Catriona Morison & Simon Lepper

The Queen’s Hall

There’s been much talk here since Edinburghborn Catriona Morison won last year’s Cardiff Singer of the World competition, but little opportunity to hear what all the fuss was about. Her Edinburgh Festival debut yesterday, with the everempathetic pianist Simon Lepper, remedied that.

She chose a challenging but engaging programme, it’s greatest test being the heated emotional world of Mahler’s Rückert-lieder. Here, Morison called on the full range of her considerable mezzo palette: gorgeously unaffected in Ich atmet’; nimble and airy in the bucolic Blicke mir nicht. Only in Liebst du um Schönheit and Um Mitternacht did one sense a slight faltering in sustained intensity.

Otherwise, who could fail to be moved by Morison’s opening set of Brahms’ lieder which, like all her performances, bore a tantalisingly slow-burning quality, even an enticing coyness communicated as much through her flashing eyes as her pitchperfect voice.

There was delicate intimacy in the five sublime Schumann settings of words attributed to Mary, Queen of Scots; and in the sentimental outpourings of Korngold’s Hollywood-scented Funf Lieder Op 38, with its freespirited Old English Song. Lovely, also, to hear Michael Head’s Sweet Chance as a well-deserved encore.