Concert
Cliff Zammit Stevens, tenor;
Annie Fredriksson, mezzo-soprano;
Ian Tindale, piano
Mdina
This Mdina concert started beautifully with Cliff Zammit Stevens launching into Ravel’s Cinq Mélodies Grécques. He and mezzo-soprano Annie Fredriksson sounded so good, with perfect diction and clarity.
To Ian Tindale’s rippling accompaniment there was all the tenderness in the beloved’s awakening in La reveille de la mariée. Là-bas vers l’église was at first jinxed by the infiltrating sound of singing from the nearby cathedral with Zammit Stevens still managing to sing with an appropriately reverential tone.
There was, of course, a change of mood with all the necessary swagger in Quel gallant m’est comparable. Half-way through Chanson des cueilleuses des lentisques something went wrong with the amplification system. The singer stopped but coolly resumed the song. Tout gai sounded very jolly and crisp.
Later in this first part, Zammit Stevens gave a very fine rendering of Hahn’s romantic barcarole La Barcheta and the cautionary L’avertimento, singing in the Venetian dialect.
It needs no reminding too that the pianist was a priceless element in the rendering of all the evening’s pieces: utterly reliable, sympathetic and in full attentive rapport with the singers.
Some of the best pieces performed by Fredriksson were sung in the first half. The first was Duparc’s passionate Au pays où se fait la guerre, equally matched by the same mood in Sibelius’s Flickan kom ifrån sin älsklings mote. A few seconds of premature applause almost ruined the lovely effect of Grieg’s Solveig’s Song which one presumes was sung in Norwegian. The smoothness of delivery here was particularly good.
Sometimes a crystal clear delivery in the top register seems to evade the tenor
Zammit Stevens returned with a rarity by Puccini, the song Avanti Urania!, very gung-ho and preceding the evening’s first duet, Dein ist mein Ganzes Herz from Léhar’s Das Land des Lachelns which could have projected a stronger dose of passion. Both singers need to clear some of the higher passages – something which appeared here and there this evening. Sometimes a crystal clear delivery in the top register seems to evade the tenor, yet at others it is as clear as one could wish for.
One could have wished for more panache in the cheeky Questa o quella from Verdi’s Rigoletto. Zammit Stevens reached superb heights in Kuda, kuda, Lensky’s famous aria from Tchaikovsky’s Yevgeny Onyegin. This aria fits his voice like a glove, something like which the best of Russian tenors could sing. It was a marvel of breath control, passion and pathos all in one. Indeed it sent shivers down one’s spine. It was irresistibly good and the audience responded accordingly; except for the very end which was rather strained.
Fredriksson’s Una voce poco fa from Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia would have been reckoned among her best pieces that evening, which Que fais-tu, blanche toutourelle from Gounod’s Romèo et Juliette certainly was. The singers then sang a very amusing duet from Offenbach’s La Périchole.
When the tenor returned, he did so with a rarity from Puccini’s song book, Sole e Amore (1888), the main theme of which resurfaced and was re-worked as part of the quartet ending Act III of La Bohème. It is a beautiful song in its own right and not one of mere curiosity value.
On the other hand, Ah la paterna mano from Macbeth is one of the best known tenor arias from early Verdi. This was delivered with feeling and dignity.
Carmen hardly dwells upon dignity when she sings of love in the Habanera form Bizet’s masterpiece. Fredriksson was very much the cynical seductress if not exactly an ideally sultry one.
Zammit Stevens closed with Di Capua’s perennial favourite O sole mio. As an encore the singers beautifully performed the duet You and I from Benny Andersen and Björn Ulvaeus’s Chess.