In one short song – Scheideblick (Parting Glance) – the justification for Scots mezzo soprano Catriona Morison’s inclusion of six of Josephine Lang’s Lieder in her debut solo album is sealed. It’s an emotionally muted number, a sinuous melancholic setting of a single poetic verse, Lang’s melodic shaping in perfect tune with the sentiment, the simplicity of the piano writing in pianist Malcolm Martineau’s capable hands gently nuanced with harmonic ingenuity, and Morison’s delivery impeccably and movingly intoned.
To position Lang (1815-80) amid such heavyweight songwriters as Schumann, Brahms and Grieg is to give her a rightful airing, for her songs, though mostly conservative in spirit, are both artfully expressive and stylistically adventurous within the parameters of the day. Early lessons from Mendelssohn and promotional support from both Robert and Clara Schumann were supportive in Lang’s bid to make a living from composition after the premature death of her husband, the lawyer and poet Christian Reinhold Köstlin.
It’s Reinhold Köstlin’s own words that are the inspiration for another of Lang’s songs, Ob ich manchmal dein gedenke, Morison again mastering the soft embodiment of this passionate setting. In all Lang’s songs featured here in fact, mostly from the Op 10 set, there is a genuine affinity between their easeful unfolding and a mezzo voice that exudes golden richness in its lower range and ringing lustre in its uppermost tessitura. The final number, Abschied, is a gorgeous example.
Morison and Martineau open this disc with Grieg’s Sechs Lieder and the springlike optimism of Gruss. The relative transparency of these songs, emphasised by their folkish charm, lead satisfyingly into the deeper realms of a Brahms selection that is introduced by the sultry questioning of Dein blaues Auge, and which lingers low until the final muscular exuberance of Meine Liebe ist grün
Schumann’s Op 90 songs open in martial mode with Lied Eines Schmiedes, immediately countered by the sweet affection of Meine Rose. Morison negotiates the ensuing mood swings with honest and persuasive versatility, concluding on a sublime note with the rippling acceptance of Requiem, but not before releasing those gripping outbursts of passion at its heart.
This release comes at a significant time for Morison, given the enforced emphasis during these Covid months on her concert repertoire. She has the voice for it, and the musicality, and the proof is here. Ken Walton
With opera engagements on hold, Edinburgh-born Catriona Morison has been focussing on her recital career. She talks to KEITH BRUCE about her debut solo album.
Catriona Morison should be rehearsing in Bordeaux for Laurent Pelly’s production of Verdi’s Falstaff, playing Meg Page alongside the Alice Ford of Veronique Gens.
A staging with production partners in Spain, Belgium and Japan, the plug was only pulled on its March opening in mid-January, three weeks before rehearsals were due to begin. Such is the uncertainty of life for a singer in time of pandemic.
If she is disappointed, and hopes very much that the show will go ahead at some point in the future, as Opera National Bordeaux intends, the mezzo-soprano is far from downcast. Morison is only too aware that she has been dealt a hand that others in her profession might envy in this fraught era.
Her diary is not empty, even if it is less frantic than it was. There are recitals in May in Amsterdam and Bilbao with pianist Julius Drake and more in June, and a St Matthew Passion with the Rotterdam Phil, set to be live-streamed in April under the baton of Scotland’s John Butt, is still on her schedule. Whether the conductor is permitted to travel for that one is perhaps uncertain – for the Berlin-resident singer that is less of an issue.
And before all that there is the release of her debut album, a collection on 25 songs by Edvard Grieg, Robert Schumann, Johannes Brahms, and Josephine Lang – whose music she is keen to champion. With master accompanist – and fellow Edinburger – Malcolm Martineau at the piano, and master producer Philip Hobbs at the controls, it was recorded at Crear in Argyll over a year ago, its release postponed as successive attempts to organise some concerts to promote it fell victim to the health emergency. In time – perhaps later this year – those dates may happen, but for now her most recent appearance in Scotland was at her alma mater, the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, in January 2020, with Julia Lynch at the piano.
Compared with those studying there now, Morison is aware that she has many blessings to count.
“I am lucky that I have started my career and have years behind me, and not coming out of university or college now with all the worries of Covid and Brexit. And I am fortunate to live over here so that travel is possible.”
Possible, but far from straightforward, as she recounts the complicated process to enable her to spend five days in Italy in December to perform a Christmas Oratorio with Trevor Pinnock, which involved much testing and form-filling in the accepted languages.
“It is currently a bit of a lockdown lottery, depending on where you are in the world. But there is a lot of humanity there too. In a time of desperation and need, there is a lot of positivity and hope. If we don’t have hope, we don’t have anything.”
Morison first stayed in Berlin as an Erasmus student in her third year as an undergraduate (a course no longer open to young British talent), and she returned to build her career in Germany, first in Weimar and then in Wuppertal. While applications for German citizenship made in Berlin have been taking up to a year to process, Morison made hers while still in the Ruhr valley and it was completed in a little over four months. She became a German citizen before the reality of Brexit and the pandemic struck.
Catriona Morison by Julie Howden
When she won the BBC’s Cardiff Singer of the World competition in 2017, her teacher Professor Siegfried Gohritz, of Weimar’s University Franz Liszt, was in the audience to witness her triumph.
“I still see my teacher as regularly as possible to maintain my voice, and coaching is still allowed over here,” she says. “It is very good to have someone like that in your corner – you get a different kind of feedback than from elsewhere.”
She has also kept up-to-date with all the latest thinking about re-opening halls and theatres.
“There have been studies in Germany about the effectiveness of masks in auditoriums and a recent study in Dortmund found that with up to 40% of the seating capacity, transmission risk was very low.”
Such thinking is helping the prospects of her upcoming recital dates, even if her opera engagement is on ice. The programme for those is the result of specific requests from promoters, but it is clear that Morison is looking forward to the prospect of singing the music she selected for her debut album as soon as that is feasible.
“Brahms is definitely my go-to composer because he wrote so incredibly well for the mezzo voice. The Grieg Sechs Lieder are a charming set of songs that I have particularly enjoyed singing since I visited his summer house in Norway. The Schumann Opus 90 songs are quite different from anything else he wrote and go to places he doesn’t explore elsewhere, especially the Requiem.”
The six songs by Josephine Lang may be much less familiar, but sit well in the company. A friend in the US sent Morison a Spotify link to a selection of under-appreciated female composers, and the singer was immediately drawn to the work of Lang. She was tutored by Mendelssohn, who wrote to his sister Fanny about her.
“I think it is important to champion the work of women composers, if it is of quality, and I was astonished that I didn’t know these songs. There is that Romantic era feel, but she has her own voice and doesn’t sound like any of the other composers. There is an understated emotional connection through the text and music, and a quirkiness and subtlety. She does compare to the greats of the Romantic period and deserves to have her music played.”
Morison made contact with Lang’s biographers, Harald and Sharon Krebs, and was rewarded with an unpublished early song, from 1833, Gestern und heute, which shows the 18-year-old Lang to be already a sophisticated and expressive writer. Its inclusion adds a premiere recording to the album and its first line supplies the title of the disc, The Dark Night Has Vanished.
Discussions are currently underway about the set’s follow-up, likely to be of English repertoire and recorded with Martineau later this year. Morison is regretful that a return to the isolation of Crear to record it may now be impossible. “You are away from the world with no distractions, so you can knuckle down and get to work.”
What the pandemic has allowed her is the opportunity to get to know her adopted home well.
“I wouldn’t have liked to come here with no German, because it is such an international city. Instead it has felt like coming home, even though I always go back so happily to Edinburgh. And I’ve been able to explore it in a way I couldn’t have if I’d been busier, and get to know all the lakes, and parks and green spaces. Even though I am not at concerts, you do meet other artists and feel part of an international community.”
The Dark Night Has Vanished by Catriona Morison and Malcolm Martineau is released by Linn on Friday February 26.
