Nicola Said

I may have written this statement before, but am happy to repeat it for those who missed it the first time round.

The talented young soprano Nicola Said is star material. Said’s ability is growing from strength to strength, something which she proved yet again when Lions Club Sliema presented her in recital with pianist Catherine Norton.

At the recital, held at St James Cavalier in Valletta, she played with her voice with the greatest ease.

Said’s voice is lovely and touches the heart and mind. Her undoubtedly comely presence, changing facial expressions at the right time without any effort, facilitates the projection of the message in all she sings. No strain taints even the most difficult passages she tackles.

For this performance, Said chose a finely balanced programme which she dedicated to love. Or, more precisely, to the many ways and paths, often thorny and tortuous, which lovers have to follow. A good third of the programme was devoted to the French repertoire. French vies with Italian as the language of love and be that as it may the songs by Chaminade, Debussy and Poulenc gave a fairly wide spectrum of style and content, of contrasts that were very well-etched.

Diction was very clear. The emotions expressed were underlined by an immersion in the text and in the flow of the music, which was fulfilling and done to great satisfaction.

No strain taints even the most difficult passages she tackles

This, of course, was in no small way thanks to the very fine rapport with the pianist. A fine singer and an equally fine pianist (as her solos proved) did not run along parallel lines but worked in an ideal fusion.

After Norton’s fine Pagodes from Debussy’s Éstampes, Said sang Charles Camilleri’s Ħames Kanti Popolari. The mood in these songs ranged widely from reflective introversion, to the poignantly suffering, the mischievous and light-hearted, and to the supreme passion of the very technically demanding L-Għabex.

The singer handled the often brusquely changing tempi and tongue-twisting text very well indeed. In her foray into the world of lieder, I believe that Said reached a sublime peak in Richard Strauss’s Morgen, with its deliberately slow flow and almost unbearable tension in what is in effect a great explosion of love.

Earlier, Schubert’s brief Nachtigall had that touch of delicate sweetness which the voice enhanced to the full, without sounding at all saccharin. And before that, another Strauss lied had a likeable element of mischief and a touch of effortless virtuoso.

When Norton had evoked the full, soothing magic of Chopin’s Nocturne in D flat Major, Said turned to the Russian repertoire, walking along Rachmaninov’s path in his Sdes Harasho, which lauds the beauty of nature. In Rimsky-Korsakov’s Nightingale and Rose there was all the lovely imagery evoked by the bird and the flower mirrored, in the fate of the lover and his maiden.

The recital ended with an exciting coloratura flourish in Alabyiev’s Solovej… well, not quite, for the audience’s demand for an encore resulted in Quando M’en Vo’ from Puccini’s La Bohème.