Music

Brahms Liebeslieder Walzer

Glasgow Cathedral

Keith Bruce

four stars

IT IS always difficult not to be struck by coincidences and overlaps in musical performance programming within our small geographical area and for a limited potential audience, but this one really was remarkable. Within 54 hours and a couple of miles of each other, two performances of the same suite of songs for four voices and two pianists at one piano – Monday’s by singers studying at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and Wednesday evening’s Cathedral Festival quartet including three recent graduates.

Brahms’ Opus 52 sequence of 18 short songs in triple time is well worth hearing twice, however, and – as you would expect – the more experienced foursome had the edge in terms of ensemble, while baritone Andrew McTaggart in particular possessed the more developed instrument for his contribution. For all that the composer’s choice of broad popular verse found its detractors, there are delights in the common touch in The Women (“I would have been a monk long ago, if it weren’t for the women”) and the feisty rhetoric of Nein, es ist nicht auszukommen (“There no getting along with some people”), and his music, with hints of both Schubert and Strauss is perfectly matched. The RCS’s Tim Dean had, however, sourced a much more idiomatic and witty translation to project above the singers.

While the RCS recital preceded the Brahms with Schumann’s rarer Spanische Liebeslieder, the Cathedral concert’s first half was a mix of solo, duet and quartet Schubert, Schumann and Brahms with a single Mahler song from tenor Joseph Doody. Here it was the women, soprano Charlie Drummond and mezzo Penelope Cousland, who ruled the roost, exclusively choosing Brahms songs for their solo performances.

Although there was evidence of considered sequencing – the fruity erotic Schumann duet Ich bein dein Baum by Cousland and McTaggart followed by Drummond’s more innocent, yet passionate Brahms and then prayerful Schumann from McTaggart – some more obvious grouping of them to allow the audience an opportunity to show its appreciation would have been welcome. As would any sort of words of welcome, introduction or explanation at all, even of the quartet’s encore from Beethoven’s Fidelio.