VoxCarnyx

Trinity Church, Cumnock

In Crail Church during the East Neuk Festival earlier this year, young baritone James Newby gave a remarkable performance of Schubert’s first major song cycle Die schone Mullerin which emphasised the disturbed existential angst of the protagonist.

Introducing his own radical revision of the work, Roderick Williams confessed to wishing he had tackled it as a younger man, and his very different reading gave us not the live trauma of a jilted lover falling apart but the regretful tone of an older man looking back on troubled times.

The boldness in Williams’ recital was in his own arrangement of the instrumental accompaniment for string quartet. The piano part is so integral to Schubert’s vision – and its playing (by Joseph Middleton in the case of Newby’s concert) key to its success – that the absence of it in the familiar opener, Das Wandern, could not help but jar.

The softer edge to the music, even if cellist Emma Denton in particular often added percussive pizzicato, undoubtedly altered the experience, but equally it suited Williams’ more wistful tone – or perhaps his approach deliberately matched his arrangement.

Whatever, it was a new way to listen to a familiar piece and as the ear attuned, one that revealed much about it. With the piano part mostly covered by the other players, quartet leader Matthew Denton sometimes added an extra obligato line – the usually unheard voice of the Fair Maid of the Mill herself. There was more of a sense of the landscape in which the songs are set, rather than simply the viewpoint of the smitten singer.

By the time we arrived at Morning Greeting, the next song that really enjoys a stand-alone life, the lush string arrangement was assuredly a positive advantage and the sequence that song starts was a highlight of the whole performance.

From then on, Williams added more drama and spice to his delivery, which was all to the good. The self-deception of Mein!, envy of Der Jager, and cynical side-eye of Die liebe Farbe brought changes of timbre in his vocal delivery, although the relaxed delivery of the German verse and technical precision across his entire range never faltered.

The final song, Des Baches Wiegenlied, was beautifully recast by the quartet, its rocking rhythm especially good in the hands of the strings. It also restored the sense that we had been given a glimpse into past grief that had proved eminently survivable.

Keith Bruce

Picture by Stuart Armitt