Music at Paxton: Dame Sarah Connolly and Joseph Middleton

Paxton House - 26/07/22

There was a palpable sense of anticipation in the large audience who had turned up at the delightful Palladian villa of Paxton House, on the River Tweed, very near Berwick. This summer festival of chamber music was established in 2006, and continues to bring superb musicians to an area of the Borders some distance from the usual hotspots of Scottish musical life. Operating mainly in the fabulous Picture Gallery of Paxton House, it offers a venue of genuine beauty and warmth, intimate enough to be perfect for chamber music and song recitals but large enough to allow a full range of volume and excitement from the performers. Perusing the full programme, I was struck by the variety of musical events taking place over the 10 day period of the 2022 festival, and the standard of many of the performers.

The concert I attended was given by Dame Sarah Connolly and Joseph Middleton and was definitely  non-populist, and I was unsure what to expect from a recital containing no songs that I had ever heard, or indeed heard of! As a singer myself, I have a pretty good repertoire of songs I have sung, or at least know about. This recital of Barber, Turnage, Chausson, Schoenberg, Berg and Weill was terra incognita, but proved to be fabulous, and highly entertaining.

I have known Sarah for a long time, and have sung with her on several occasions in the past, but she is now on a level beyond most mere mortals, and her Damehood, awarded in 2017, is testament to this high place in British musical life. What she has always had, since the very beginning, was integrity, both in programming and in performance, and it is always a delight to find out what she has decided to present to the public. She is known as a very intelligent singer, and in a world which seems to be controlled at the moment by mediocrities, such qualities shine through. She also has a fabulous voice!

Dame Sarah, and Joseph Middleton, began their recital with three songs by Samuel Barber, settings of poems by James Joyce, which established the special partnership between pianist and singer. This relationship, built on empathy and a clear sense of enjoyment, shone through the entire recital and contributed enormously to its success.

Next came a new work, premiered in June this year at Snape Maltings, ‘Songs of Sleep and Regret’ by Mark-Anthony Turnage, who, on this showing, has gone from an “enfant terrible” to a thoughtful and lyrical composer of songs. Settings of poems by Dickinson, Joyce, Shakespeare, Hardy, George Eliot and Stevie Smith, all explore the premise that sleep will, if only momentarily, set regret at bay. It was quite a lot to take in at first listening, but the musical idiom was not particularly modernistic, and there was much to admire both in the settings and in their interpretation. There was an extended piano interlude when Sarah sat down, leaving the limelight to Joseph, reminding me of those piano interludes in Schumann’s cycles which allow the audience some moments of contemplation without the necessity to attend to understanding the words. The cycle can be heard again in London’s Wigmore Hall on the 28th of September, performed by the same artists.

After the interval, when we were able to chat over a glass of wine in the courtyard, Sarah and Joseph took us away from Britain, to Paris and Vienna in the heady years around the turn of the 20th century.

Ernest Chausson wrote his extended work, ‘Poème de l’Amour et de la Mer’ (Poem of Love and the Sea) in the later years of the 19th century, for voice and piano, and gave the first performance, with the tenor, Désiré Demest, in Brussels in 1893. It was originally conceived with orchestral accompaniment, and that version was first heard later that year in Paris. The work consists of two poems by Maurice Bouchor, separated by an extensive interlude for piano/orchestra. The poet sees his beloved in the sea and in the flowers, but his love is not returned. It is quintessentially fin de siècle music, and none the worse for that, and Sarah and Joseph gave it everything they had. This was all the more remarkable as poor Joseph had had to drive all the way from the south (six hours), since the East Coast line was closed due to overhead power problems. His playing was phenomenal, and there was no apparent sign of fatigue. Indeed I found his accompaniment superb, and it was no surprise to read of the many fine singers for whom he has played. As Director of Leeds Lieder, Musician in Residence at Pembroke College, Cambridge and Professor and Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music, heaven knows how he has time for recitals as well, but he played like a God!

The recital continued with songs by Schoenberg and Berg (fortunately, from my point of view, from their early careers) and ended with a varied group of songs by Kurt Weill, three in English from his US years and one from his period in France after fleeing the Nazis in Germany. In a very subtle change of style, Dame Sarah showed her versatility in a convincing performance of more songs I had never heard, and I particularly enjoyed ‘Je ne t’aime pas’, classic Weill but with a touch of Gauloise.

The whole recital was special, but I felt Sarah was particularly fine in her French songs. Perfect pronunciation and a sublime feel for the style made these songs stand out.

Warm applause greeted the end of the recital, and we were treated to one of Britten’s ‘Charm of Lullabies’ as an encore. Written in 1947 for Nancy Evans, whom I had the good fortune to know and study with long ago, these are delightful miniatures. Sarah and Joseph gave us the Burns song ‘A Highland Balou’ in a near approximation to Scots (in mitigation, I don’t think Britten or Nancy Evans had much of a clue either!). We cheered anyway, but it is a warning to non-Scots that a bit of Brigadoonery is not really good enough for the Scots language! Jeremy Paxman’s ramblings about Burns and doggerel still rankle, and his texts need as much care as Goethe.

I don’t want to end on a negative, so let me reiterate what a pleasure this recital was, a demanding programme carried off in grand style by two world class performers. Great credit must go to Music at Paxton, and its director, Angus Smith, for bringing such excellence to the Borders.

I am conducting an exclusive interview with Dame Sarah Connolly, which will appear soon on the Edinburgh Music Review. Look out for that!