Historical kirk venue for emotional performance

November’s concert for Perth Chamber Music in St John’s Kirk was not only a supreme musical event, but also a most moving one emotionally.

It was Schubert’s song cycle Winterreise (Winter’s Journey) given by the very best of Britain’s art song performers James Gilchrist, tenor, and Anna Tilbrook, piano.

Winterreise is the interior monologue of a young man who has set out to find his way in the world and runs away from his rejection in a love affair.

He trudges through a cold, snowy, damp landscape that he sees as an extension of himself and his troubles: I moved in as a stranger and I’m moving out as one. The girl spoke of love, her mother, even of marriage.

From shrugging at disappointment, he descends through despair to delusion.

From the first song, we heard anger and desperation in his fine tenor voice, poignantly seconded by Anna Tilbrook in Schubert’s spare, amazingly evocative piano part.

The acoustics of St John’s Kirk were just right and rang to his voice, the tenor range limning the youth’s vulnerability.

James Gilchrist moved his audience though bitterness, to desperation, to nostalgia, to pain.

Delusion sets in as he trudges on and even a cemetery rejects him, until he ends up with the hurdy-gurdy man: Am I like you? No one wants you or your tunes, even dogs growl at you. Are you the one to sing my woe?

James Gilchrist and Anna Tilbrook vividly brought all these emotions to the Perth Chamber Music audience.

Their magnificent performance received much applause.