Like all good things, even an Inverurie Music concert season must finally end and so it did with a wonderfully intimate and poised performance from baritone Robert Rice and pianist Will Vann in the resplendent acoustics of the Acorn Centre on a warm, late-Spring night. And this final concert did not disappoint, with a concert of English song from its early-twentieth century zenith to much more recent exponents of the genre, many of which were being heard for the first time in Scotland that evening. Like all of the concerts this season, well-known composers and works jostled with relatively unknown names and new offerings in a beguiling mix, all performed with the same precision and passion from the London-based duo.

The concert began with a mainstay of the repertoire, Gerald Finzi’s Let Us Garlands Bring, the composer’s setting of five songs from Shakespearean plays. The set is most well-known for its opening song, ‘Come Away, Come Away, Death’ (taken from Twelfth Night) which provided the tone for the rest of the evening: a soft melancholy enhanced by Rice’s mellifluous baritone and the subtle art of Vann’s piano playing. Finzi’s work ends with another of his most famous songs, ‘It was a lover and his lass’ (from As You Like It) which gave Rice an opportunity to show a different character to his voice, full of the rustic charm which imbues the music. It was a ravishing opening to the concert.

The major offering in this recital was a sequence of settings of the twentieth-century English poet, Walter De La Mare (1873-1956), a favourite poet of many composers of that period. This ingenious project, which contrasted settings of De La Mare from his contemporaries (Herbert Howells and Cecil Armstrong Gibbs) with new settings from a host of contemporary composers was the brainchild of composer and festival director David Power. The project had its first performance in York in February, and it was wonderful for Inverurie to host the Scottish premiere three months later. There were many colourful, dramatic and evocative new works on offer here, from Robert Walker’s witty and bright The Barber’s to David Lancaster’s insistent With Lantern Bright and the brooding dissonances of Liz Dilnot Johnson’s Into the Dream. Hearing settings composed almost a hundred years apart in quick succession made for a dizzying experience as the restrained language of Howells and Armstrong Gibbs was contrasted with a variety of modern styles and approaches, each bringing something fresh and different to these beloved children’s poems. The sequence ended with Howells’s setting of Full Moon, one of his most beautiful and resonant settings of de la Mare, second only, perhaps, to his setting of the poet’s King David from 1919. This then provided the link to a short cycle of new songs from the author of this review – this set of three of de la Mare’s poems entitled Silver was performed with exquisite clarity and detail by Rice and Vann, capturing the wistful sadness of the songs in a radiant performance.

The final piece in the programme was more de la Mare, now in the hands of a young Benjamin Britten and his collection Tit for Tat which he compiled in 1968 from his youthful exploits. These songs perhaps lack the mannerisms of Britten’s later, much more well-known song-cycles for Peter Pears and it was fascinating to hear another compositional voice bring a different perspective to de la Mare. It would have been a fitting end to the concert, but we were treated to one memorable encore – King David! This masterpiece of poignant, dreamy English song was made for performers such as Rice and Vann, and they gave the piece the performance it deserved and provided a worthy end to this magnificent recital.       

So, another season comes to an end, but not to worry, another one is right round the corner. With so much exciting music to look forward to.

PAC (6 June 2024)