Snape Maltings, Aldeburgh, Suffolk

21 June 2006 19:30

Ian Bostridge (tenor)
Julius Drake (piano)

” With Drake both reactive and thrillingly proactive…” The Times

Gustav Mahler:
Frühlingsmorgen
Errinerung

Gustav Mahler:
Des Knaben Wunderhorn (selection)

Gustav Mahler:
Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen

Hector Berlioz:
Les Nuits d’été

What the critics say

Hilary Finch, The Times, 23 June 2006

Midsummer is not officially marked at the Aldeburgh Festival. You can get up at 5am and watch the sun rise out of the sea, but there are no solstice rituals and no burning of boats.

But the Longest Day was celebrated in its own subtle way at Snape Maltings. At 11am Emma Kirkby greeted The Morning, a solo cantata by Thomas Arne, in which the strings and guitar of the Palladian Ensemble warmed into their own thrumming crescendo of a sunrise. And in the evening Ian Bostridge and Julius Drake re-created the longest day of all: that which begins with the soldier’s reveille in Mahler’s Revelge.

…Nothing routine, though, about Mahler and Berlioz as experienced through the voice and fingers of Bostridge and Drake. For a start, two major songcycles were performed with their original piano accompaniment rather than in their orchestrated form. And neither of them is often sung by a tenor. The sheer range of Bostridge’s voice, and the remarkable integration of all its registers when on top form, made Berlioz’s Les Nuits d’été a revelatory experience.

With Drake both reactive and thrillingly proactive, Bostridge uncovered the anger within the cycle’s grief. The finality of his “jamais” was lacerating — and it ricocheted back at the audience in that “nimmer” of Mahler’s no less grief-laden Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen. Bostridge is naturally cast as the lovelorn Wayfaring Lad but this time vocal and body language bonded into a fiercely eloquent whole.