There are some concerts where it is difficult to make much comment that seems useful. Ernest Newman, who could be a dismissive critic, was no doubt in his element when he wrote what may have been the shortest review on record. If my memory is correct, he dismissed a song recital given by a singer in the following terms: ***** gave a recital at the Wigmore Hall last night. Why?
However, the same dilemma can present itself when one is faced by a recital that is at the other end of the scale and such an occasion was the last Midday Recital before Xmas, given by the young baritone James Newby, a one time Leicester lad, and the pianist Simon Lepper. I was a friend of the late Edward Greenfield, the long-time music critic of The Guardian ,who once said to me that he wished that he could be called an appreciator, always seeking out firstly what artists are trying to do before weighing in the balance the result.
No such weighing was necessary in regard this hour’s music making. It was simply superb even in the basics of concocting a various programme ranging from songs in English, most of them unknown to me, before moving onto some of the staples of German lieder. In the former I was particularly impressed by Rebecca Clarke’s The Seal Man which had considerable dramatic power. My only quibble was that I might have liked to have heard the genius of Britten’s song writing rather better represented by music completely of his own invention rather than by two folksong arrangements, lovely though they were.
In some ways Lieder, or Art Song as some now call it, is the most demanding of all music for the voice. You have no scenery, a single companion artist on the piano and only your exposed voice to render what in many of the best cases is little short of a mini opera, with sudden changes of feeling line by line of verse mirrored in music often requiring sudden variations of timbre and volume.
All these challenges were met triumphantly by singer and pianist. The latter should certainly take a bow because in many of these songs at crucial moments the piano is an equal, sometimes more so in the Beethoven, Mahler and Schubert compositions. However, ultimately it is the voice which attracts the attention and, on this occasion, listening to James Newby’s singing I found myself recalling some very famous baritones of past and present. The effortless power of the instrument in which the power never became a bark recalled Fischer Dieskau and lower down in volume the sound at times was almost like honey as in Thomas Allen. In the end I simply put my pen away,sat back and luxuriated in the experience. Christmas had truly come. I was later told that the singer’s next concert would be in The Musikverein in Vienna so I went away feeling that I had not been mistaken to think that I had heard something really special.
The Diary of a Leicester Concert-goer 