The Art of Song Recital

Yesterday at the Wigmore Hall, two of this country's most cherished singers appeared in solo recitals that captured the essence of the song recitalist's art.

Dame Felicity Lott recently celebrated the thirtieth anniversary of her Wigmore Hall recital debut, and in that time has built up a huge audience following and an almost unique bank of repertoire in the Hall. At lunchtime on Monday, accompanied by Graham Johnson, her partner since their student days at the Royal Academy of Music, she gave a glorious programme, the majority of it new to her London audience, including a rare look at the Wagner song repertoire - his Wesendonck Lieder - and a rich selection of French mélodie, including rarities of Duparc, Berlioz, Hahn, Chausson and De Falla. Like the very great artist she is, she made every word and note tell, and enchanted the packed audience with the beauty of her tone and her stunning variety of vocal colour.

On Monday evening Sir Thomas Allen, one of London's favourite artists over more than thirty-five years as an unmatched star at the Royal Opera House, gave the final recital in a series of programmes devoted to French song, 'Poulenc and Courtly Love', devised by Malcolm Martineau, who once again accompanied Thomas Allen in a partnership that goes back many years and has taken them all over the world. Thomas Allen demonstrated his dazzling skill as a story teller in a marvellous programme of Debussy, Duparc and Ravel, Poulenc's rarely performed settings of the poet Ronsard, and - new for Thomas Allen - Poulenc's Le Bestiaire and Le bal masqué. A true magician, he encapsulated the drama and intimacy of the most exquisite mélodie just as vividly as he communicates the greatest roles of his operatic repertoire on the stage of Covent Garden.

These two great singers, who have often performed together on the world's great stages and in the world's great recital halls, showed in these solo programmes just why they are so loved and admired.

9 July, 2008

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Felicity Lott Sir Thomas Allen Malcolm Martineau Graham Johnson