Wagnerian Recital

Stockbridge Parish Church, 23/02/2025

 Susan Bullock, soprano, Laura Margaret Smith, mezzo, Lionel Friend, piano

 ‘The Ring’ comes to Stockbridge Parish Church

 I don’t suppose there are any other churches anywhere in Britain or indeed anywhere else where a week is devoted to Wagner’s Ring! But this is what is happening in Stockbridge this week due to the creative energy of Clea Friend, not only a fine cellist but a great community music organiser who has made her Stockbridge Music Hub one of the most successful community music initiatives in Scotland, if not in the whole UK. Of course it helps if your father is Lionel Friend one of the finest conductors in Britain and a Wagnerian specialist.

The week began on Saturday morning with a talk by Michael Downes, Professor of Music at St Andrew’s University and author of the recent book on Wagner’s Ring “The Story of the Century”  (reviewed by Brian Bannatyne-Scott in the Edinburgh Music Review). It was an entertaining lecture to a very decent audience of around 80 people, many of whom intend to come to the whole week of lectures, concerts and films screening of Wagner’s Ring (from Bayreuth). The week ends next Saturday with a concert by the great Wagnerian singer Sir John Tomlinson. Truly Clea Friend has made Edinburgh the centre of the Wagnerian world this week in Stockbridge.

 Tonight’s concert had two fine singers, brilliantly accompanied by Lionel Friend on the piano, giving us an excellent selection of Wagnerian songs and excerpts from the Ring. The principal singer was Susan Bullock, the very well-known international soprano, who has sung Wagner all over the world. She began with a beautifully sung account of the Wesendonck Lieder, followed by powerfully sung and demanding extracts as Brünnhilde from Götterdämmerung, She was joined as Waltraute by a fine young Scottish mezzo, Laura Margaret Smith, surely a star of the future. Lionel Friend was a sensitive accompanist, aided by daughter Clea doing the page turning.

Edinburgh is very lucky in its classical music provision. This week, in addition to the Wagner week in Stockbridge, we have the SCO doing Fauré’s Requiem in the Usher Hall on Thursday, the RSNO on Friday, the BBC Scottish at the Usher Hall on Sunday doing Elgar’s ‘Dream of Gerontius’ with the fabulous Beth Taylor, Scotland’s leading mezzo soprano, and of course Scottish Opera doing ‘The Makropulos Affair’ at the Festival Theatre. We are indeed lucky to live in Edinburgh and we should be very grateful to Clea Friend for making the Stockbridge Music Hub an important part of that musical scene.