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                                 RODERICK WILLIAMS

Royal Pump Rooms, Leamington Spa *****

Much-loved baritone Roderick Williams gave the Leamington Festival “a Taste of the Exotic” on Sunday lunchtime, and, boy, didn’t he just! This was such a well-researched programme, full of discoveries which he and pianist Andrew West shared with us so enthusiastically, and Williams’ friendly, engaging introductions were the icing on a cake of wonderful performances.

The Festival’s commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the death of Sir Arthur Bliss was continued with his Siege, an early song delivered with driving energy before its enigmatic final note. As throughout the recital, Williams’ body-language, resourceful eye-deployment  and shadings within the vocal registers added to the communication of the music, as did West’s mercurial, responsive alert accompaniments.

Delivered in three languages, Williams’ recital had begun with Schubert’s Kennst du das Land, deploying a range of characterisation which evoked the three voices of the composer’s ErlKonig. Then came a poignant discovery, Arabia by Great War victim William Denis Browne. The eerie, sparse accompaniment to Rebecca Clarke’s A Dream was followed by the generously rich pianism supporting Williams’ heartfelt and committed account of the famous Pale Hands I Loved, Amy Woodford-Finden’s Kashmiri Song.

Duparc’s L’Invitation au Voyage drew out so much of Williams’ acting gifts, before he then gave us with a fellow-composer’s empathy an insight into Sally Beamish’s Four Songs from Hazez,  he and West proceeding to perform them with an engaging sense of colour which actually persisted beyond the conclusion of the notes.

A real find was the American singer-composer Harry T. Burleigh, who had sung Negro spirituals to Dvorak, and whose Five Songs of Laurence Hope here were given with fervour and growing ardour by Roderick Williams, unleashing reserves of power. The mischievous encore was Williams’ own deft polyglot arrangement of “I’d like to get you on a slow boat to China” – a taste of the exotic indeed.

Christopher Morley


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