Music

A Little Lunchtime Lieder

Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, Glasgow

Keith Bruce

four stars

WILL the feast of St Valentine never end? Celebrations of the patron saint of lurve spilled over to Monday lunchtime in the company of a quartet of singers from the Alexander Gibson Opera School headed up by Tim Dean, who provided the accompaniment for the male side of the stage, tenor David Horton and baritone Christopher Nairne. Stage right, the woman were pianist Marija Struckova, mezzo Grace Durham and soprano Joanna Norman. Oppositional? You bet.

The repertoire was the Italian Songbook of Hugo Wolf, now over 150 years old in terms of the words, translated into German from folk sources by Nobel Laureate Paul Heyse, but still with plenty to say that is relevant about the affairs of the heart. Dean and his singers had arranged the art-songs in vaguely narrative sequence, jumping between both books that Wolf published, and batting the initiative between the sexes so that songs answered one another. It was an effective strategy but seemed unfairly weighted in favour of the girls. After Horton serenaded his love from below her window, for example, Durham has a riposte suggesting he quieten down and get off home to bed. The mezzo also had some witty putdowns for a class conscious suitor while Norman's selections included musings on her lovers's lack of stature and complaints about the paucity of his catering arrangements.

But then she was also animated on the reasons for wearing a green dress, and, truth to tell, both women were the more expressive performers in the intimacy of the recital room. Norman's closing geographical list of her lovers – shades of Leporello's "catalogue" aria in Don Giovanni – only confirmed the victory.