BERKELEY: 5 Houseman Songs, Part 3. Songs of the Half-Light. BRITTEN: 7 Sonnets of Michelangelo. OLDHAM: 5 Chinese Lyrics. BENNETT: Tom O’Bedlam’s Song. BUSH: Songs of the Zodiac / Robin Tritschler, ten; Malcolm Martineau, pno; Philip Higham, vc; Sean Shibe, gt / Signum Classics SIGCD774
There are two kinds of people in the world, those who like the late Peter Pears’ singing—mostly because he was such a great interpreter, but also because they don’t mind the sound of his voice—and those who hate Pears’ voice, period, and that’s that. I count myself among the former although I do avoid his recordings of the period 1953-57 when he was going through a vocal crisis and had picked up a bad wobble, which he corrected by 1959.
Perhaps it helps that I heard him sing in person twice, once in the Metropolitan Opera’s initial run of Death in Venice and the second time—surprisingly to me, at his invitation—in a solo recital with harpist Osian Ellis at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. But even before then, I had liked his recordings although I freely admit that his voice in the 1940s had a brighter, more “open” quality than his voice of the 1950s through the ‘70s. If you don’t believe me, dig up his 1940s recordings of the Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings with Dennis Brain, Vaughan Williams’ On Wenlock Edge with the Zorian Quartet and Britten at the piano, and especially the early EMI recording of Britten’s Seven Sonnets of Michelangelo, where his voice almost sounds like that of Italian tenor Tito Schipa. Aside from his ability to interpret the text, I can attest that Pears was a surprisingly striking stage actor and that his voice was of a large size, almost on a par with that of Carlo Bergonzi. Most people, myself included, would never pick that up from just listening to the recordings.
Aside from the very individual timbre of his voice, Pears was unusual in that one of the strongest parts of his range was right around the break in the vocal registers, E-F-F#-G. Britten, in particular, wrote to this strength, which is one reason why so much of the music he sang is difficult for other tenors. In the liner notes, Tritschler brings up the fact that it is also difficult to escape the “Pears sound,” which is ingrained in many people’s minds because of the proliferation of his recordings, but others have done it successfully, particularly Anthony Dean Griffey in his recording of Peter Grimes and the late Jerry Hadley in his excellent recording of Les Illuminations, Nocturne, and the Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings.
As fate would have it, I do not have Pears’ recordings of Berkeley’s Five Houseman Songs or two of the five Oldham Chinese Lyrics, thus the music is new to me, but I’ve long admired Richard Rodney Bennett’s Tom O’Bedlam’s Song on the Argo recording by Pears and of course I have Pears singing Songs of the Half-Light (with Julian Bream). three of the Chinese Lyrics and the Michelangelo Sonnets.
Although Tritschler’s voice is indeed different from Pears’—it is lovelier in timbre, brighter on top as well as lighter in weight—he is that rare bird nowadays, a real artist who understands words, articulates them clearly, and knows how to shape phrases in a way that is both musical and inherently dramatic. He also has no flutter or wobble in the voice. In short, he is an excellent singer and one whose work it is a distinct pleasure to listen to. It also doesn’t hurt that his accompanist, Malcolm Martineau, is one of the finest alive today, and he matches Tritschler note for note and phrase for phrase. This recording should be mandatory listening for all modern lyric tenors, whether singing older or newer art songs.
As was usual with Lennox Berkeley, all of these songs are excellently crafted, using moderately adventurous harmony (occasionally, as in “Look not in my eyes,” having the pianist play somewhat different harmonies from those the singer is given) to carry the message of the lyrics. The Songs of the Half-Light are accompanied by guitarist Sean Shibe, recalling the many recordings (generally of English lute songs) that Pears made with the great Julian Bream. Here, too, I am happy to report that Shibe is an exceptionally good accompanist. Although his way of plucking the strings lacks some of the wonderful energy that Bream had, he is not afraid to play a little more aggressively in those passages that call for such an approach, and in “Full Moon” and “All that’s past,” Tritschler and Shibe catch the mood perfectly. In the latter song, one can again hear Berkeley’s penchant for leaning towards bitonality. In the latter song, Tritschler sings a pianissimo G that is absolutely perfectly placed, and in “The Moth” he executes a perfect crescendo from pp to f on the high A-flat. What artistry!
Needless to say, I was not disappointed by Tritschler’s singing of the 7 Sonnets of Michelangelo, but here I felt that Martineau just missed the energy and spontaneity of the original recording by a hair; his playing is just a bit too cautious whereas Britten’s had a headlong rush about it that is exhilarating, matching Pears’ singing perfectly. (Some of this, I think, had to do with tempo, since Tritschler and Martineau take some of the songs at a slower pace.) Nonetheless, it is still a fine performance, especially Tritschler’s outstanding vocal control and artistry.
According to Tritschler’s copious and informative notes, Arthur Oldham (1926-2003) “was affected by public criticism and the comparison to his colleagues,” but wrote these pieces in 1945 when he was Britten’s only pupil. They do indeed have a Britten-esque quality about them, using good harmonic subtlety and a grateful lyric line. I particularly liked “The Herd Boy’s Song” and “The Pedlar of Spells” with their lively rhythms and quirky tune construction.
Tritschler’s performance of Tom O’Bedlam’s Song is also quite successful, thanks in part to the energetic and sensitive playing of cellist Philip Higham but, to be honest, Pears’ recording is even more intense. But I was particularly taken by Geoffrey Bush’s Zodiac songs, set to the quirky surrealist poetry of David Gascoyne, who had also worked with Britten. But these songs were not written for Pears to sing but, rather, in his memory, first performed by the wonderful tenor Anthony Rolfe-Johnson in 1990. They are real gems, fascinating and intense music, just the sort of material that would surely have appealed to Pears, who never shied away from a challenge.
The only small negative I can say about Tritschler’s singing is that he doesn’t “color” the voice as much as Pears did, but vocal colorization was already fading from classical singing by the time of Pears’ death in 1986. But Tritschler is still fairly young and, if he has a mind to, can surely add this quality to his singing. Otherwise, this is clearly the finest vocal recital disc of the year and one of the finest of this decade.
—© 2024 Lynn René Bayley
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