Brighton Festival – Sarah Connolly (mezzo soprano), Joseph Middleton (piano)

Half the vast space of the Corn Exchange miraculously became a Victorian parlour – How? By the magic of intimate singing and seductive skill at the piano. We know that Dame Sarah’s resonant voice can fill any opera house with stirring Handel, Mozart and even Wagner, but this performance was all about detail. With a well curated programme that respected her wide range she drew us into the delicate world of the song recital.

Dame Sarah Connolly

It started with a cute blacksmith’s song to a jolly little horse but the modest four verses also held the pain of the romantic poet, Nikolaus Lenau as expressed by Robert Schumann, a master in the art of miniature storytelling. Each of this collection of Lieder, so flawlessly sung and so sensitively accompanied by Joseph Middleton, had this heady mix of beauty and unbearable heartache. Lenau, like Schumann, died distressed in an asylum, ironically on the very day of the première of these songs.

The mood brightened a little with some Lieder of Hugo Wolf, although sadly he too died in an asylum – syphilis had a lot to answer for in those days! Wolf’s idiosyncratic and less formal style brought forth a more dramatic delivery from both performers, especially in the eerie Nachtzauber, where the voice gently conflicts with the piano. The accompaniment for Goethe’s famous Kennst du das Land is almost histrionic and the outrageous Zigeuner Lied had our Dame of the opera stage become louche enticing gipsy.

Joseph Middleton

So much for German song. The French (& Belgian) contribution began with Claude Debussy’s settings of the sensuously Sapphic three Chansons de Bilitis, pseudo-classical confections from the heroically effete Pierre-Félix Louÿs. The Duparc that followed was even more erotic. Extase, L’invitation au voyage and Chanson Triste often feature on the concert platform but Au pays ou se fait la Guerre was new to me, and a wonderful surprise. My concentration wandered for a moment but the words were so clearly delivered that I was able to find my place in the libretto again immediately.

For us the test of any singer’s diction is when they are singing English. Of course it was perfect for the three Britten songs, especially for Sephestia’s Lullaby with those odd words by Robert Greene, the academic drunkard that slandered Shakespeare. Samuel Barber’s Three Songs, of poems by James Joyce, made an excellent conclusion to this serious but delightful programme.

Yet it was not all over because we were treated to two encores, a simple and very gentle lullaby, an Arabic plaint for the loss of a child, followed by Herbert Howells’s exquisite King David on a poem by Walter de la Mare, perhaps the most heartbreakingly beautiful songs of the evening.

Brighton Dome Concert Hall,
19 May 2025

Rating:

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Sarah Connolly (mezzo soprano), Joseph Middleton (piano)

Schumann – 6 Gedichte Lenau und Requiem Op. 90

Wolf – Auch kleine Dinge
Gesang Weylas
Nachtzauber
Kennst du das Land
Zigeuner Lied

Debussy – Chansons de Bilitis
Duparc – Extase
L’invitation au voyage
Chanson Triste
Au pays ou se fait la Guerre

Britten – O Waly Waly
Sephestia’s Lullaby
At the mid hour of night

Barber – Three Songs, Opus 10
Rain has fallen
Sleep now
I hear an army