Songs from Schubert, Die schöne Müllerin D795 plus Butterworth, Loveliest of trees; Trimble, Green Rain; Vaughan Williams, The vagabond; Boyle, A Song of Enchantment; Finzi, Overlooking the River; Vaughan Williams, The Water Mill; Clarke, Down by the salley gardens; Head, Tewkesbury Road; Vaughan Williams, Silent Noon; Quilter, Brown is my love; Finzi, He abjures love; Ireland, We’ll to the Woods No More; Quilter, By a Fountainside; Howells, The sorrow of love; Britten, O Waly, Waly;
Another concert that I probably wouldn’t have gone to in the normal run of things, but seemed eminently worth going to given that I was in London for the night before going to Vienna.
The theme of this concert was ‘Love flows as the Brook flows’. Rather cleverly, it combined a number of songs from Schubert’s Die Schoene Muellerin with early to mid-20th century English art and folk songs, letting the story contained in the Schubert – the young man, the miller’s daughter, unrequited live and his eventual drowning – set the tone and content of the English songs used.
Rather oddly, the (generous given that it was a free one) programme booklet gave the German text for the Schubert and an accurate English translation, while Roddy Williams actually sang an extremely free English translation by Jeremy Sams. As the Schoene Muellerin poetry is hardly Goethe, I don’t think this matters, but it is a pity it was not recorded in the booklet, as it often seemed very clever and appropriate. Another mild grumble about the booklet is that it nowhere recorded the names of the poets who’d written the lyrics. The final grumble is that, although probably 95% of the audience probably knew the story of the Schubert song cycle, Mr Williams decided to give at points a narrative of what the young hero of the cycle was feeling. This (a) sounded a bit naff and unfortunately, because the singer has a slightly bloke-ish and affable manner with the audience ( b) sounded ironic and produced giggles at points, inappropriately given the subject matter and the eventual suicide in the text.
Having got these points out of the way, I have to say this was a very enjoyable recital. Singing the Schubert in modern English encouraged the singer to offer even more than usual variation and shading in his delivery and in the way the words were communicated. Susie Allan accompanied the Schubert songs brilliantly, with crisp rhythms and a vigorous pulse. The overall effect was Spring-like and life-enhancing. The beautiful final song of the cycle ‘Des Bachen Wiegenlied’ was very movingly sung. It was lovely particularly to hear, alongside the Schubert, such songs as ‘Silent Noon’ and ‘Waly Waly’, as well as Butterworth’s ‘Loveliest of Trees’ (I was struck by the austere brilliance of Britten’s arrangement of Waly Waly) . I was also impressed by the impact of the Schubert cycle in contemporary English, which made it sound far more relevant and powerful, far more meaningful for today in some ways, than the English music written 100 to 130 years later
John's musical journey 