This year's St Endellion Festival - the 59th Summer event welcomes back for its opera performance Sir John Tomlinson, who memorably generously stepped in for an ailing Robert Hayward in the role of Wotan Walkure in 2011 and last year appeared in the title role of Boris Godunov. This year with Artistic Director Mark Padmore, and festival stalwarts baritone Roderick Williams and conductor Ryan Wigglesworth they perform Benjamin Britten's great seaborne opera "Billy Budd" next Wednesday 2nd August and Friday 4th August.
I attended the imaginative concert of words and music to celebrate Charles Causley's birth centenary. Undoubtedly Cornwall's premier poet, who lived much of his life in Launceston and, a private man, eschewed the limelight....though Ted Hughes his friend always averred he should have been Poet Laureate. Causley was very fond of the narrative ballad as a form but his poetry does not generally lend itself to song writing and setting. This concert featured Mark Padmore singing settings of his work by British contemporary composers Richard Barnard and Stephen McNeff (whose premiere of an opera to a previously unknown libretto by Causley #BurningBoy will be made @Carn2Cove with @BSorchestra in November this year in Launceston and St Ives - see www.carntocove.org.uk for details) accompanied by the guitar playing of Morgan Szymanski, some further settings with the same duo of Edward Thomas by composer Alec Roth. Interspersed were some reading of Causley's more well known poems by readers I cannot name because they were not in the programme sheet. Causley's The Seasons in North Cornwall particularly draws us into the Tamar Valley and the
One of the issues around the difficulty of Causley's poetry the denseness and strangeness of some of the thought. Nevertheless Richard Barnard's setting of the Green Man in the Garden evoked some of the magic and mystery of this creepy encounter with the spirit of nature - on winter night's in windswept Cornwall. Padmore's very high tenor which is in the reaches of where counter-tenors might venture was tested in this work and reminds one of just what a great technique he has - I last heard him in Harrison Birtwistle's double opera at ROH the Corridor and The Cure where he sang Orphes. Unfortunately I did not hear Barnard's settings of Tom Bone or Miller's End except from outside the South Door of St Kew Church as change-over day traffic on the A30 had not been provided for in my schedule!
Stephen McNeff's settings of Elizabethan Sailor's Song clearly drew on Tudor song writing - rather beautifully and simply expressed with voice and guitar - it could have almost been a lute but, otherwise, his writing was more the guitar providing a sound world around the more or less solo line of Padmore rather than accompanying him in a verse song - a kind of solo a capella for voice with ethereal music, chords plucked and resounding while for the most part very successful in Faure - a very lush and rich setting - and Eden Rock, was less so in A Certain Man which required the sort of Alban Berg style leaps of the vocalist which test the soloist and the audience - though it no doubt conjures some of the jagged nature of Causley's mercurial thought. Easier that Causley as a lyricist Edward Thomas's settings by Alec Roth of Away, Signpost, Roads, Home and Lights Out served as a strong contrast textually - their less dense narrative and appealing, open thought provided a highly varied range for Roth to work a more traditional set of beautifully realised and performed songs here by Mark Padmore.
Morgan Symanski was excellent in this self-effacing performance, with never a strident note, beautifully balanced with the voice and Padmore whose selection was considered and performance impressive remains one of the more interesting programmers and performers around.
The wonderful St Kew Church - a parish away from St Endellion itself, was thronging with audience on an rain and shine Cornish summer's day - I am sorry not to be joining them for Billy Budd, though I might catch the Verdi Requiem tommorrow night in Truro Cathedral - Sophie Bevan in the lineup or tonight's late night line up of Walt Whitman settings curated by Iain Burnside with readings by Rory Kinnear. However I fear Wildworks' Wolf's Child will not come down early enough for me to get to St Endellion from Trelowarren in time. Oh the travails and variety of great performances available to audience members in Cornwall in the summer!
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