Festival Music
Rene Pape
Queen's Hall
Keith Bruce
four stars
THOSE whose Festival schedule meant they missed the kirk (or chapel) on Sunday, were amply redeemed by the interval of Monday morning's recital from vast-voiced German bass Rene Pape, accompanied by fellow native of Dresden, Camillo Radicke. Beethoven's six settings of the religious verse of Christian Furchtegott Gellert showed that there are more hymns in his canon than the Ode to Joy, and the sequence takes in prayer, preaching, supplication and atonement – an entire church service in 15 minutes.
If the Festival's vocal soloists are a track and field team, with some impressive long-distance runners, Pape might look like the hammer-thrower, but there was delicacy too in his performance of Dvorak's Biblical Songs that followed. These settings of the Psalms include the best known – The Lord is My Shepherd and By the waters of Babylon – and end with echoes of plainchant in I will lift my eyes to the hills, and some thing approaching a sea shanty on Song to the Lord a new song.
After German and Czech, the second half featured English and Russian, beginning with Quilter's Three Shakespeare Songs, once considered museum pieces now restored to the repertoire, of which Twelfth Night's O mistress mine was the highlight. However the bass had saved the best for last (barring brief encores of Schubert and Strauss) with Mussorgsky's four Songs and Dances of Death, the most operatic material in his recital, particularly in the dialogue of the first one and the narrative of the last. Here were the scariest and lullabies and love songs, as well as the most expressive accompaniment from Radicke, particularly the cascades of notes in the third.
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