Haddington’s 1815 Holy Trinity Church stands on the site of a thirteenth-century Franciscan friary. It is set back on the deceptively narrow Church Street which terminates at the Nungate Bridge, as did the dangling lives of many criminals in bygone eras. This elegantly simply venue housed an imaginative centenary celebration programme entitled “Literary Britten”. It was an entirely male event: performers, composer, poets, subject matter – including love interest.
Having greatly enjoyed Lammermuir 2012’s Master and Commander programme, I was greatly looking forward to this exploration of the written, spoken and sung word. Welcoming the audience, Lammermuir co-artistic director James Waters made special mention of tenor Robin Tritschler, standing in at very short notice for an indisposed Andrew Kennedy. As if this were not sufficiently impressive, it soon seemed clear that there can be no greater test of a singer’s diction than to alternate items with a fine-voiced actor such as Alex Jennings. Despite music’s additional demands on pitch, breathing, phrasing, balance with piano etc., I could make out every syllable (only translated items appeared in the printed programme).
The lion’s share of the evening’s verse was Auden’s, the programme opening with Britten’s 1937 setting of five poems from the 1936 collection Look, Stranger! The song cycle was entitled On This Island, and Auden later retitled his collection to match. “Let the florid music praise” opened boldly with grand, fanfare-like piano accompaniment ably supplied by Iain Burnside and, later, extended Baroque-style vocal decoration by Tritschler. The importance of dynamics really came out in “Seascape”, where it seemed simply obvious that some phrases are, as it were, born loud. Vocal range was impressive, whether ethereal head voice or sonorous lower notes. The steady, darkly plangent chords of “Nocturne” finally gave way towards the end, allowing Burnside’s right hand to sing melodically with lovely tone. Tritschler alternated effectively between peaceful colours and more menacing, edgy ones which seem to inform the text and music of truly gripping nocturnes.
A similar alternation featured in Jennings’ reading of Auden’s 1935 Night Mail, where brisk, insistent locomotion yielded to the vulnerable reflection that all await mail with such apprehension, “for who can bear to feel himself forgotten”. The “Nocturne”’s element of hinted menace was mirrored nicely in the beautifully portrayed injured love of “Dear, though the night is gone” (1936) and also, in the second half, “Lullaby” (1937), which opens with the doubly charged lines “Lay your sleeping head, my love, Human on my faithless arm”.