United Kingdom Oxford Lieder Festival 2022 [2] – The Catch Club: Caroline Taylor (soprano), Christopher Purves (baritone), Choir of The Queen’s College, The Friendly Harmonists, Jonathan Byers (cello) Christopher Bucknall (harpsichord) / Owen Rees (conductor). Freud Café Bar, Oxford 17.10.2022. (CR)
This was a concert (programme details below) with a difference, taking place in Oxford’s well-known cocktail bar to recreate something of the drink-fuelled, convivial atmosphere in which such musical societies as the Catch Club, the Madrigal Society, and the Academy of Ancient Music would meet in eighteenth century London. They did not give public concerts as such; rather, when they met, it was as an occasion for their members to sing lively catches and glees, bawdy and ribald songs, or to explore antiquarian repertoire such as Elizabethan madrigals, or Renaissance church music, hence the sometimes bizarre juxtapositions in the programme selected for this instalment of the Oxford Lieder Festival. (Freud’s was built in the 1830s as a church, and still has its apse in place, so perhaps in this context the sacred music happened to seem not quite so incongruous as it otherwise might have been.)
With snacks and a glass of something to hand, the audience were invited to participate in a couple of catches (‘Now we are met’, and ‘A drunken old sot’) with the four singers of the specially formed a cappella group The Friendly Harmonists. With some evidently seasoned singers in the audience grounding each entry securely, these came off surprisingly well, despite their three- or four-part counterpoint in canon, as also the more serious canon ‘Non nobis Domine’ in which the three entries come in at different pitches.
Under Owen Rees’s direction, the two dozen or so singers of the Choir of the Queen’s College delivered quite expansive accounts of the pieces of sacred polyphony and the secular madrigals in this programme, tending to be radiant and soaring in the former, but too solid for the latter, which would have benefitted from greater levity. Caroline Taylor gave an impressive rendition of the solo songs, especially those by Purcell where her dramatic characterisations were astute and convincing. John Bannister’s three settings of Ariel’s Songs from The Tempest were sung with sparkling finesse, ending in a version of ‘Where the bee sucks’ that is nearly as captivating as that by Thomas Arne, whilst the anonymous ‘Begone sweit night’ received an affecting interpretation on account of Taylor’s pure-voiced nobility that perhaps recalled Purcell’s ‘Evening Hymn’, written for the other end of the day (not performed here but it would have found a natural place in this programme).
Christopher Purves provided airy support in the duets, alongside Christopher Bucknall’s colourful accompaniment on the harpsichord, particularly in the ornamented introduction to ‘May the God of Wit inspire’. Purves came into his own for an ironically stentorian, deadpan account of the four ribald songs by Eccles, revelling in various bodily parts and functions, and their indulgences, whose texts often left very little to the imagination. Altogether a delectable and surprising programme, very far from the usual bourgeois or Biedermeier context of so much song or Lieder repertoire.
Curtis Rogers
Palestrina – Exaltabo te Domine
Gibbons – The Silver Swan
Samuel Webbe – Now we are met
Purcell – Dear Pretty Youth; Fair Cloe my breast so alarms; My op’ning eyes are purg’d
Purcell (attrib) – Down among the dead men
Lobo – Audivi vocem
Palestrina – Sicut cervus
Byrd (attrib) – Non nobis Domine
Arne – O ravishing delight
Purcell – Lost is my quiet for ever
Henry Harington – I cannot sing this catch
William Hayes – Sir Toby reel’d home
Edward Johnson – Eliza is the fairest Queen
Purcell – May the God of Wit inspire
Mary Hudson – Applaud so great a guest
John Stafford Smith – Blest pair of sirens
John Bannister – Ariel’s Songs
Anon – Begone, sweit night
Farmer – Fair Phyllis
Wilbye – Flora gave me fairest flowers
Eccles – Upon Port Wine; John the Millar; My man John, my maid Mary; Farting and Belching
RJS Stevens – Ye spotted snakes
George Berg – A drunken old sot