Toronto Summer Music | Barber: Three Songs, Op. 10; Errollyn Wallen: Night Thoughts (Canadian Première); Richard Rodney Bennett: A History of the Thé Dansant; Mahler: Rückert-Lieder; Schoenberg: Select Songs from Vier Lieder, Op. 2; Berg: “Schlafen, schlafen” (Vier Lieder, Op. 2, No. 1); Weill: “My Ship”, “Speak Low”, “Trouble Man”, “Je ne t’aime pas”. Dame Sarah Connolly, mezzo-soprano; Joseph Middleton, piano; Walter Hall, July 16, 2024.

One of the brilliant features of Toronto Summer Music is its two-fold mission of sharing and fostering great music-making, whereby each year world-renowned musicians offer masterclasses to pre-selected fellows. It wasn’t surprising, then, to hear enthusiastic cheers from these emerging artists as they welcomed two of their mentors, Dame Sarah Connolly and Joseph Middleton, to the Walter Hall Stage.

This space, at least compared to Koerner Hall, leaves something to be desired acoustically. But it offers a suitably intimate setting for an art-song recital, especially in a program such as Connolly and Middleton’s, where theatricality and the sense of the words are as important as their musical setting.

The American/English first half and German second half each hovered between the worlds of jazz/cabaret and late-romanticism. Samuel Barber’s 1936 three songs, settings of James Joyce, are perfect representatives of the composer’s personal brand of romantic pathos, commuting between post-impressionist harmonies and Rachmaninovian textures. Connolly was sensitive to every nuance, and she found an equal partner in Middleton’s almost onomatopoeic pianism, from the falling rain figurations of the first song, to the angular ‘voice of winter’ in the haunting lullaby of the second, to the thunderous anguish of the last song.

The second set of songs, commissioned by Leeds Lieder festival and composed for Connolly and Middleton by Belize-born British composer Errollyn Wallen, continued the theme of night and sleep. This 2023 cycle shifts mercurially between jazz, post-Debussyist impressionism and poetic nostalgia. The disquieting opening song, which incorporates excerpts from Shakespeare’s Macbeth, is highly chromatic and sits at the higher register of Connolly’s voice.

The tension is then relieved for Wallen’s own poem, set in a bluesy number, depicting a young Ella Fitzgerald facing the dazzling stage lights. Contrast comes in the shape of a darkly poetic third song to Emily Dickinson’s ‘There is a certain slant of light’, before Wallen returns to jazzy quasi-improvisation inspired by Howard Hodgkin’s painting ‘Night thoughts’, which is also her chosen overall title.

Connolly revelled in the swift mood changes throughout the programme, as she assumed different roles and characters. In the 1994-composed A History of the thé dansant by Richard Rodney Bennett, another composer of wide-ranging stylistic interests, we are taken to the world of the 1920s. The texts are provided by Bennett’s sister, M. R. Peacocke, inspired by photos of their parents’ holidays in the French Riviera. Connolly and Middleton infused these colourfully entertaining, funky songs with flair and joie de vivre.

Originally conceived orchestrally, Mahler’s Rückert Lieder struggle to deliver their full quota of heart-wrenching passion when heard with piano accompaniment. But Middleton, who has recorded these songs with Connolly on a highly acclaimed disc, made as convincing a case as possible, emulating orchestral colours through a combination of imaginative pedalling and subtle touch. Connolly was in equal measure moving, defiant and tragic. The last song, “Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen”, surely one of the most beautiful ever composed, was a masterclass of singer-pianist rapport.

A selection from Schoenberg’s and Berg’s early song cycles continued the journey from late- to post-romanticism, shading into expressionism. Connolly opted for a lighter tone in Schoenberg’s “Erwartung”, highlighting the contrast with the religious monumentality of “Schenk mir deinen goldenen Kamm”.

Finally, we were treated to four of Kurt Weil’s deliciously sensuous cabaret songs, culminating in the pain-ridden “Je ne t’aime pas”. But the highlight of the concert, at least for me, came with the encore, “King David” by Herbert Howells, about a melancholic king who can only be consoled by the song of a nightingale, touchingly evoked in the piano. ‘And the king in the cool of the moon, Hearkened to the nightingale’s sorrowfulness, Till all his own was gone’.

Few eyes were left dry.

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Michelle Assay

Michelle Assay is a Marie Curie/UKRI Global Fellow at the Universities of Toronto and King's College London working on Women and Western Art Music in Iran (Womusiran.com). She holds a PhD from the Sorbonne and University of Sheffield and has been a Leverhulme Fellow at the University of Huddersfield. She is the author of award-winning articles on Russian and Soviet music and on Shakespeare and music, and regularly appears in concerts as a pianist. She is a regular broadcaster for the BBC and contributor to Gramophone, International Piano, and Bachtrack, along with Ludwig Van.

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