Tales of mortals who marry fairies don’t generally end well but have often made for spellbinding narratives. The ancient Welsh legend of the Lady of the Lake, recorded in the 14th-century manuscript Llyfr Coch Hergest, provided the inspiration for The Faerie Bride by composer Gavin Higgins and librettist Francesca Simon. Acclaimed for their first collaboration, The Monstrous Child, this new work is styled a cantata, using just two singers with full orchestra, a reflection of Higgins’s role as composer-in-association with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales who premiered it at the Aldeburgh festival.
As the farmer telling in sad retrospect his story of falling in love with the woman who rose from the glacial waters of Carmarthenshire’s Llyn y Fan Fach, baritone Roderick Williams was unfailingly clear and expressive. Emerging from the instrumental texture as though from the misty depths of the lake, mezzo soprano Marta Fontanals-Simmons as his bride conveyed an aura of otherworldliness. The couple’s happiness is real but conditional, for it is she who set the marriage terms, vowing to return to her watery underworld should she be struck three heart blows. That her faerie blood gives her sight into the future leads to the misunderstandings which in turn cause the blows that send her back into the lake, leaving her husband bereft.
Weaving traditional Welsh folk songs into the mezzo’s lines and bringing a pastoral lyricism to wind writing invoking the passing seasons, Higgins’ control of his orchestral forces was highly assured, and combined with an equal instinct for colouristic and atmospheric detail. Martyn Brabbins conducted with feeling.
In contrast, Graham Fitkin’s new commission, the previous afternoon, had dealt with the all too contemporary world where public pronouncements and statements are empty of meaning, with the effect of habituation. Bla, Bla, Bla was the last work in a concert of piano music for two pairs of duettists: Fitkin, his wife Ruth Wall, Clare Hammond and Kathryn Stott. In earlier pieces of his from the 80s and 90s, Fitkin’s was the exuberantly driving bass line, but this piece’s engagement with the concept of Shifting Baseline Syndrome was more than a pun. Donning a head-mic, Fitkin narrated while he and Wall on synthesisers added layer upon electronic layer of sampling – including witty snippets of film dialogue – to Hammond’s and Stott’s two live pianos. With scintillatingly energetic rhythm and some Pet Shop Boys touches, the moments of cacophonous mayhem spoke volumes.
• The Aldeburgh festival continues until 26 June.
