Review: Nicholas Mulroy at Tardebigge Church

Jul 30 2010 By Christopher Morley

Tardebigge’s “Celebrating English Song” summer series, now in its seventh year, has already become an annual fixture approaching the likes of Aldeburgh and Presteigne, with performers and composers returning to greet old friends – and long may that continue.

On Sunday the tenor Nicholas Mulroy was welcomed back to enthusiastic applause, as was the composer Raymond Yiu to hear his second premiere commissioned here. This time it was Dead Letters, a song-cycle largely concerned with the circle of the Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, and totally compelling in its directness of expression drawing on a multiplicity of styles.

Baroque rhetoric, tango, foxtrot and waltz resonances, and the most gorgeous pastoral lyricism are all here; only a contrived flash of repeated notes high in the piano treble to illustrate the word “electric” seemed less than subtle.

And, because this was an afternoon celebrating the centenary of the birth of Peter Pears, many of Yiu’s songs had titles evoking settings that Benjamin Britten had composed for the great tenor. Another great tenor, Anthony Rolfe Johnson, who died last week, was remembered in Yiu’s dedication of this premiere to him.

Mulroy and pianist John Reid delivered Dead Letters with authority and dedicated commitment, as they did with other well-established masterpieces: Britten’s First Canticle, and Winter Words (such a wonderful feel for Hardy’s often desolate poetry and Britten’s brittle, apposite piano-writing), Tippett’s awesomely difficult The Heart’s Assurance, with its many resonances of the equally demanding – but so rewarding – opera The Midsummer Marriage, and songs by Purcell and John Ireland.

And after so much that was strenuous and taxing, the encore, Britten’s arrangement of Salley Gardens brought a homecoming of reflective tranquillity. Tardebigge should always have an encore of a Britten folksong setting.

Rating: 5/5