Music at Paxton: ‘An Entertainment’
Paxton House - 23/07/23
Rowan Pierce, soprano | Christopher Glynn, piano
It’s an unseasonably dreich afternoon at Paxton House, with few summer dresses and linen jackets in evidence, but a sizeable audience have gathered to hear Rowan Pierce (who left Saltburn this morning in torrential rain) and Christopher Glynn perform ‘An Entertainment.’ Their programme was chosen to reflect the intimate setting of the Picture Gallery, and to replicate “the musical entertainments that people – both grand and humble – performed in their homes over the last 250 years.” Most of the songs are in English, though not all are by British composers.
I last heard Rowan Pierce in the Scottish Chamber Orchestra’s ‘Israel in Egypt’ last autumn, where she duetted beautifully with Mary Bevan, but had only one other aria – Handel being stingy in this oratorio in his allocation of arias to the soloists. So it’s delightful to hear her clear soprano soar into Arne’s ‘O Ravishing Delight’, the perfect opening number. This domestic entertainment is by no mean restrained! Haydn wrote songs in English, especially during his happy (and lucrative) stay between 1791 and 1795. He valued the opportunity to write for the new Broadwood piano and ‘The Mermaid’s Song’ with its tinkling watery accompaniment reflect his enjoyment in the extended range of the new keyboard instrument. The lyrics by Anne Hunter (1742-1821) with its chorus reference to “rocks of coral” hint at ‘The Tempest,’ and the last song in the group sets Shakespeare’s words from Twelfth Night when Viola attempts through an allegory to tell Orsino how she feels, ‘She never told her love.’ It’s a short reflective piece, sung simply with sparse accompaniment and is one of several well-chosen serious songs in this programme.
Beethoven never visited Britain, but through commissions from Scot, George Thomson, he, and others including Haydn, wrote many arrangements of folk airs. I’ve heard some of the fine Scottish settings but wasn’t aware of the songs from Ireland and Wales of which we hear two examples today. The carpe diem lyrics of ‘Some Greybeards Inform Us’ are set to a vigorous upbeat tune, while the more reflective Welsh song ‘To the Aeolian Harp’ has a haunting chorus and ornate piano interludes between verses.
Throughout the concert both musicians give short witty introductions to the music. Schubert, Christopher Glynn points out, lacked the opportunities to set English lyrics given to Haydn and Beethoven. Working with translator, Jeremy Sams, Glynn has provided English versions of songs appropriate for domestic music-making. An upbeat, un-Schubertian, view of solitude is taken by the contented narrator of ‘The Lonely One’ whose time by the fireside is enlivened by the presence of a cricket, and a foolish troubadour in ‘Listening to Love’ is understood too well by his sweetheart. The last song in the set, ‘To Music,’ is sung very plainly, understating the emotion, by Rowan Pierce, leaving Christopher Glynn to develop the power of the beautiful melody in his accompaniment.
The sun makes a brief appearance for interval drinks in the courtyard – last year’s fundraising innovation, having proved successful, is being repeated. The second half features twentieth century song. First, completely new to me, a 1962 song cycle by William Walton, ‘A Song for the Lord Mayor’s Table’ sets six poems about London in contrasting and vivid arrangements. The cycle was premiered by Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, no less, who, according to her accompanist, Gerald Moore, sang “as if she were an Englishwoman.” The ornate baroque-inspired setting of the seventeenth century poem, ‘The Lord Mayor’s Table’ about the extravagant amounts of food on offer provides a jolly opening, followed by the quieter setting of Wordsworth’s ‘Glide Gently’ with expert legato phrasing from Rowan and Christopher. The poignant traditional tale of a lass who loved a sailor, ‘Wapping Old Stairs’, has hints of Kurt Weill in its melody and piano parts. Pierce characterises the young woman well, though I wondered later if the Cockney accent deployed in Coward’s ‘London Pride’ might have been effective here too. The cycle finishes with ‘Rhyme,’ a vocal tour de force in an elaboration of ‘Oranges and Lemons’ with an appropriate bell-like accompaniment. Rowan’s clarity of diction is an asset in this song, and indeed in steering us through a number of unfamiliar and complex lyrics in the programme.
Five French songs follow in an earlier song-cycle, Poulenc’s 1940 ‘Banalites’ which sets five poems by Apollinaire, who died in 1919 of Spanish flu after sustaining shrapnel wounds in 1917. Poulenc, defiant under German occupation, chose to set these poems by a war hero, which reflected his own taste for the strange and inconsequential. The surface juxtapositions in the longer poems often mask a deeper melancholy especially in the last, ‘Sanglots’ (Sobs) about dreamers who died in war. Two short poems make idiosyncratic points. ‘Voyage a Paris’ was Poulenc’s favourite encore when performing in the sticks “Oh! How delightful/ to leave a dismal / Place for Paris!” and the evocative words and languorous setting of ‘Hotel’ are a seductive reminder to me, a completely reformed smoker, of the pleasures of cigarettes!
The concert finishes with three songs by Noel Coward. Written during the Blitz, ’London Pride’ is the name of the flower which grows on bombsites, and the tune, deliberately reminiscent of the German national anthem, became a popular success. Rowan uses a Cockney accent to good effect here. ‘A Bar on the Piccolo Marina’ lets her show further comic talents in a celebration of a widow enjoying her new-found freedom. ‘Sail Away’ is a typically bitter-sweet Coward song, hinting at the vulnerabilities under the resilient exterior.
This has been a wonderful start to my week at Paxton, with a great deal more to follow. For details of the full programme see music@paxton.co.uk
