Bryn reviews 2008

xcept · Posted: Sat Jan 19, 2008 1:59 pm Post subject: Bryn reviews 2008

Arias full of ardour in some enchanted evening

After an overlong absence, the internationally renowned Welsh bass-baritone Bryn Terfel returned to the National Concert Hall this week, joined by the Ulster Orchestra under the singer's compatriot Gareth Jones.

Terfel creates a distinctively rich and secure sound, which has a positive depth in its lower reaches and can spin a phrase of transparent delicacy at the top.

His programme begins with Mozart's 'Non Piu Andrai' -- Figaro's mock-military exhortative farewell to the page Cherubino in The Marriage of Figaro. It is full of amusing character. After it, Mozart's somewhat sombre concert aria 'Io Ti Lascio' still provides an acceptable antidote. Wagner's 'Oh, Star of Eve' -- Wolfram's aria from Tannhauser -- is marvellously atmospheric, with the voice having a heroic ring in this expressive evening hymn. Borodin's Act II Prince Igor aria, 'No Sleep, No Rest', remains within this pleading environment and Terfel's intense interpretation, superbly free of affectation, has imperial gravitas.

Moving to the French repertoire brings the snarling travesty of Mephistopheles' Serenade from Gounod's Faust, but a shift to Verdi's Italy is an altogether different affair. In a way, Falstaff's marvellous 'Honour' monologue is the high point of the evening. Terfel manages a veritable kaleidoscope of vocal colour in this tour de force.

Elsewhere, Terfel shows commanding presence as the Prophet Elijah (Mendelssohn) and offers simple directness in the haunting Austrian lullaby carol, 'Still, Still, Still'.

There is defiance, plaintiveness and ardour in settings of the traditional 'Loch Lomond', 'Cariad Cyntaf' and 'Passing by'. Emile's 'Some Enchanted Evening' from South Pacific and Javert's 'Stars' from 'Les Miserables' are the concluding contrasts.

Source: Irish Independent

xcept · Posted: Sun Mar 09, 2008 12:32 am Post subject:

Falstaff review from the Telegraph CLICK HERE

xcept · Posted: Wed Apr 16, 2008 1:12 pm Post subject:

For a Roy Thomson Hall concert review - CLICK HERE

xcept · Posted: Thu Apr 17, 2008 11:43 am Post subject:

And another...

Manly, yes, but hauntingly tender too

The Roy Thomson Hall vocal series reached a thrilling climax Tuesday night with a recital to cherish by the great Welsh baritone Bryn Terfel, partnered by the distinguished Scottish pianist Malcolm Martineau.

At 42, Terfel is in his magnificent prime. His rock-steady, ringingly resonant, deeply musical voice solved utterly the acoustic problems of the hall. His crystalline enunciation gave us every word he sang, or spoke, clearly and naturally. The voice, as music, carried in the same unaffected way, whether at the top or the bottom of its ample range, and whether in burnished, clarion trumpet sounds; in an easy parlando style; or in a hushed mezza voce like a silvery thread.

I had expected the fundamental virility of the singing, but not the frequent heart-stopping tenderness. There seemed no corner of Terfel's chosen repertoire that he could not inhabit fully and with the perfect ease that hides art. This was golden-age singing, as human and all-embracing as it was refined.

Terfel and Martineau gave over the first half of their recital to a large selection of early-20th-century English songs, and it was a pleasure to hear these neglected pieces revived so eloquently. We heard John Masefield's verse in settings by John Ireland (including the stirring Bells of San Marie), Peter Warlock (Captain Stratton's Fancy) and Frederick Keel (three of the Salt-Water Ballads).

After these, two songs of Ralph Vaughan Williams: The Roadside Fire, to verse of Robert Louis Stevenson, and the ineffable Silent Noon, one of the great love songs, to the poem of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Finally, we heard four songs by the disarming miniaturist Roger Quilter, opening with the poignant setting of Tennyson's Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal. It was a rare feast.

After intermission, the team turned to European classics - Handel, Mozart, Schubert and Fauré - followed by six beloved traditional songs, Scottish, English, Irish and Welsh.

The Handel - Si, tra i ceppi e le ritorte, from the opera Berenice - provided the only fly in the ointment. While suitably swinging and robust, Terfel's Handelian coloratura in this was the evening's one failure in clarity. We heard a kind of sliding of the pitch up and down, but not the notes.

The exquisite Mozart concert aria, Io ti lascio, oh cara, addio, K. 245, was immediate redemption, a flawless assumption of Mozart style, profound and beautiful.

The four Schubert songs could not have been improved upon. The delicacy and crisp humour of Heidenröslein and the grieving serenity of the Litany for All-Souls' Day will shine in the memory. Terfel's Fauré songs - the sombre Automne, the gentle Le Secret and the brilliant Fleur Jetée - captured their idiom and, within that, their differences, to perfection.

In the final traditional songs, Terfel embraced his audience like a gathering of friends. His Loch Loman brought a tear to many eyes. His Cariad cyntaf spoke personally in Welsh to the many countrymen - and women - in his audience. His Danny Boy he gave particularly to those in the top front balconies, turning his back (without the slightest danger of being unheard) on the main part of his audience. And he didn't sing the haunting Welsh song Ar hyd y nos (All Through the Night) at all until he had persuaded his audience to hum it first ("Humming is good for you"), which it did, sweetly in tune.

These "popular" sallies seemed to arise naturally out of the audience's own shy desires and the performers' generosity and largeness of spirit. For his first encore, Terfel slipped down into the audience to address Don Giovanni's serenade to several doubtless electrified ladies. For his second, he broke everyone up with a hilarious account of Flanders's and Swann's The Gasman Cometh.

What an evening!

Source: The Globe and Mail

xcept · Posted: Sat Apr 19, 2008 12:46 pm Post subject:

Terfel woos Zellerbach crowd

If not for the fact that he's a Welsh national - and is certainly too smart to want the job - I suspect that Bryn Terfel could be elected president tomorrow.

I don't even know what his position is on trade, or how well he bowls. But on Thursday night, in a magnificent recital that marked his first visit to the Bay Area in eight years, the great bass-baritone revealed an ability to woo a crowd that most politicians could only dream of.

All that, and musical brilliance to boot.

Terfel's artistic gifts, of course, have never been in doubt. His huge dynamic palette, from a thundering, superbly modulated fortissimo to the barest filament of sound; the dark, burnished beauty of his vocal tone; his fluent phrasing and extraordinarily clear diction; and his mastery of a wide range of vocal styles - all these and more conspire to make his every vocal performance a memorable treasure.

In his past appearances, though, Terfel has sometimes gilded the lily with a variety of antics designed to win over listeners. Some were effective, some merely corny.

But on Thursday, appearing in Berkeley's Zellerbach Hall under the auspices of Cal Performances, Terfel hit that sweet spot that every performer seeks, where the audience knows perfectly well it's being seduced and goes along anyway. And, together with the excellent pianist Malcolm Martineau, Terfel unreeled one vocal gem after another to produce a double triumph of music and charisma.

The first half of the program was devoted to English art songs of a folkish bent, matched at the tail end of the evening by a posy of true folk music from the rest of the United Kingdom (Ireland, Scotland and Wales, misbilled in the program as "the Celtic Isles"). This was where Terfel shone most vibrantly, digging into the poetic texts with a showman's glee and caressing or pounding away at the melodies.

He opened with a long set of songs to the sea-besotted texts of John Masefield, beginning with John Ireland's setting of the famous "Sea Fever" ("I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky") and continuing through songs by Peter Warlock and the aptly named Frederick Keel.

There wasn't a lot of variety in this set - nearly everything sounded vaguely like a tarted-up pirate chantey - but Terfel brought lusty charm to the most extroverted numbers, like Warlock's "Captain Stratton's Fancy," as well as a touching sensitivity to Keel's "Port of Many Ships," a seaman's fantasy of the nautical afterworld.

There were non-nautical offerings by Ralph Vaughan Williams and Roger Quilter, in which Terfel's energy and interpretive zeal alleviated the pastoral blandness that can sometimes afflict this repertoire.

In particular, Terfel's performance of Quilter's "Go, lovely Rose" was so jaw-droppingly beautiful that the audience could only sit in transfixed silence when it was over. Terfel broke into the song set to remark on how appreciative the audience was, and to suggest, "You can breathe, you know."

From continental Europe, Terfel offered a tremendous quartet of Schubert songs - including a jaunty, light-toned account of "Heidenröslein" and a breathtakingly serene rendition of the "Litany for the Feast of All Souls" - and three shapely if slightly overbearing Fauré songs. And, perhaps to prove that he is as human as the rest of us, Terfel included one clunker in the program: an aria from Handel's opera "Berenice" whose clumsy coloratura and rusty tone suggested that this may not be his strongest suit.

But he immediately recovered with Mozart's concert aria "Io ti lascio, o cara, addio," done with tender clarity. And the concluding folk-song set found him bringing in the audience like a pro - prompting a hum-along for "All Through the Night" in the original Welsh and a sing-along for "Molly Malone."

The encores were Mozart's "Deh vieni alla finestra," Don Giovanni's seductive serenade - which Terfel addressed to a series of audience members while prowling the aisles - and the Alma Bazel Androzzo spiritual (made famous by Mahalia Jackson) "If I Can Help Somebody."

Source: San Francisco Chronicle

xcept · Posted: Tue Apr 22, 2008 8:10 am Post subject:

Towering in Every Aspect

Bryn Terfel sure knows how to work a crowd. After his rendition of Roger Quilter’s Go, Lovely Rose left adoring attendees at his Cal Performances recital in profound silence, he smiled and said, “You’re a fabulous audience. You can breathe, you know.”

Such a winking acknowledgment of his impact was only part of the shtick. When the six-foot-three, former rugby player first took to the stage of Zellerbach Hall Thursday night, he quipped, “I apologize if I walk funny, because Falstaff is still with me.” After sticking out his belly to imitate Sir John, he dedicated the first half of his program, a generous helping of English song, to his teacher, “A. Reckless, baritone.” The warm laughter that greeted his spiel could have melted the frost on the Thames.

But just in case there were any hard-hearted naysayers (or clueless critics) left by recital’s end, he jumped off the stage at the start of his first encore, Deh vieni alle finestra (Don Giovanni’s serenade), sauntered down the aisle, and proceeded to serenade several audience members in polygamous fashion. Then came the final encore, Bazel Androzzo’s If I Can Help Somebody (with the lyric “If I can help somebody as I pass along, then my living shall not be in vain”), delivered with all the generosity of tone and perfectly gauged sentimentality to leave you feeling that you had just encountered the Salvation Army’s most prized bell-ringer. What a grand bloke he is!

Absolute Command
The encores capped a generous recital that began and ended with the repertoire Terfel performed best: English and, in one case, Welsh song. The opening three works, by John Ireland, immediately established an air of masculine authority. Sung with impeccable diction, Sea Fever gave us the voice of the archetypical seaman, and The Vagabond featured convincingly plebeian speech and a bit of the lovely half voice that would only improve throughout the evening.

The Bells of San Marie confirmed Terfel’s ability to mix occasional touches of sentimentality with finely spun sound. By the conclusion of Peter Warlock’s Captain Stratton’s Fancy, in which a judicious dowsing of alcoholic swagger included a few well-placed growls, it was impossible to imagine any singer, whether present or past, performing Terfel’s maritime repertoire more convincingly.

As Terfel sailed through Frederick Keel’s Three Salt-Water Ballads, my appreciation for his declamatory delivery grew. The distance from Keel’s Port of Many Ships to Rodgers and Hammerstein’s My Boy Bill soliloquy from Carousel seemed but a short skip across the salty sea. No wonder, because at the last Terfel recital I attended in Zellerbach many years ago, the music that most impressed was from Broadway rather than 19th-century Germany.

This is not to say that every English song that our boy Bryn performed was equally convincing. Despite a lovely, soft falsetto ending, his rendition of Vaughan Williams’ Silent Noon was too grand to convince. (By all means, check out the sacred silence that the great Kathleen Ferrier bestowed upon this short masterpiece.) But the lovely stillness at the end of Roger Quilter’s Weep You No More, the profundity of Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal, and the declamatory tone worthy of Sir John himself in Fair House of Joy were nothing short of magnificent.

Equally magnificent was Malcolm Martineau’s accompaniment; always in synch with Terfel, his challenging rapid arpeggios flowed like water and his tone was always apt. If ever a pianist could make a singer feel supported and mirrored without being upstaged, it is Martineau.

On Shakier Ground
Beginning with Handel (even after intermission) may be a standard programming choice, but Bryn Terfel’s coloratura facility is less than commanding. Most curious was the final phrase of Sì, tra I ceppi (Yes, among the stumps), which he declaimed like a sea captain. Although Mozart’s Io ti lascio, o cara, addio (I leave you, my dear, farewell) was light years ahead stylistically, and ended with a fade to silence that Martineau held marvelously, a declamatory style again intruded into Terfel’s four Schubert lied.

There, the contrast between how Terfel now sings Schubert and how he performed three of the songs — Heidenröslein (Rose blossom on the heath), Litanei (Litany), and An Silvia (Who is Sylvia?) — on his award-winning 1994 Schubert recital with Martineau (DG) was profound. The voice today is just as beautiful, and the charm and half voice are equally beguiling, but key words and phrases that before were impeccably sung are now occasionally voiced in an obtrusive, declamatory style in which sharp beginnings and straight tone interrupt the flow of the vocal line.

Liebesbotschaft suffered most — the murmuring brook and whispered dreams that Elly Ameling and Elisabeth Schumann captured so well were far too grand. Granted, Zellerbach is a far bigger space than Schubert performed in, but it does not require Sir John Falstaff to put a song across.

Forget France — Let’s Head to the Celtic Homeland
Although his current approach, in which restraint often cedes to big, was unsuited to Fauré, the opening lines of Le Secret demonstrated that Terfel can still sing a melting legato when he puts his mind to it. Unsurprisingly, the grand, emotional conclusion to Fleur Jetée (Discarded flower) fared best.

Best to return to the land of Loch Lomond, Danny Boy, and Molly Malone. The last, sung with the help of a standing audience, capped the recital. Fabulous.

Few artists can create such a familial, down-home atmosphere as Terfel can. If the man ever decides to become a barker at county fairs and carnivals, I’ll bet he could set a world record for the number of stuffed animals and candied apples sold. Perhaps someday he will follow in Ezio Pinza’s footsteps. Then, we could all sing together, from Dublin’s fair city to Broadway so pretty, there’s nary a singer as super as Bryn.

Source: San Francisco Classical Voice

xcept · Posted: Thu Apr 24, 2008 1:25 pm Post subject:

Terfel is near-perfect mix of passion, poise

A. Reckless, baritone.

That was the name of the teacher to whom singer Bryn Terfel dedicated the first half of his Schubert Club recital at St. Paul's Ordway Center Wednesday night. Arthur Reckless was the man who instilled in the young Terfel a love of English song. And, hence, the inspiration for a program laden with works by various British songsmiths.

And it's a touch of recklessness that helps make Terfel such an enjoyable performer. Possessing not only one of the world's great voices but an abundance of charm, stage presence and panache, the Welsh bass-baritone delivered a wonderfully memorable concert, a lovely valedictory to the Schubert Club's 125th Anniversary International Artist Series season.

It wasn't only the old English tunes that acquitted him so splendidly, but the passion he poured into every piece. Terfel threw himself full force into arias, lieder, French art song and Celtic ballads, displaying an admirable blend of abandon and control.

Partnered with one of the elite singers' pianists of choice, Malcolm Martineau, Terfel may have been the most engaging vocal recitalist to visit the Twin Cities since ... well, since Terfel last came to town four years ago. Spicing his powerful yet astoundingly gentle interpretations with engaging and amusing stories, he proved a gifted raconteur in both song and speech.

Yes, Terfel could unleash some full-bore crescendos that could loosen toupees at the back of the Ordway balcony. But the most

stirring moments were the softest: When he almost whispered Roger Quilter's "Weep No More, Sad Fountains," or made a sad lullaby of Schubert's "Litany for the Feast of All Souls," each an absorbing intersection of grief and acceptance.
To hear Schubert lieder sung by a vocalist of this quality is a rare pleasure, but Terfel showed himself equally adept at the romantic-era French fare of master melodist Gabriel Faure and ballads by Ralph Vaughan Williams. If any among the capacity crowd left disappointed by the paucity of opera — an aria each from Handel and Mozart, as well as a flirtatious aisle-roaming encore — his closing Celtic songs perhaps proved theatrical enough.

Theatrical, but never hammy. Terfel delivered what may have been the least schmaltzy "Danny Boy" in memory, as well as a touching "All Through the Night." Yes, he sang both the last time in town, but he's growing more natural with age. He's become a more relaxed performer, yet one who can transfix listeners like few others.

Source: TwinCities.com

xcept · Posted: Fri Apr 25, 2008 1:54 pm Post subject:

Terfel displays his depth, vocal dexterity at recital

In a varied repertoire, the famed bass-baritone combined power with passion at the Schubert Club.

Bryn Terfel is indisputably one of the great voices singing today. His resplendent bass-baritone is a force of nature. A few interpretive quibbles aside, his Schubert Club recital at the Ordway Wednesday night featured some of the most audience-pleasing singing of the season.

The first half of the program consisted of English songs from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This repertoire -- works by John Ireland, Frederick Keel and Roger Quilter -- is unfairly neglected on recital programs. Two songs by Ralph Vaughan Williams were as finely wrought as any works in the art-song repertoire.

Terfel obviously loves this music. There was in his performance the sheer joy of music-making. He sang with a glint in his eye and in his voice.

He was a musical storyteller. Some of the effects he used in service of the drama -- exaggerated dynamics, overarticulated vowels, excessive crooning -- might be considered crude. But his diction was impeccable, and when he restrained himself, he sang alternately with great wit and great longing.

Peter Warlock's "Captain Stratton's Fancy" typified his performance style. The reading was rambunctious and over the top, but full of character, reminiscent of Terfel's performance as Falstaff in Verdi's opera.

The repertoire in the second half was more familiar. A bravura Handel aria demonstrated Terfel's facility for coloratura, but the performance was overly aggressive for the gentle aria. There was likewise a lack of elegance in the Mozart concert aria "Io ti lascio, o cara, addio." Terfel had a hard time scaling back his big voice.

In four songs by Franz Schubert and a set by Gabriel Fauré, he was on firmer artistic footing. He sang with a gentle lyricism and real elegance. From the folk song-like naiveté of Schubert's "Heidenröslein" to the deeply felt religiosity of his "Litany for the Feast of All Souls" and the powerful passion of Fauré's "Fleur Jetée," he was the stylistic master.

In accompanist Malcolm Martineau, Terfel had a strong collaborator. Their long partnership was evident from the almost intuitive communication between them. Martineau played with great delicacy, infusing even the subtlest moments with drama.

The recital concluded with a series of Celtic songs, including the familiar "Loch Lomond," "Danny Boy" and "All Through the Night." These were among the most admirable renditions of the evening, straightforward and unsentimental in their simplicity.

William Randall Beard is a Minneapolis writer.

In accompanist Malcolm Martineau, Terfel had a strong collaborator. Their long partnership was evident from the almost intuitive communication between them. Martineau played with great delicacy, infusing even the subtlest moments with drama.

The recital concluded with a series of Celtic songs, including the familiar "Loch Lomond," "Danny Boy" and "All Through the Night." These were among the most admirable renditions of the evening, straightforward and unsentimental in their simplicity.

Source: Star Tribune

xcept · Posted: Mon Apr 28, 2008 10:19 am Post subject:

CLICK HERE for the New York Sun review of Bryn's Carnegie Hall concert.

And the New York Times CLICK HERE