EIF: Mari Eriksmoen and Daniel Heide
Mari Eriksmoen is a rising young opera star from Norway who is getting operatic engagements all over Europe, including Glyndebourne recently. However she chose to make her Edinburgh Festival debut in a recital of Norwegian and German songs. There is a problem about this: because of COVID restrictions the Festival have decided not to have any printed programmes which would normally contain the text of the songs. The limited programme notes available online had little outline of what the songs were about, so our understanding was, to put it mildly, limited.
There was another problem with her recital and that was sound balance. The classical concerts at the Old Quad are amplified from a sound deck operated at the rear of the tent which adds to the natural sound from the stage with a range of overhead speakers. This worked well with the Zehetmair Quartet the previous day, when the full sound of the quartet sounded almost natural, but today with the big dynamic range of an opera singer at times she sounded too loud. But of course Mari is an opera singer and her voice often sounded too big for her material which sits more naturally with a lieder singer. Finally there was a problem because of the audience, or rather the lack of an audience as more than half of the seats empty. Now Mari Eriksmoen is not a big enough name yet to sell out a venue, as Joyce di Donato has done, but in a ‘normal’ festival morning I think she would have more than half filled the Queens Hall. Maybe this was partly due to prices, since COVID economics has meant charging £26 to £32 for a one-hour concert at an outdoor venue, when you could get a Queens Hall seat 2 years ago for £7 for a two-hour concert. However I think the truth is that there are far fewer festival goers in Edinburgh this year, both visitors from around the world and locals prepared to risk a concert even in a socially distanced outdoor venue. I shall be interested to see the final attendance figures for both the fringe and the International festival, but my impression is that Edinburgh is a much quieter place this year!
As for the songs. Mari first sang Norway’s most famous musical son Grieg’s only song cycle ‘Haugtussa’. This clearly appealed to her, as she told us she lives just opposite Grieg’s home and this song cycle is about a young woman falling in love among the beauty of Norway’s countryside. Mari certainly gave her all in this song cycle both singing and acting out the part and, dressed in a stunning white gown, she stood out against the black background of the stage. As a well-prepared critic I used my binoculars to study her expressions during the songs (the distances from the dimly lit stage make it difficult with the naked eye) and she really gave an operatic interpretation of the songs. The second set of Norwegian songs were by the female composer and contemporary of Grieg, Agathe Backer-Grondahl, and were rather quieter and much shorter, but between them the Norwegian songs took up the bulk of the concert. The rest of the concert was more familiar territory with wedding songs by Schumann from Widmund’, his song cycle present for his wife-to-be Clara, and five of Hugo Wolf’s Italian Song Book. They were lighter and well sung but again without texts, largely unknown to the audience, but despite that the audience gave her a warm response, Mari rewarded us with another Norwegian song. She is a fine singer and I look forward to hearing her in the opera house which would seem to be her more natural home. To be fair she has released a well-received CD of Lieder, so it may have been the big tent in the Old Quad which produced a more operatic performance. Mari was well accompanied by Daniel Heide, a German pianist who is gaining an international reputation as a vocal accompanist. Dressed in black he was almost invisible in the dimly lit black background of the stage and unobtrusive in his support of Mari and that sometimes is the best position for an accompanying pianist.
