Wigmore Hall, London
15 November 2004
Alice Coote (mezzo)
Julius Drake (piano)
“Drake seized the moment, scaling the music and supporting the voice with both subtlety and daring” The Times
Hector Berlioz: Les nuits d’été
Songs by Bizet, Chausson, Debussy and Fauré
What the critics say
Hilary Finch, The Times, 18 November 2004
FOR any mezzo-soprano, Berlioz’s Les nuits d’été is one of the hottest musical summer nights in the repertoire. And Alice Coote certainly raised the temperature in Wigmore Street with her performance of Berlioz’s masterpiece.
This time, there were no violins to conjure the rustle of spring, no orchestra to fill the sails heading towards L’ile inconnue. In the piano-accompanied version, it fell to Julius Drake to quicken the imagination of singer and listener, so that she and we would still feel brushed by the spectre of the rose, still look into the dark immensity of the night, still hear the solitary dove lament.
Drake seized the moment, scaling the music and supporting the voice with both subtlety and daring. And a considerable degree of daring is necessary when music-making with Coote. For this most mettlesome of mezzos never gives less than full measure — and more — even when, as on Monday night, she claimed to be recovering from a throat infection. Only the tiniest, fleeting details at the very quietest moments gave that away. And possibly, if nothing had been said, we wouldn’t even have noticed.
For it’s the sheer vibrancy of Coote’s physical presence and — for want of a better word — the soul-strength of her performance that always grips both the music and the audience by the throat and refuses to let go.
As Le spectre de la rose announced itself, Coote had anticipated and imagined the precise tone-colour, the quality of movement, even, it seemed, the temperature of the breath which would bring its first words into being. And her exceptional breath control was able to realise her imaginative picture to the full.
In Sur les lagunes, the entire body seemed crushed by the weight of grief. And ever longer distances ached within the voice in Absence.
This was the recital in which Coote set out to put her Gallic cards on the table. Some aspects of verbal definition still betray the non-native singer; but Coote’s extreme sensitivity to the movement and inflection of words through a supple line of melody made her Bizet, Chausson, Debussy and Fauré never less than idiomatic.
The vein of sensual orientalism which ran through these songs awoke in Coote that sense of transfixed sensuousness at which she excels. Debussy’s Chansons de Bilitis, one song dissolving into another in timbre and gesture, were of a strange and haunting beauty in Coote’s ardent yet fragile declamation of their prose poetry.
Anna Picard, The Independent, Sunday 21 November 2004
Last month the Wigmore Hall reopened. You may not have been aware of this because a) its closure coincided with the Proms, b) its restoration was completed on time, and c) it is not the kind of venue that likes to draw unseemly attention to itself. Nose freshly powdered, twinset and pearls in perfect order, the Wigmore is the Barbara Pym of British concert halls.
At first glance, little has changed. The murmur of cashmere-clad music lovers in the foyer is still tuned to a modest middle C. The new bar is as conducive to relaxed laughter as an operating theatre or, indeed, the old bar. But, if your contact lenses haven’t dried up like prawn crackers from the new air-conditioning, it’s worth a closer look. The lights in the auditorium are now blingtastically bright (more Harlesden than Cliveden), the seats as plush as the private cinema of an R’n'B impresario. Only, where’s the long-promised rake? Without a spirit level to prove my point I cannot state with certainty that there is no rake. But if there is, it’s the subtlest element in a very subtle restoration.
Attending a concert here is a salutory lesson in good behaviour. (Cough, wriggle or fidget and you’re dead.) Especially if you’re not tall enough to see the stage from the back of the auditorium. In the case of Alice Coote’s French Song recital this Monday, which in every respect bar Coote’s pronunciation would have been a more fitting entertainment for President Chirac than Les Miserables, it paid to sit up straight…
Mezzo soprano Alice Coote has shot up through the ranks of young British singers in the last few years. A commanding, sensual, leonine presence with a voice of copper silk, she has also acquired something of a reputation for cancelling her performances. Which probably explains why she went ahead with Monday’s recital despite a husky knot of phlegm on her cords that was audible from her first breath – the Wigmore Hall has a very clear acoustic – and with a tissue tucked into her décolletage. A mistake in terms of vocal health (and etiquette) perhaps. But a small triumph in terms of artistry.
Though Coote’s French is uneven, the lush, melancholy timbre of Berlioz, Bizet, Chausson, Debussy and Fauré is ideal for her voice. The seductiveness of her Chansons de Bilitis and, in particular, her Chanson d’avril and Adieux de l’hôtesse arabe – I’d love to hear her sing Djamileh – underlined the mezzo’s professional advantage over other voice types in regularly playing both sexes on stage. Coote is not a passive singer. She reaches out to her audience with eyes and arms and uses her body well; managing to suggest a state of perpetual erotic arousal that is sometimes boyishly urgent, at other times as luxuriant as an odalisque. She didn’t do innocent in this programme and I think that’s wise. It wouldn’t work.
The pianoforte version of Les nuits d’été is frustrating. The vocal lines soar and murmur and dip as persuasively as ever, but the reduction of the orchestral score is dire. Inner harmonies disappear, the listener is forced to rely on memory for colour, and Berlioz’s disdain for traditional musical building blocks – such as bass lines – is evident. It’s horrible to play, lies uncomfortably under the hands, and Coote’s pianist Julius Drake made it no easier on the ear by hammering the off-beats. Nonetheless, this was a dramatic and absorbing performance. And if Coote can navigate the imprecatory extremes of Sur les lagunes and Absence as generously and thoughtfully as this while fighting a throat infection, she is an artist to be reckoned with.