Simply stunning singer of the world
Catriona Morison (Queen’s Hall) Verdict: A star in waiting
WHEN Nicola Benedetti won the BBC Young Musician of the Year award in 2004, it proved to be the passport to international music stardom. Last year, Edinburgh-born mezzo-soprano Catriona Morison won the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World competition and was joint winner of the Song Prize. During her Edinburgh International Festival recital at the Queen’s Hall she showed a rapt audience just how good she is – and how much better she may yet become. She began with a selection of ten songs by Brahms, in which she displayed a range of vocal emotion encompassing the vagaries of love, loss and grief for that which has gone. One of the highlights was a heartfelt rendition of Schumann’s Gedichte der Konigin Maria Stuart from 1852, the composer’s last significant contribution to the lieder genre before his death four years later. Based on a sequence of five poems attributed to Mary, Queen of Scots, the songs chart her farewell to France; the birth of her son, the future James VI and I; a cry of supposed supplication to Elizabeth I; another farewell, but this time to the world; and a final prayer before facing the executioner’s axe. In a voice charged with emotion, Miss Morison wrung every ounce of tragic drama from the poems. Mahler is often seen as a visionary composer of vast symphonies but he was equally adept at love songs. The singer perfectly caught the tenderness of his treatment of five lyrics by German Romantic poet Friedrich Ruckert. The advertised programme ended with a confection of songs by Erich Wolfgang Korngold, a child prodigy at the turn of the 20th century who is rather less well known today. The audience then practically demanded encores and Miss Morison brought the house down with a spirited rendition of Ye Banks and Braes of Bonnie Doon by Burns.