CAMBRIDGE SUMMER MUSIC - LUNCHTIME CONCERT
Pembroke Auditorium - ring any bells? This sparkling music venue was formerly the much-loved United Reform Church on Trumpington Street and today’s lunchtime concert was a musical feast. A first performance at this ‘new’ venue by Cambridge Summer Music.
Behind the concert grand was the young virtuoso Ian Tindale and upstage the fine soprano Elinor Rolfe Johnson. The programme though lasting just an hour seemed to defy normal time patterns. It was as though we are all sitting (on new very comfy seats) enjoying some visions in a dream. Tindale specialises in classical song, lieder or what are sometimes called ‘art songs’. Whatever the name he is damned good at it; bringing superb delicacy or emotional power to the piece in hand. He was also the perfect match for Rolfe Johnson’s stage persona.
There are two kinds (at least) of great singers: the stand still and let the voice do the work or the type that lives and breathes the piece. Rolfe Johnson is most certainly in that latter category. Her eyes burn with emotion as she both sings and acts out the meaning, often deeper meaning, of the lyrical words (here handily translated from the German on a generously free-of-charge programme).
The recital began with Mahler’s Ruckert-Lieder, the poet’s exploration of nature and mankind. Such was Rolfe Johnson’s expressions – in face and arms – that word-for-word translation seemed unnecessary. Mahler’s gorgeous settings with their sweeping melodies captured the ear; none more so than in ‘Um Mitternacht’. The music’s dark tones and stirring drama was captured beautifully both by pianist and singer.
Next up, a less familiar work, Alma Mahler’s ‘Vier Lieder’. More bittersweet in tone than her husband’s work, the four songs speak of love, loss and wandering. Rolfe Johnson’s excellent range and pin-point delivery melted the music into our collective hearts. But this was an emotional hors d’oeuvres for the main course to come.
After the shortest of short breaks Tindale and Rolfe Johnson came back on to perform the Four Last Songs by Richard Strauss. I have never heard the piano transcription for this late Romantic swan song but it was so good that I yearn to hear it again. Once more Rolfe Johnson sang with such delicacy of phrasing and power when needed. The famous fourth song, ‘Im Abendrot’ (In the Twilight) was almost too emotional to take on a cloudy July afternoon. This of course is music to die for but also to die to. As the last strains of the soprano hushed the hall ‘How weary we are of our travels – Is this perhaps – Death?’ and the piano echoed the fading cry of the now far off skylarks, there was a prolonged silence as though no one dared to break the magic. There were tears aplenty Yet the magic was indeed broken by loud and much deserved applause that grew louder by the second. In this former church, someone should have let the bells ring out.
