Festival Music

Catriona Morison

Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh

Keith Bruce

****

BEFORE her debut EIF recital in her home town, mezzo Catriona Morison apparently confessed to nervousness as it was also her first live broadcast on BBC Radio 3 - at which point her accompanist Simon Lepper reminded her that the Cardiff Singer of the Year competition had also been transmitted to a grateful nation. She won that, of course, and there was never any doubt about the result at the Queen’s Hall either, with standing-room only and printed programmes at a premium.

Having spent the bulk of her career in Germany, it was little surprise that most of her recital was of German lieder, with Korngold’s switch to English for the last two of the five he published in 1948 responsible for the exceptions. They interestingly paralleled the Schumann five that had ended the first half, supposedly setting words by Mary Queen of Scots, as one is a patriotic battle-cry in support of her rival, Elizabeth 1, and the other Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130 to his Mistress’ Eyes, echoing the verse form of two of those attributed, dubiously, to Mary.

Morison opened with ten selections from the love-lorn Brahms, and if that nervousness was detectable at the start it was dispatched during the pictorial Madchenlied, where the expression in her voice was matched by the animation in her face. The latent power in her well-tempered mezzo was starting to be heard in the two that followed, and Therese proved she could do teasing and coy as well.

Mahler’s Ruckert Songs are the sort of repertoire by which mezzos are measured, and on those it was apparent that she is not yet at her voice’s maturity although undoubtedly in possession of a very fine instrument. Lepper was a little forceful on the second of them, and while her ease with the language gave the next a fine conversational tone, the climactic Um Mitternacht was rather strident and perhaps, in its slang sense, “Germanic”.

At one time her encore rendering of Ye Banks and Braes would have made her a regular on Saturday evening variety TV; her old-fashioned take on it was, of course, cheered to the echo.