The audience assembled for this performance at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music had the rare chance in a single concert to witness Claire Primrose’s commanding vocal and dramatic skills. Primrose’s choice of recital program showcased her as a stunning storyteller as well as proving why this dramatic soprano is sought after across the globe.
Exquisitely focussed expression and seemingly effortless vocal rendering were engaged from every piano introduction to the echoes of each postlude. A myriad of vocal colours and dramatic expression were instantly engaged from the outset of each song in the recital. Her versatility of characterisation and musical style was at all times rewarding for the listener.
The program of Romantic period art song and lieder pivoted around contrasting 20th century vocal compositions by American composers Samuel Barber and William Bolcom. Primrose delivered two of Bolcom’s cabaret songs with sufficient wit and very clear English lyrics. The text from James Joyce’s Ulysses was also given suitably sparse and clean 20th century treatment in the song ‘Solitary Hotel’, from Barber’s song cycle Despite and Still.
In the three surrounding brackets of songs by Henri Duparc, Richard Strauss and Richard Wagner, Claire Primrose showed her mastery of the heightened late Romantic period style. Each well-shaped phrase was supported in pointed descriptive gesture and with an extensive palette of facial expression.
Once again, the structure of the concert program was successful. It allowed Primrose to guide us with finely selected vocal tools through the range of poetry settings. Starting from the French poems of love and environment set in the Duparc art songs, we travelled through the more deeply personal and intimate Strauss lieder.
The climax of the concert in poetic complexity was the refined setting of Mathilde Wesendonck’s broadly referencing texts in Fünf Gedichte fur eine Frauenstimme. These five lieder were sung with suitable control, momentum and direction. This also gave the audience a chance to hear Claire Primrose interpret Wagner. On this afternoon it was via lieder and not the vehicle of opera, which she has built a considerable following for since leaving our shores.
The entire concert, with an unquestionable display of the soloist’s virtuosity, was ably supported by Diana Weston’s full piano accompaniments with much beautiful lyricism and atmospheric postludes.
Legacies of Love and Loss
Claire Primrose, soprano
Sydney Conservatorium of Music
25 November
