2023 – Highlights of a Year in Music

It’s an odd experience being a retired opera singer. Having spent over 40 years travelling the world, singing operas and concerts, going from contract to contract with very little repetition, flying from city to city, staying in rented apartments and nice hotels, meeting wonderful colleagues, all in the pursuit of musical excellence and a desire to entertain as many people as possible, it has been very strange suddenly to stop! My accident in Vietnam in 2018 when I broke a vertebra in my spine, and the long rehabilitation over 10 months to allow me to walk again and live fairly normally, caused me to bring my operatic life to a somewhat dramatic conclusion. The fact that I have been able to sing a few concerts and a couple of recordings in the time since, interrupted again by Covid, forced me to re-examine my priorities. The offer from Hugh Kerr to join the Edinburgh Music Review as a writer has been a life saver, and I will be forever grateful to Hugh for giving me a new goal to pursue. I hope that my writings over the last three years have been interesting and helpful, the blog allowing me to show my readers something of the life of a singer, and the reviews giving, I hope, the readers an insight into the music being performed in Scotland from the point of view of a professional singer and not a journalist. The lockdown and its aftermath gave me a chance, in the absence of any live music, to describe all aspects of my career, the works I have sung, the people I have sung with and learned from, the places I have sung and so on. I was able to expand my writing into an examination of voice types, particular pieces of music I love, and even to have some interviews with Scottish performers and colleagues about their lives. With your support, I will keep doing that into 2024 but I thought I’d sign off for 2023 with a brief survey of highlights of my reviewing and performing year. 

I was extremely fortunate to be able to review much of the RSNO season at the Usher Hall, the Edinburgh International Festival, the Lammermuir Festival and many shows in between. I am probably going to surprise you by naming my Concert of the Year as the ‘Secret Byrd’ concert given at St Mary’s, Haddington by the Gesualdo Six in the Lammermuir Festival on 14th September, but in a year of superb concerts, this was, for me, the pinnacle. 

We have been celebrating, in 2023, the 400th anniversary of William Byrd’s death, and there have been many wonderful concerts showing Byrd to have been one of Britain’s finest composers, a true genius and, due to his longevity, a prolific one. I had first heard the Gesualdo Six at the 2021 Lammermuir Festival and had been much impressed by their beautiful sound and their superb blend of voices. Their ‘Secret Byrd’ concert took them to even greater heights as, partnered by the viol consort, Fretwork, and directed by Bill Barclay, they enacted a clandestine Catholic Mass similar to those which went on during the turbulent period of Tudor England after Henry VIII’s split with Rome in 1534, and especially during the reign of Elizabeth 1. Within the confines of a semi-staged re-enactment, we heard all of Byrd’s 5 part mass and the Agnus Dei of the 4 part, as well as several motets and some viol pieces. The whole concert was magical, and in the fantastic acoustic of St Mary’s, the Gesualdo Six demonstrated why they are the premier small vocal ensemble in the world. Look out for further appearances in Scotland. I will keep you posted on the EMR. 

Another stand-out performance in 2023 was the concert version of Richard Wagner’s ‘Tannhäuser,’ given by the Deutsche Oper, Berlin, conducted by Sir Donald Runnicles on 25th August in the Usher Hall. With the American tenor, Clay Hilley in the title role, Emma Bell as Elisabeth and Thomas Lehman as Wolfram von Eschenbach, the team from Berlin gave a magnificent performance of Wagner’s tricky early opera about a singing competition and a man’s search for redemption from sin. In a Festival largely devoid of opera, and despite a clunky semi-staging, this ‘Tannhäuser’ was remarkable. 

The two song recitals I most enjoyed were given by Catriona Morison in the Queen’s Hall during the EIF and by William Thomas in the Paxton Festival at Paxton House in the Borders. Both recitals were accompanied by the Edinburgh pianist Malcolm Martineau, and both featured young singers on the verge of great careers. The art of the song recital is a subtle one and can catch out singers with limited imagination or monochrome voices. Charisma is required when you have to dominate an audience for an hour and a half with no costume, no props and no histrionics. These two young singers passed the test with flying colours. 

A word here for another brilliant young Scottish mezzo-soprano, Beth Taylor. She and I sang a recital of music inspired by Robert Burns in January in the Great Hall of the Portrait Gallery, accompanied by the estimable John Kitchen, and I was delighted how this young singer has developed over the four years I have known her. She is already taking the European opera scene by storm, and this was confirmed later in the year by her magnificent performances in the Cardiff Singer of the World competition, in which she reached the final, and, in many people’s view, should have won. She, John and I will back in the Portrait Gallery on 28th February 2024 with a concert celebrating the bi-centenary of the death of Lord Byron. 

The RSNO has continued to perform at the highest level throughout the year, appearing with great success abroad as well, notably in Salzburg. My top two works were Tchaikovsky’s 5th Symphony, electrically conducted by Elim Chan and Brahms’ 2nd Symphony conducted by Thomas Søndergård, and my favourite concert featured Mussorgsky’s ‘Pictures at an Exhibition’, with live drawings of each section by James Mayhew, conducted by the exciting New Zealand conductor, Gemma New. 

From my own perspective, I derived great pleasure from my concert in the Edinburgh Festival, ‘Another Afternoon of Opera,’ at St Andrew’s and St George’s Church in George Street (on February 1st 2024 to change its name to ‘The New Town Church’), with some of my young protégés from St Andrews and Edinburgh. We managed to attract a large audience for an exhilarating concert of operatic highlights in a splendid venue. If I can’t appear in staged operas any more, I can at least sing some of the music! 

I look forward to another great year of music in Edinburgh in 2024. Please come along for the ride on EMR!