Songs of Edinburgh: Brian Bannatyne-Scott and Beth Taylor
St Michael’s Church
A concert good enough to be in the International Festival.
These were my thoughts at the end of this superb concert on Sunday evening. But firstly a declaration of interest: Brian Bannatyne-Scott, one of the prime movers behind the concert and a principal performer, is one of our best writers for the Edinburgh Music Review and a friend. However having listened to him over the years in his annual festival concerts, and recently reviewed and frequently listened to his latest CD, I know he is a fine singer. I also know he has suffered recent health problems, so I wondered whether he was up to performing in public again. I needed have no fears. He was in superb form, dominating St Michael’s Church with that great bass voice. Brian was joined by Beth Taylor a fine young Scottish mezzo soprano who, after her education at the Conservatoire in Glasgow, is making a name for herself in European opera houses. After tonight’s concert I have no hesitation in saying she is a future star. They were accompanied by an excellent young pianist Michael Gajzler, originally from Poland but more recently training and working at the Conservatoire in Glasgow and accompanying young opera singers in Scotland.
St Michael’s Church in Colinton is a little outside the normal festival and fringe venues, but it is a superb venue for music with a very good acoustic and a very healthy audience of over 200 on Sunday night for the concert..(Incidentally, St Michael’s has a series of concerts for this final festival week. Check them out on the Fringe programme). It was very nice to be inside for a concert rather than the tents of the official festival, which although a brave initiative to mount a festival threatened with COVID, have their disadvantages. The big tents have problems of weather, noise and amplification balance. If you doubt it, listen to the same concert you heard in the big tent broadcast on Radio 3, where the extraneous noises have been cleaned up and the BBC microphones pick up a natural sound without the problems of amplification. So Sunday night gave us that natural sound with two big voices that needed no amplification and a very sensitive piano accompanist who didn’t dominate the singers but supported them.
This concert was headlined ‘Songs of Edinburgh’, but before we got to them we heard a lovely selection of classical Lieder by Brian and Beth to warm us up, but also to show off their excellent voices and to give a contrast to our ‘Scottish Lieder’ later in the programme! Brian began with 3 songs by Schubert: the first Meeres Stille (Calm Sea) was so quiet I thought Brian might need amplification but after the second song Im Abendrot (At Sunset) I realised that Brian was just singing quietly as the song required and in his subsequent songs he showed the power of his voice as well as its beauty and his perfect German diction (according to my co-editor Christine who speaks German) His third song in this first group was Gruppe Aus Dem Tartarus (Group From Hades) whose words were by Schiller. Brian advised us to read the texts in the free programmes provided. It had portentous words, and the music was almost Wagnerian in its depth and melody. These three songs by Schubert were a perfect introduction to the art of Lieder and a reassurance that Brian’s voice was in great working order.
The next group of songs were sung by Beth Taylor and if you had never heard her voice before, by the end of these you were left in no doubt that Scotland has a future star in its midst. The songs had a very strong Scottish connection; they were Schumann’s ‘Letters of Mary Stuart’, the heart-breaking tale of the tragic Queen of Scotland brutally executed by Queen Elizabeth 1st of England. These were among the last songs that Schumann set to music and as Brian wrote in his programme notes Schumann himself was soon to reach a tragic end to his life by being locked up in an asylum for the rest of his life. In these songs Mary tells her tragic story from leaving her happy childhood in France to her violent death. Beth in her magnificent voice gave us power and pathos, a rich palette of colours in the voice and with the text an understanding of the anguish of Mary. As I listened, I was reminded of Joyce DiDonato another great mezzo (who I am reviewing later in the Festival) singing the part of Mary in Donizetti’s ‘Maria Stuarda’ at Covent Garden. She sings to Queen Elizabeth (of course they never met in real life!) “Figlia impura di Bolena (impure daughter of Ann Boleyn) and “Profanato e il soglio inglese vil bastarda dal tuo pie” (The English throne is sullied vile bastard by your foot”). Beth in her rendition of these songs gave us the pathos of Mary, but the beauty of her voice left us wanting more, another perfect introduction to the evening. I should also say that by this time I had begun to really appreciate the delicate piano accompaniment of Michael Gajzler, never too dominant, always allowing the singer to shine, but supportive in his accompaniment. He was the perfect pianist.
Brian and Beth then moved on to a series of songs by Gustav Mahler, but also by his often-neglected wife Alma Mahler, better remembered for her famous marriages to Mahler and Walter Gropius, the founder of Bauhaus, than her compositions. Sadly only 17 of her compositions survive but on the basis of the three presented by Beth they deserve to be much better known. Brian gave us a selection from Mahler’s ‘Rückert Lieder’ opening with the ominous Um Mitternacht ( At Midnight) and finishing with the ravishing Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen (I Have Become Lost To The World), which Brian in his notes suggests is the finest song ever written. Brian’s rendition compared favourably to the great recordings of the past.
The next two sections took us fully into the Scottish theme of the evening, firstly Beth sang us two Scottish songs with music by Respighi and I must say, as a lover of traditional music, of course I knew the songs, but not these versions. The first ‘The Piper O’ Dundee’ is a traditional Scots song, maybe written or written down by James Hogg, This was one of Alex Campbell’s favourites back in the 1960’s.This tune by Respighi has of course more of a classical than a folk style and Beth’s powerful delivery certainly brought out the text, but did it give it the meaning that the traditional folk version did? This of course raises questions of crossover music, and I know there are fierce debates around this. Beth’s second song ‘My Heart’s in the Highlands’ by Robert Burns also raises these questions. It’s a great song and like all songs in the folk tradition has been reinterpreted, most notably by Bob Dylan in the past and more recently by Arvo Pärt and used as a soundtrack for the Italian film ‘The Great Beauty’ sung by Else Torp. Respighi’s. versions are interesting but I must say I prefer the traditional arrangements. Brian’s two Scots songs were on much more traditional ground, Scots poems set to music by a Scots composer, in this case one with the name of Scott! As Brian says in his programme notes, Frances George Scott deserves to be much better known than he is and these songs demonstrate his quality. First ‘A Loch Fyne Fisherman’ and second the great poem by MacDiarmid, ‘Crowdieknowe’, which gives god a hard time on judgement day!
The final section of the concert, and what gave the concert its title, was ‘Songs of Edinburgh’, poems written by Sandy McCall Smith, set to music by composer Tom Cunningham, who was in the audience. The poems were originally written to accompany a book written by Sandy commissioned by Historic Scotland of photograph’s of Edinburgh ‘A Work of Beauty - Alexander McCall Smith’s Edinburgh’ I have the book on my shelf; it is a delight as are Sandy’s poems and Tom Cunningham’s music. In ‘The Gym Lesson’, a hilarious poem, Beth gave us echoes of Miss Jean Brodie. In ‘Edinburgh In Winter’ Brian evoked the spirit of the city. In ‘The Uppies And the Doonies’ Beth and Brian captured the class divisions of Edinburgh, truly a tale of two cities. ‘Unfinished Dream’ reflects on the geography and architecture of the city, not yet completed as Sandy says. I wonder what he would say about the new St James Centre and “The Turd”! ‘The State Processes’ refers to all those state rituals that Edinburgh observes and a plea for a different future for Scotland. ‘Hutton and Higgs’ refers to two of our great scientists who keep the tradition of the Enlightenment alive. ‘From Candlemaker Row” goes back to the past in 1932 and a separated wife. ‘Jenner’s Tea Room’ is a gentle satire on Edinburgh ladies, though sadly they currently have no Jenner’s Tea Rooms to go to, and the final song, sung by Brian and Beth ‘Friends Together’ celebrates growing up in the city and the love of place that Edinburgh inspires amongst us all, aided by pictures of Edinburgh from Sandy’s book, projected on to a big screen. It was a perfect end to a perfect concert. As I said in my heading, this concert was of international quality and would be very much at home in the International Festival. Fergus Linehan our festival director (who is sadly leaving us next year) has done well to promote Scottish culture as a part of the festival, including traditional music this year (unlike his predecessor who wasn’t interested in it!). He could do worse than commission Brian, Beth and Michael to put on a version of this concert for next year’s festival programme.
