Songs by Mendelssohn, Weber, Schubert, Mozart, Liszt, Rachmaninov, Strauss and Guastavino

Anyone looking for well-worn operatic arias (or well-worn excerpts from musicals, for that matter) would have had to wait a long time in this concert - until the encore, in fact, when we were rewarded with Io son l'umile ancilla from Adriana Lecouverer. Before that Kiri Te Kanawa gave us subtle and restrained performances of some interesting and out-of-the-way repertoire. Mendelssohn's On Wings of Song, Schubert's Gretchen am Spinnrade and Rachmaninov's Vocalise were the only really well-known items. But if the Mozart, Liszt and Strauss Lieder were less familiar, they were also in many ways more rewarding, with Liszt's fantastic Comment, disaient-ils and Strauss's eerie Befreit being particularly memorable. All of these songs benefited from Warren Jones' delicate accompaniment. Kiri Te Kanawa served the programme up with an allpurpose creamy legato in which fortes and dramatic effects were eschewed in favour of subtle shading. But if she seldom seemed to get beneath the surface, it nevertheless remained a very attractive surface. The main problem with this concert was, however, pointed out by Dame Kiri herself - what is the point of selling programmes with full texts and translations, and then turning down the house lights so that we can't read them? She ended with a group by a composer entirely unfamiliar to me, the Argentinean Carlos Guastavino (1912-2000). His songs make much the same atmospheric appeal as Piazzolla, although they may be a bit too subtle to achieve the same wide popularity.