The third concert in the inaugural season of Swansongs featured soprano Katya Webb and pianist David Wickham. While the house was not quite as full as it was for last month’s offering, which featured the better-known Sara Macliver, it was nevertheless well-patronised despite the foul weather.
It will not be long before Katya Webb is drawing as big a crowd as Macliver. She has a rich dramatic soprano voice with notably excellent breath control, and she is capable of switching moods at the drop of a key change. What’s more, she has a tall, slender physique with a commanding presence. A multi-award winner, over the last few years she has been putting some fine training and valuable experience behind her, and she has emerged as a confident and very professional performer.
This program, like the others in the series, covers a lot of musical territory. With an over-arching theme of ‘Letters’, each half dealt with the theme in a different way. The first half focused on romantic love letters in all their moods and habits: the second was more about messages and communication in general, and had a little more scope for humour.
The first few songs, starting with Schubert’s ‘Die Post’ and ‘Die Liebesbotschaft’ were dramatic and somewhat sorrowful, but just in time we were delivered a little light relief in the form of two Brahms lieder: ‘Boschaft’ and ‘An de Tauben’. The second, especially, with its lilting rhythm, lifted our spirits. The next number, Hugo Wolf’s ‘Storchenbotschaft’ gave us a deeper insight into Webb’s possibilities: it was extremely difficult technically, while demanding that the singer impart a light, jocular mood with its narrative about a farmer confronted by not one, but two storks, possible harbingers of a double birth!
The first half was sung in what sounded to me (a non-German speaker with a German name!) to be faultless German. In recent years, Webb has been engaged in professional development at the Vienna State Opera, so she has had plenty of practice.
The latter part of the program gave us modern works (all in English save for the closing bracket) none of which was easy material to sing or to listen to. Webb’s excellent diction and acting ability carried us along, however, starting with Try me, Good King by contemporary American composer Libby Larsen. The opus featured quotes from the wives of Henry VIII. I was especially impressed by Webb’s ability to pitch the start of the second song – that of Anne Boleyn – without cue.
Webb expressed Anne’s terror of facing the block dramatically, and later, when she had to express similar sentiments from Katherine Howard, she managed to make the two characters quite different from one another. We felt young Kate’s powerful sense of tragedy as she contemplated how different her life might have been if she’d wed her first love, Tom Culpeper, instead of the King.
In lighter vein, Webb then gave us a newly-discovered piece by Benjamin Britten: a setting of the WH Auden couplet sonnet ‘Roman Wall Blues’. While delicate in its approach, the words and music nevertheless managed to make us feel sorry for the poor chap with his runny nose in the mists of the north as he plaintively sings ‘I want my girl and I want my pay’!
Next were songs by two Australian composers, Richard Peter Maddox and Geoffrey Allen, the latter of whom was in the house for the concert. He must have felt seriously chuffed to hear his deeply touching song ‘Love Letters’ sung so magnificently! It was followed by ‘If she had been the Mistletoe’ and ‘I cannot live with you’, written by American Gordon Getty – yes, of the famous house and therefore an entrepreneur and businessman as well as a composer. The piano part to the last song was especially clever in its expression that often mimicked the words.A highlight of the program was the funny song cycle by Dominick Argento, Miss Manners on Music, a setting of letters and replies that passed between newspaper columnist Judith Martin (‘Miss Manners’) and her correspondents via the pages of the papers to which her etiquette advice was syndicated. Clever references to the works of other composers could be heard in the piano part, while the lovely, if tongue-in-cheek, vocalise at the end of ‘Gentle Reader’ gave us still more reason to admire the vocal expertise of Katja Webb.
George Butterworth’s ‘A blacksmith courted me’, retained its folk song roots while nonetheless clearly sitting within the Art Song genre, and to remind us of the genus’s origins, Wickham and Webb concluded their recital with two of Schubert’s more light-hearted pieces, ‘Der Blumenbrief’ and ‘Die Tabenpost’.
Altogether, a very well-put-together and excellently performed program, and I’m already looking forward to a second season of ‘Swansongs’ next winter.
By the way, Wickham had a bit of a dig at your reviewer, who, you might remember, grizzled last time that Sarah Macliver wore the same gown throughout the program. But I am pleased to report that Katya Webb brought along a change of gear for the second half, and very lovely she looked, too! From a stunning black scoop-necked gown with three-quarter sleeves and heavily beaded drapery, she changed at interval into a strapless purple number set off by a sparkling silver stole and a simple, tasteful choker necklace. In both outfits, she stood out from the black drapes of the stage, her glamour complemented by a huge floral display in a Grecian urn-topped column. Stunning!
Rating: 4 ½ stars out of 5
Perth Town Hall Sunday Series presentsAs part of the City of Perth Winter Arts Season:
Swansongs: Katja Webb and David Wickham
Katja Webb (soprano)
David Wickham (pianist)
Perth Town Hall
22 August
