Review Details
MUSIC IN THE UNIVERSITY In association with S-O-U-N-D IRENE DRUMMOND Soprano ALASTAIR BEATSON Piano BURNS IN SONG: 250TH ANNIVERSARY
Alan Cooper
01 November 2009
ZESTE AT CROMBIE HALL
Making a welcome return to Aberdeen University Music following their previous recital in King’s College Chapel almost a year ago, were the splendid piano-vocal duo Irene Drummond and Alastair Beatson. They pulled in a surprisingly large audience on a spectacularly horrible night. This year’s programme featured settings of poems by Robert Burns. However, texts by Hugh MacDairmid, Walter Scott, Lady Nairn and William Souter were also included in Sunday’s piquant recital. Many of the musical settings were by more or less contemporary Scottish composers although Schubert, Schumann and Robert Franz were represented by German translations of the original texts. It was astonishing how closely these translations mirrored the originals. I will probably have the more extreme nationalists baying for my blood for saying that the German texts projected a more polished and refined impression, sitting nicely alongside texts by Heine or Müller perhaps, but I’m sorry, they did. That is not to say that the Scots words did not have an earthy raw power of their own, something that was further enhanced by gritty settings by composers like Francis George Scott.
Crystal clear singing, soaring to effortless top notes by Irene Drummond was often complemented by the most delicate piano playing from Alastair Beatson. Sometimes he would seem to be scarcely tickling at the surface of the keyboard or elsewhere, his fingers would fire off like precision pistols at the keys. I had quite forgotten that the original text of Schubert’s Ave Maria was by none other than Sir Walter Scott. This was probably the most familiar song in the recital and the performance was sensational. German settings of Ye Banks and Braes and A Red Red Rose by Robert Franz opened and concluded the recital. Delicate and attractive, they are not of course the tunes we are used to. In any case, Burns himself would not have recognised the tune we normally hear sung to My Luve is like a Red Red Rose. It has been set many times by all sorts of composers. Even Pat Boone sang a somewhat embarrassing version in the film Journey to the Centre of the Earth!
After Franz’s version of Ye Banks and Braes, Francis George Scott’s realisations of MacDairmid’s poems Moonstruck and Country Life seemed like a splash of cold water square in the face, still the tortuous melodies and stabbing piano accompaniments had a remarkably powerful impact.
John Maxwell Geddes tends not to shy away from the familiar tunes in his vocal parts but like Britten in his folksong arrangements, his piano writing adds more than a small measure of eloquence to the mix. I enjoyed Tom Cunningham’s Up in the Morning Early and I wholly concur with the sentiments it expresses.
Judith Weir never fails to enchant with her magical stories and Lady Isobel and the Elf Knight did not disappoint. The Watergaw, a MacDairmid poem set by a very young Edinburgh composer Lewis Forbes was melodically strong, attractive and imaginative, while another MacDairmid poem was given a rollicking and surprisingly hummable setting by Francis George Scott.
I have left until last James MacMillan’s three settings of poems by William Souter. Although I have always recognised his talents as a composer I have not always felt at ease with everything he has written (I suspect he would not want me to) but I thought these pieces were absolute gems. The clear vocal writing in Ballad supported by the merest dabs of colour from the piano, the searing emotional power of The Children and the release of tension in Scots Song where he finally allows the piano to blossom forth along with the voice made these songs the unquestionable star turn of Sunday’s recital.