RODERICK WILLIAMS AND SUSIE ALLAN EX CATHEDRA
KING’S HIGH SCHOOL, WARWICK SYMPHONY HALL, BIRMINGHAM
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Leamington Music’s first ever concert in the magnificent new King’s Hall of Warwick’s King’s High School was a triumphant success. It could not have been anything else, bringing the legendary and empathetic partnership of baritone Roderick Williams and pianist Susie Allan to a hugely enthusiastic audience.
Under the title “The Great Outdoors…” the programme brought together pastoral and maritime songs by six English masters of the craft, all of them contemporaneous with each other – though Benjamin Britten only just scraped in three years before George Butterworth’s death at the Battle of the Somme in 1916.
Butterworth’s heartbreaking Six Songs from a Shropshire Lad allowed the performers to set out their stall as they meant to continue, Williams floating tenor-like head notes with fluid phrasing at the opening of “Loveliest of Trees”, Allan drawing almost orchestral colourings from her piano. Williams’ characterising of two tones in the concluding “Is my team ploughing?”, one plaintive, the other rough and bluff, was mesmerising and in fact chilling to the soul.
And so the recital’s pattern was set, through groups of songs by John Ireland, Peter Warlock and Ivor Gurney; Williams engaging the audience with both sweeping eyes and body-language now static and serene, now exuberantly all-embracing, and always superbly timed in an almost telepathic relationship with the remarkable Allan.
Vaughan Williams’ Songs of Travel provided the meatiest fare of the evening, compellingly delivered. Allan’s response at the piano was fully alert to the music’s varying stylistic demands, and Williams marshalled his resources in a marvel of communication.
But what is earworming me as I write are the concluding four Folksong arrangements by Benjamin Britten, Allan’s deftness in the sliding tonalities of The Ash Grove laudable, the poignancy from both performers in The Salley Gardens quietly gripping, Williams’ body-language and timbre in The Ploughboy utterly theatrical.
But what did it for me was Williams’ amazing delivery of The Foggy, Foggy Dew, humorous and knowing, yes, but with so much aching tenderness just beneath the surface.
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The irony is overwhelming. When Mozart died in Vienna in 1791 he was given a pauper’s burial. When Beethoven died in the same city 36 years later, more than 25,000 people turned out in the same city for his obsequies, the Requiem Mozart had struggled on his deathbed to complete being the centrepiece of proceedings lasting several days.
Ex Cathedra’s triumphant postlockdown return to a packed and appreciative Symphony Hall audience on Sunday was a fascinating reconstruction of the music performed at Beethoven’s funeral. Movement of the musicians onto the stage was imaginatively choreographed, a passing-bell tolling while a crucifixbearer led in the next group to be introduced.
Recently-passed opera director Sir Graham Vick, to whose memory this concert was dedicated, would have appreciated this novel, inclusive approach, with the opening half bringing to life the German Psalms by Beethoven and others sonorously interleaved with the composer’s solemn Equali for Four Trombones (Adrian France presiding over the remarkable Concert Trombone Quartette).
Ceremonial and musical links flowed with dignity under Jeffrey Skidmore’s discreet direction, and we heard a magnificent rendering of the great Austrian actor Franz Grillparzer’s Oration, delivered so tellingly by an unnamed soloist from the choir.
Then came Mozart’s Requiem, totally unsentimental, lightly phrased, with beautifully balanced choral tone and clarity of leading lines shrewdly shaped by
Skidmore. The tiny orchestra sounded puny initially, but the ear rapidly adjusted to appreciate the subtle colouring and indeed strength of the playing, and for once we could understand why the trombone doubling of the choral parts in counterpoint was really so crucial.
Though that particular aspect of the performance was my personal highlight, so was the beautifully blended and attuned solo quartet. Katie Trethewey, Martha McLorinan, James Robinson and Lawrence White never obtruded in the sheer beauty of this otherworldly writing. Mozart’s Ave Verum Corpus brought us even closer to Heaven.