Music at Paxton: William Thomas and Malcolm Martineau
27/07/23
It is always a pleasure to see generational shifts, and that goes for voices too. I have been waiting a while for a new British bass to establish himself and it was a delight last night, at the Paxton Summer Festival in the Scottish Borders, to find a young singer who promises to fill that role. William Thomas, expertly accompanied by Malcolm Martineau, performed a fine programme of German Lieder to an enthusiastic audience in the lovely Picture Gallery of Paxton House.
I first heard Will when I was singing Arkel in 'Pelleas et Melisande' at Garsington Opera in 2017. He sang the small role of the Shepherd, and you could already hear the quality of his voice. The following year, he won First Prize in the Kathleen Ferrier competition (I won Second Prize in 1981!), and his career was launched. His rise has been meteoric and he represented England in this year's Cardiff Singer of the World, with big debuts coming up at Covent Garden, La Scala and the Proms.
I was interested to hear him in recital, a discipline which needs more than just a good voice, and I am glad to say that he is the real deal.
EMR readers will know that I am quite critical of my own voice type, but I really have only admiration for this young singer. As I well know, choosing a recital programme as a bass can be problematic, as our voices lend themselves to the dramatic and the gloomy side of life. Not for us the sunny uplands of young love or the twinkling lights of comedic slapstick. No, we thrive on melancholy and meditations on death, and indeed the programme hinted at this with songs such as 'Fahrt zum Hades' (Journey to Hell) and 'Alles endet, was entstehet' (Everything must end, that has begun). However, such was William's mastery of his voice and the quality of his chosen songs, that we were thoroughly entertained for an hour and a half of sublime music and left Paxton with uplifted spirits.
William and Malcolm began their recital with a group of Schubert songs. I particularly enjoyed their rendition of the gorgeous 'Du bist die Ruh' (You are the calm), a wonderful setting of Rückert's beautiful love poem - you see, basses can sing of love, only rather rarely!
The duo then moved on to a group of Hugo Wolf songs. I have to admit that I have never been a huge fan of Wolf, finding his idiom hard to identify with, but these were well performed, and 'Fussreise' (A Walk in the Woods) conjured up happy memories of wandering through Alpine meadows and woodlands on a sunny morning.
A change of programme substituted two ballads by Carl Loewe for the expected Richard Strauss Songs, and brought the first half to an end. I was delighted to hear again 'Tom der Reimer', a song I have sung many times over the years and which is particularly suited to Paxton, being only a few miles from the Rhymer's Stone, where the aforementioned Thomas was, allegedly, whisked away for seven years by the Queen of the Elves! William Thomas characterised the two protagonists excellently and Malcolm Martineau tinkled and trilled to great effect.
The next song, ‘Herr Oluf’, another tale of otherworldly enchantment, although much more morbid, allowed Malcolm to show his impressive piano technique and Will to demonstrate some splendid low notes.
This is a seriously good voice, smooth and even throughout the range, and demonstrating a beautiful legato. For such a young man (28), William Thomas possesses a very mature sound, round and mellow, and already quite powerful. The top is thrillingly secure and the low notes sonorous and rich. I only hope that he is well-advised and avoids the heavier repertoire that he will inevitably sing, until he is ready. I would also counsel sticking with the bass repertoire and not be tempted to venture into the bass-baritone world. There are few true basses around and Will is a true bass! It was shocking that he didn't even make the final in Cardiff, and that the clearly inferior Italian bass won the prize.
The second half started with Wolf's three Michelangelo Lieder, another unannounced change from the printed programme. My only quibble in an otherwise excellent evening was that the audience should have been told of these changes. I don't mind at all that the second half swapped round the two groups of songs, but the audience must be made aware!
I have sung these extraordinary songs many times over the last 40 years and they never cease to amaze me. Indeed, they are the only Wolf songs I have sung, and the performance last night fully justified my admiration. Translated into German from Michelangelo's Italian original, they form a powerful group of two love songs flanking a nihilistic view of the utter pointlessness of life, as the dust of dead men remind us where we are all doomed to go.
The last songs that Schubert wrote before his untimely death in 1828 were settings of Heinrich Heine, songs infused with melancholy and despair. They were grouped with another set of songs to poems by Ludwig Rellstab and published posthumously as 'Schwanengesang' (Swansong) by Schubert's publisher, as a cycle. There is no evidence to suggest that the composer intended them as a cycle and the performers last night gave us the Heine songs alone. They are uniformly magnificent settings, ranging from the delightful 'Das Fischermädchen' to the utterly desperate 'Der Doppelgänger' via the impressionistic 'Die Stadt'. William and Malcolm provided us with a powerful and deeply moving account of these superb songs, matching each other for drama and eloquence.
So that we didn't all go home in the depths of despair, the duo offered us two encores devoted to Sylvia, by Schubert and Finzi, to rapturous applause.
