaniment; the second from the sense of poigniancy communicated in the words. Rossini’s Largo al factotum might be a baritone ‘standard’, but it needed more swagger and freedom to come  really alive over the rather choppy playing of the accompaniment.

For me, the singer who satisfied most across the duration of his programme was Gerard Collett, though all performers do the Royal Academy of Music credit. 

Evan Dickerson


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