IN last week's recital in Dublin Castle, Malcolm Martineau produced an orchestral richness of colour from the piano, ravishing the ear by subtle variations of phrasing and dynamics. Showing himself to be a true partner of the tenor Mark Padmore and not Just an accompanist, he never allowed his part to become unduly prominent as he might have been tempted to do.
Both he and the mellifluously voiced tenor paid a loving attention to detail. This concentration underlined the many felicites of Tippet's Songs for Ariel, but it made the three settings of Shakespeare by Quilter seem over inflated and more repugnant than ever. Quilter does not export well.
Britten's Winter Words, eight settings of hardy, show the composer in Purcellian mood, more intent on an ornate vocal line than on communicating what Hardy called "Life's little ironies." It was during this item that I wished Opera Theatre Company had supplied tests for the English songs as well as the German ones.
Beethoven's songs are much freer from their texts than Schumann's. Adelaide is almost a vocalise and the cycle An diefrrne Geliebte in which, for example, a whole verse is sung to one note, could be instrumental.
The music expresses a mood but does not respond to the text in the way that Schumann did. The four songs from Schumann's Op 40, settings of Hans Andersen, give equal weight to words and to music and here singer and pianist were at their most sensitive to nuances of feeling.
