Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin
Songs by Brahms, Wagner and Stanford
The new year opens the second decade of a Berlin sojourn for Paul McNamara, the Limerick-born tenor who, since moving to Germany in 2000, has been gradually building a career there as a Wagnerian Heldentenor. Patience has yielded well-received debuts as Tannhäuser (2009) and Parsifal (2010), with plans for Tristan and Siegfried in the works.
He presented songs by Brahms and by the Irish composer upon whom Brahms was an early influence, Charles Villiers Stanford. That influence was unmissable in four Heine settings – in German – from 1893 (Op 7 Nos 1, 2 and 5; Op 4 No 4), featuring the hallmarks of German romanticism – ecstasy in nature, unremitting heartache – rather than the English pastoral sound normally associated with Stanford.
Poetic emotional excess notwithstanding, McNamara was all the more persuasive for steering a moderate course, deploying that intense quiet in his expressive repertoire which so nicely balances the heroic end of his range. Here he and pianist Philip Mayers first found their best balance, rather than in the opening Brahms songs when Mayers tended to a heaviness which either compromised the nuances of McNamara's delivery or obliged him to sustain a forteat odds with the text.
Stanford's own, pastoral voice was enjoyably more apparent in the gentility and nostalgia of "A Soft Day" and "Irish Skies" from the Op 140 A Sheaf of Songs from Leinsterof 1914.
Sharing the recital was mezzo-soprano Colette McGahon, who gave expressively detailed accounts of the five Wesendonk-Lieder,Wagner's only mature contribution to the song repertoire and – in the absence of his operas – just about the only live Wagner we ever get to hear in Ireland (thus vindicating the Wagner Society of Ireland's sponsorship of this event).
To Mayers’s sensitive partnership, McGahon comfortably scaled the vocal demands of what is full-blown romantic music – more often orchestrally accompanied – while gauging well the small performing space.
