Over the past five or six years the mezzo-soprano Helen Charlston has been making a name for herself as one of the most promising singers of her generation. She is a current BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist, was a finalist of the 2021 Kathleen Ferrier Awards and has collected various other accolades in the meantime. That promise has been amply fulfilled and she is now in considerable demand at leading venues.
The Wimbledon International Music Festival was scheduled to feature a joint recital which she would have shared with the tenor Alessandro Fisher, but the latter’s indisposition necessitated a substitution, impressively provided by Robin Tritschler at less than 48 hours’ notice. Remarkably the announced programme of English song remained intact: this was clearly home territory for Tritschler.
Charlston’s voice is truly exceptional. It is both lithe and multifaceted rather than opulent, which makes it ideal for the song repertory. The way she can modulate between emotional contrasts within a phrase, drawing on a variety of tonal colours in response to the text, is little short of miraculous.
Juxtaposed with Britten’s well-known Salley Gardens was the lesser-known setting by Rebecca Clarke. The latter is perhaps a shade more doleful, but in Britten’s song Charleston made the word “foolish” – alluding to the young lover’s irresponsibly carefree behaviour – all the more poignant. She conjured the sense of nature’s beauty within a dreamscape in a pair of Hardy settings by Gerald Finzi. And the exuberance of Madeleine Dring’s humorous version of Shakespeare’s It was a lover and his lass was neatly captured. John Ireland’s Sea Fever and Elgar’s The Swimmer, from Sea Pictures, were also highlights.
Tritschler offered more of Hardy’s poetry in Britten’s Winter Words. The contrast between the delicately depicted bird and the “mongrel slowly slinking” in Wagtail and Baby was nicely drawn, while the Choirman’s Burial was quietly touching. As at other climaxes, the pitch of intensity reached at “How long?” in Before Life and After caused the voice to stiffen uncomfortably. William Denis Browne’s gorgeous To Gratiana Dancing and Singing and settings of Sleep by Peter Warlock and Ivor Gurney were expressively delivered.
The diction of both singers was seemingly good but too many words were swallowed up by the resonant acoustic of the church. Without printed texts available, it was often a struggle to hear complete lines.
The contribution of the experienced Sholto Kynoch at the keyboard was not that of a mere accompanist but of a true collaborator. His immaculately voiced piano parts were always a pleasure to listen to in themselves, but they also provided the bedrock of exquisitely nuanced interpretations of gems of the English art song repertory.
