The stately gravitas of Middle Temple Hall, now 450 years old and an oak-panelled jewel at the heart of London’s legal cloister, survived in dignity until the final moments of this exceptional recital. That was the point when Gerald Finley and Julius Drake shed their cultured demeanour and played it for laughs.
The first half was devoted to Heine settings by Schumann and Schubert, so not many chuckles there. Eight songs by the former, half of them offcuts from Dichterliebe, made a substantial opening sequence, and from the moment he sidled into the first notes (no waiting for the applause to subside; they had a job to do) the Canadian bass-baritone revealed his familiar warm timbre, as fine-grained and polished as the surrounding woodwork yet altogether human in its colours and compassion.
The duo is on a European tour with this programme and they can seldom have sounded more attuned to their material (and to each other) than here. Finley’s voice was in extraordinary fettle, secure on every note whether north or south of the stave; indeed, both artists were completely inside the music and they inhabited the Schumann songs with a conviction and intensity that held the audience in their thrall.
The beauty of Finley’s legato in Dein Angesicht infused the text with a romantic lyricism, while Drake’s lolloping piano in Mein Wagen rollet langsam was a striking illustration of that song’s locus, a carriage rolling slowly through a bucolic landscape. The sheer theatricality of Belsazar, the poet's verse retelling of the Belshazzar story, afforded a first glimpse of Finley the stage animal, with more to follow in the spectacular Die beiden Grenadiere with its stomping incorporation of La Marseillaise.
In Heine’s contributions to Schwanengesang, Drake the Schubertian demonstrated his prodigious understanding not just of the music’s idiom but of its textual subtleties. Take the ‘cuckoo’-like descending chords that recur in Ihr Bild: at first they evoked a smile; later under Drake’s touch they became tears. The lilting charm of Das Fischermädchen gave way to the chilling arpeggios of Die Stadt, a desolate song that shares a musical terrain with Nebensonnen from Winterreise. Der Doppelgänger was even bleaker and Drake’s piano bit the air with some astonishing discords.
It took a clutch of Henri Duparc’s mélodies to lighten the mood, for even the French composer’s most lovelorn songs have a warmth about them. It's unusual to hear these gems sung by a bass-baritone but Finley made it all sound inevitable. Drake divided L’Invitation au voyage into two segments by dint of a daringly protracted pause after the first “volupté” – the kind of choice that makes one listen afresh to music we can otherwise take for granted. Phidylé followed hard on its heels, both songs interpreted with an aching, truthful beauty. What luxury it was to hear such masterworks side by side!