Sunday 20 February, 2000: Recital by Andrew
Young, accompanied by Fiona McCabe
The first event in our Society's 20th anniversary
year was a concert by Andrew Young, accompanied at the piano by Fiona
McCabe. Perhaps because it was our first event of the new year, or
perhaps because of the glorious weather outside, only some 30 members
were fortunate enough to hear this, our third recital in twelve months.
While he was at high school, Andrew Young had spent
a year as an exchange student in Germany, with a few months in Italy
to top up his Italian. He started singing with the university choir
while completing a degree in science in Adelaide, and then enrolled
at the Adelaide Conservatorium. He won a scholarship to the Sydney
Conservatorium in 1993, and completed his Master of Performance in
1998. He has sung in the chorus for Opera Australia, notably in Tannhäuser
and Don Carlos, and is very keen to develop his career in the
German repertoire.
Andrew is shortly moving to Brisbane where he will be
a Young Artist with Opera Queensland. This will include understudying
roles in all three 2000 productions, including Don Giovanni
and The Mikado.
Fiona McCabe completed her Graduate Diploma in Accompaniment,
also at the Sydney Conservatorium. She has just returned from six
months' study at the London Guild Hall where she was a repetiteur,
playing the harpsichord in Rinaldo, and performing at the Kurt
Weill Festival. Fiona has also worked as a repetiteur with Opera Australia.
Andrew and Fiona had prepared a recital of eight songs,
all written in 1840. First, three songs from Robert Schumann's song
cycle Myrthen (Opus 25): No. 1 "Widmung", No. 7 "Die
Lotosblume", and No. 24 "Du bist wie eine Blume". Andrew
introduced these songs as love gifts from Schumann to Clara Wieck,
whom Schumann married in September 1840. They are part of the extraordinary
outpouring of songs written in the space of eleven months in that
year on which so much of Schumann's reputation rests.
Then, as Warwick Fyfe had done at our September 1999
event, Andrew sang the two versions of "the two grenadiers"
by Schumann and Wagner, both composed in 1840 . First, to a text from
Heinrich Heine, he sang Schumann's German setting "Die beiden
Grenadiere" (from "Romanzen und Balladen" vol ii, Opus
49), and then Wagner's much longer setting "Les Deux Grenadiers",
to a French translation of Heine.
Fiona had commented that Wagner's piano accompaniment
had more of the quality of a transcription of an opera score than
an accompaniment to a song, which was certainly true in comparison
to Schumann's setting. In introducing the song, Andrew told us that
Wagner had written it as a quick way of getting some money, but that
he had found difficulty in getting any singer of note in Paris to
premiere the song for him. One of them commented that the inclusion
of a direct musical quote from "La Marseillaise" in the
accompaniment was more appropriate to the barricades than to a salon.
Finally, Andrew sang three songs from Nuits d'Été
by Berlioz: Opus 7, No. 1 "Villanelle", No. 3 "Sur
les Lagunes", and No. 4 "Absence". Andrew told us that,
like Wagner's setting of "Les Deux Grenadiers", these songs
were written by Berlioz in an effort to make some money quickly. We
don't know whether or not he was successful in this, but Berlioz later
orchestrated the accompaniment, providing us with the setting by which
these songs are today best known.
Not wanting to end the concert on such a mournful note,
Andrew sang as an encore "Abendlich strahlt der Sonne Auge"
from Das Rheingold where, as he characterised it, Wotan "shows
the missus their new house".
Andrew's voice has a clear steely edge, at times reminiscent
of a young Jon Vickers. The material he had chosen for this recital
sat comfortably with his voice, and in the main the sound was strong
and rich. The encore, although short, which especially well sung.
There were, however, a few moments when, perhaps because of nerves,
higher notes caused him some difficulty, but this did not diminish
the pleasure of his performance.
Fiona's accompaniment matched the varied character of
each song perfectly. The piano, which has been recently tuned and
was moved to the left-hand side of the performance area, filled the
room with a fuller and richer sound than we have heard for some time.
As Barbara McNulty said, in thanking Andrew and Fiona
for their wonderful recital, we were privileged to hear two such talented
performers in the early stages of their careers. Those of us lucky
enough to be at the recital joined Barbara in wishing them both well
for the future.
ROGER CRUICKSHANK
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