Review by Sam Monk (@smonk78)
At the end of March, in keeping with their generally eclectic and often high-culture program, the Howard Assembly Rooms brought John Mark Ainsley and accompanist Roger Vignoles to Leeds for a rare, in these parts anyway, performance of Lieder. For those not intimately acquainted with the format, a group that includes this writer, Lieder is a German word that literally means ‘songs’ but more particularly it usually refers to Romantic-era songs which set German poems of relatively high literary aspirations to a piano accompaniment and are often grouped into themed collections (the original concept album?) . The canon is comprised of a number of poets and composers but the principal proponents of the art are considered to be Robert Schumann and Franz Schubert, whose Die schone Mullerin and Winterreise are consider to be the pinnacle of achievement in the form.
The sense that this is a different kind of performance is confirmed when upon taking up my front row seat I wonder aloud whether there is any need to be worried about the possibility of audience participation only to be told by my next door neighbour in the most sententious and peremptory tones imaginable that there ‘certainly won’t be anything of the kind’, a statement that comes with the most perfect look of contempt for good measure. Having been reassured that my rudimentary German will not be tested in any kind of call and response interaction, Ainsley and Vignoles take to the stage amidst applause initiated by the stage manager cum security guard (he seems to follow the performers on and off stage as if they were presidential candidates rather than two unprepossessing, mild mannered middle aged men). Outfitted in their best suits, the formality of dress of the two men is at odds with the quite relaxed atmosphere that pervades the actual performances of the songs, which are conveyed without amplification, giving the whole evening a cosy, front parlour feel.
Ainsley, a lyric tenor who has worked with many of the most prestigious orchestras and opera companies throughout Europe, introduces the first half of the programme, a recital of Schumann’s Liederkreis Op. 39 – a song cycle based around the poems of Josef von Eichendorff, which perhaps unsurprisingly for German verse displays a preoccupation with lost love, death and the implacable indifference of nature. The first of these short songs is In der Fremde, which Ainsley gives a sonorous but light, skippy feel that is somewhat incongruous when you consider that the poem sees the poet ruminating on a time when he ‘will rest, and above me will be the sweet murmur of the lonely woods, and no-one here will no me anymore’. Despite the passionate and airy vigour of both the singing and playing – Ainsley repeatedly launches himself to the front of the stage in excitement during especially potent moments – the germanic darkness of the songs, which come one after another with no respite, eventually becomes stifling and suffocating. The interval offers a welcome hiatus, coming as it does hot on the heels of a selection of Brahms songs that culminates with Death is the Cool Night, in which death is equated with a singing nightingale and wholeheartedly embraced.
On returning to the stage Ainsley introduces the second half of the programme which is comprised of hand picked English lieder dating from the time of the First World War, a fact that seems to confirm that the spectre of death is inescapable tonight. And yet these songs, perhaps because they are sung in English and therefore more familiar to the ear, seem to be more melodically diverse and all the more engaging for that. James MacMillan’s The Children is on paper, a harrowing account of the death of children during war but in song it is transformed into something more uplifting, poignant but somehow hopeful. Fortunately Ainsley saves the best, most unadulterated and joyous until last. Peter Warlock’s Sigh No More, Ladies, an interpretation of a passage from Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, is performed with affable, charming gusto by Ainsley who, in his unbridled enthusiasm almost throws himself off the edge of the stage whilst breaking into a broad, delighted smile, during the absurdly nonsensical ‘hey nonny, nonny’ section.
Having left the stage to an excited, extended applause the duo return for a two song encore before sidling off alone towards their no doubt mid-priced hotel accommodation. So, in no way was this performance the new rock n’ roll but it was undoubtedly intriguingly different and culturally enriching.
A lieder bill for next year’s Live At Leeds anyone?
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