Mezzo Christine Rice is a compelling performer: she appeared in Deborah Warner’s first season at the Ustinov Studio last year, in a blistering rendition of Britten’s ‘Phaedra’.
Photo © Patricia Taylor Photography
Direct communication and total commitment to the text, as well as a voice of great richness and variety of colour, again characterised this programme, devised by her and the peerless collaborative pianist Julius Drake.
‘Arianna a Naxos’ is a condensed mini-opera by the mature Haydn, on a theme from classical antiquity.
Haydn charts the range of emotions as Ariadne realises she has been abandoned on the island of Naxos, and the performers followed every twist of plot and harmony superbly.
Viola-player Sascha Bota joined them in a sequence of smaller pieces by Rebecca Clarke, a pupil of Vaughan Williams now recognised as a truly important and original composer.
Pieces for viola (Clarke’s own instrument) alternated with songs, culminating in ‘The Seal Man’, a powerful drama with a sting in its tail.
The three Frank Bridge songs were inspired by the Brahms that followed, but seem a less than successful homage, their textures muddy at times and their harmonic language conventional.
The culmination of the evening was the pair of Brahms songs, a perfect fusion of voice, viola and piano. Dedicated to his violin-playing friend Joseph Joachim and depicting the Virgin Mary singing to her son, the song quotes the old German Christmas song ‘Joseph lieber, Joseph mein’.
An affectionate tribute at the end of a compelling hour of quality music-making.
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Reviewer: Niall Hoskin
