Julius Drake & Friends
Middle Temple Hall, Fleet St, London
14 February 2007 19:30
Ailish Tynan (soprano)
Christine Rice (mezzo)
James Gilchrist (tenor)
Christopher Maltman (baritone)
Anna Tilbrook (piano)
Julius Drake (piano)
5 out of 5 stars “An evening in heaven.” The Independent
Robert Schumann:
Spanisches Liebeslieder op 74
Johannes Brahms:
Duets for mezzo and baritone, op 28
Liebeslieder Waltzes op 52
What the critics say
Michael Church, The Independent, Tuesday, 20 February 2007
5 out of 5 stars
Concerts often aim for that serendipitous state where music, performers, venue and occasion meld in magical fusion; the offering by pianist Julius Drake and four vocal friends was one of those rare events that actually achieved it. Under the thoughtful gaze of Van Dyck’s Charles I, the hammer-beamed, armour-lined Middle Temple Hall was the ideal space in which the love-lyrics of Schumann and Brahms could take wing; soprano Ailish Tynan, mezzo Christine Rice, tenor James Gilchrist and baritone Christopher Maltman were a dream team.
Schumann once opined that while “spirits speak the language of poetry, angels communicate through music”: no wonder his solo songs don’t hit the button the way his solo piano pieces do. But his “Spanisches Liederspiel” – a dramatic song-sequence – somehow incorporates the wayward brilliance of the piano music. He chooses his lyrics from far and wide – the most suggestive are verse dialogues by Robert Burns – and he weaves a tapestry that these performers realised to perfection. It helped that all four are top-flight opera singers, all equally at home in tragedy and comedy: it was hard to square Rice’s voluptuous presence here with the coke-snorting masculine tearaway she plays on other nights of the week in the ENO’s Agrippina. Although, when Gilchrist leavened his amorous torments with deliciously ingenuous innuendo, one remembered that he also makes an hilarious Frederic in The Pirates of Penzance. Supported by Drake’s responsive touch, they spun wonderful spells.
After the interval came Brahms’s Liebeslieder Walzer. While Schumann explores his passions, Brahms goes straight to his target. Each of his 18 songs is a miracle of condensed expression, some only 50 seconds long. His male voices shout out in anguish, his women sigh and moan; when all sing together, the tempestuous cross-currents are forged into a communal outpouring of joy and sadness, which makes the senses swirl.
At first they didn’t find the balance these songs require. But when they got it, this extraordinary work took off. Some songs hit you between the eyes with their explosive force, others became dramas in miniature. The last – “The bushes are trembling” – came like a delicate breath of wind, which mysteriously vanished into the distance whence it had come. An evening in heaven.
Neil Fisher, The Times, 16 February 2007
4 out of 5 stars
A nudge, a wink, a coy glance: this isn’t the normal framework for a night of lieder, where young love tends to turn inexorably into young misery.
But reporting on his mostly sunny Spanisches Liederspiel, Schumann mistakently predicted that these ten songs for four singers and piano would be his best known, “due to the happy and charming verse”. On Valentine’s night in the atmospheric Middle Temple Hall you can almost see his point of view, particularly when such a well-blended lineup as Christine Rice, Ailish Tynan, Christopher Maltman and James Gilchrist were entrusted with finding the right balance between “happy and charming” and saccharine and gooey, and nearly always managed it.
As the thread that pulls the quartet together, Julius Drake’s eloquent accompaniment went some way to belie the composer’s own cheerful aspirations. In the limpid waters of Intermezzo, he plunged in with soulful abandon, and as Rice and Tynan’s perfectly complementary voices — the mezzo velvety and imposing, the soprano all light and air — faded out of Liebesgram, Drake gave us an ethereal postlude. But Tynan and Gilchrist were the undisputed stars of the gorgeous duet In der Nacht, Tynan particularly ravishing as she gracefully intertwined with Gilchrist’s mellow tenor.
But no one wanting more froth and less introspection would have been disappointed. In the gleeful numbers for all four singers, everyone radiated joyful spontaneity, an atmosphere that carried over into Brahms’s echt-Viennese Liebeslieder Walzer. This is slighter material, but the expressive contrasts between the singers, as well as the rapport between the duetting pianists (Drake and an attentive Anna Tilbrook) were ample enough reason to hear it. Only the filler between the two cycles — Schumann’s faintly mawkish Four Duets, Op 34 — seemed like a little too much cream on the Valentine’s pudding.