Unusual Christmas concert - songs, poetry and harp !

Unusual Christmas concert - songs, poetry and harp ! with Sarah Minns, Adam Best and Mary Reid at Stoke Newington Old Church
 


From Roger Thomas


Soprano Sarah Minns's message -- to very loosely paraphrase her introduction to this fascinating OperaUpClose evening concert (December 5) -- was that Christmas is coming, but let's not drown in schmaltzy Xmas musical fare but, rather, examine the season of "hibernations and awakenings". The themes were not followed so closely as to self-destruct but we got the picture. The chilly wet and windy weather helped, as did the venue: Stoke Newington's Old Church (now an arts centre), the only surviving church in London built in the Elizabethan era.

We don't hear enough of Sarah Minns, one of London's most characterful, lively and versatile classical sopranos. The versatility was in full play here; no piano for this recital but harp, played exquisitely by Mary Reid, who had also prepared the harp transcriptions of the vocal works from piano or full orchestral scores. The Old Church cried out for Shakespeare and actor Adam Best was there to add the Bard's own words to Minns's Shakespeare-influenced songs, as well as other poems suited to the season and themes.


But first an aria ("O Sleep, why dost thou leave me") from Handel's Semele, with a libretto based on Congreve's (he -- not, as often believed, Shakespeare -- who wrote "Musick has charms to soothe a savage breast"). Charms indeed from Minns, but above all regret poignantly portrayed as the mortal Semele awakens to the realisation that her dream of the God Jupiter has faded -- only the beginning of her troubles.

In this first group, more regret at an aborted awakening as Adam Best read Emily Dickinson's poem "I thought the train would never come" (/How slow the whistle came/I don't believe a peevish bird/So whimpered for the Spring...) Then, from Minns, three of Aaron Copland's 12 settings of Dickinson poems: a forcefully expressed, soprano-apt "Why do they shut me out of heaven?" (/Did I sing too loud...); "The World feels dusty"; and "Heart we will forget him".


Before we moved into Shakespeare territory Mary Reid refreshed our musical palates with two of Marcel Tournier's evocative Images: the cool and calm of "Au Seuil du Temple" and the multicoloured fluttering of magical birds in "La Volière Magique" -- I expected Stravinsky's Firebird to fly in at any moment.


Shakespeare moved in with Hamlet: Minns sang Elizabeth Maconchy's beautifully simple setting of "Ophelia's Song", mourning the death of her father Polonius, its watery sounds perhaps foretelling Ophelia's own demise.


Then different approaches to Romeo and Juliet. Minns in bel canto mode made the most of Giulietta's lament from her balcony in Bellini's I Capuleti e I Montecchi ("Eccomi in lieta Vesta"). What's to be done to get Juliet out of a marriage she does not want? Adam Best took us back to Shakespeare where Friar Lawrence in Act IV Scene 1 of Romeo and Juliet confidently expounds to Juliet his cunning plan to have her seem dead and thus escape her unwanted marriage and flee with Romeo. But as we in the UK know all to well these days, "cunning plans" engineered to leave marriages often go askew.


Before the interval, Mary Reid played "Improptu Cristatus" a work written for her by Thomas Chevis that had its world premiere in Ripon Cathedral on November 29 in a recital entitled Les Oiseaux. Podiceps cristatus is the great crested grebe, a water-bird noted for its elaborate mating rituals. On the harp, much frantic paddling, splashing and flapping of wings. And the low and harsh call of the male bird, which, Reid warned us, involved some harp technique that worried the Ripon audience who thought the resulting sound was a mistake.


The shorter second half took us gradually towards Christmas but also featured Elizabethan and older texts. Edmund Rubbra's "A Hymn to the Virgin" set a text from c. 1300 and was followed by Adam Best's reading of Shakespeare's Sonnet 43, which grapples with the paradox of seeing his lover more clearly with eyes closed or dreaming than in the light of day-to-day reality (When most I wink, then do mine eyes best see,/For all the day they view things unrespected;/But when I sleep, in dreams they look on thee,/And, darkly bright, are bright in dark directed....)


Then more Elizabethiana: Ivor Gurney's exquisite setting of John Webster's poem "Sleep" from the composer's Five Elizabethan Songs. Gurney's sparse scoring -- not a note too many -- worked just as well on the harp as the piano.


Two of Samuel Barber's 10 Hermit Songs ("The Crucifixion" and "The Desire for Hermitage") based on Irish monks' marginalia, took us back to the 8th to 13th centuries.


We were now on the way to a sophisticated Christmas. The two poems read by Adam Best that framed this final section were ironic, but respectfully so, prompting us to think of new angles on the Nativity. Joseph Brodsky's "Star of the Nativity" takes us to a realistic Bethlehem seen from a newborn's perspective but with Godly intervention (...from the depth of the universe, from its opposite end-the star/was looking into the cave. And that was the Father's stare.). Worth reading in full. For text, see here.) U.A. Fanthorpe's poem "I am Joseph" also takes an oblique view of the Nativity, with Joseph gently lamenting (I wanted an heir, discovered/My wife's son wasn't mine). But he's still deeply in love with Mary and will take things as they are (My lesson for my foster son:/Endure. Love. Give.) (For full text, see here.)


Mary Reid played the harp solo "Interlude" from Britten's Ceremony of Carols, for me distant church bells heard in a snowy landscape.


Max Reger's "The Virgin's Slumber Song", sung in the original German by Minns, draws on a text written in the late 19th century but has a folk-song down-to-earth reality. Mary is a real (loving) mother but is tired and dearly wants her baby to sleep (And soft and sweetly sings/A bird upon a bough: /Ah, baby, dear one,/Slumber now!). The exclamation mark is indicative; it's in the German text too. Mary is far from shouting at the baby, but is frustrated.


Finally, Sarah Minns sang some old favourites: Holst's "In the Bleak Midwinter; Franz Gruber's "Silent Night" (Minns invited the audience to join her in singing this); and Adolph Adams's "O Holy Night". Great work from the trio, with special praise to Sarah Minns for singing her whole lengthy and varied programme from memory, without any back-up scores in sight.

Photos: Roger Thomas