Awakenings
Contents listed after review
Laurence Kilsby (tenor)
Ella O’Neill (piano)
rec. 2023, SWR Hans-Rosbaud-Studio, Baden-Baden, Germany
Texts included
Avi-Music 4866025 [67]

I first experienced the singing of Laurence Kilsby when he was a star treble in the Schola Cantorum choir of Tewkesbury Abbey, not far from where I live. In 2010 I reviewed for Seen and Heard a concert in which he was one of the soloists. That was the launch event for a CD on the Delphian label which I reviewed shortly afterwards. Kilsby was born in 1998 so he would have been about thirteen years old when the disc was made. Looking back on the two reviews, I see that I commented on his “rich, round tone but also on his musical maturity, uncommon, I would suggest, in one so young. He offers genuine interpretations of the music he sings and, moreover, there’s spontaneity in these interpretations”. Discussing his performance in the famous ‘Laudate Dominum’ movement in Mozart’s Vesperae solennes de Confessore, K339, I said “Here we have a genuine artist, showing a feeling for music that belies his years. I hope his interest in music will survive the breaking of his voice and that he’ll develop a comparably fine adult voice in due course”. Well, the interest in music was most certainly sustained. Kilsby went on to study at the Royal College of Music and the Curtis Institute of Music, following which he has won several prestigious competition prizes and he is now pursuing an increasingly successful international career as a soloist.

Here we have what I think is his first solo recital album. He’s joined by pianist Ella O’Neill who has been his regular recital partner since their student days at the RCM. In the comments that follow I suspect I’ll say more about the singer than the pianist; such is the nature of things. So, let me say at the outset that Ella O’Neill makes two key contributions to this project. Not only is she an excellent and perceptive pianist but in addition she has written the outstanding notes on the songs; these notes are as fine a guide to the individual items as you could wish to read.

As Laurence Kilsby explains in a preface to the programme, the foundation of the programme which he and Ella O’Neill have devised is an exploration of “romantic, sexual and emotional awakenings”. The programme has been compiled with discernment and is very wide ranging. Along the way, Kilsby is required to sing in five different languages, including English, and he seems as comfortable – and able to communicate – in French, German, Russian and Swedish as he is in his native tongue.

All the performances in this collection impressed me but I want to single out immediately two that not only grabbed my attention but also proved to be harbingers of what we experience on the disc as a whole. In Brahms’ ‘Unbewegte, laue Luft’, which opens the recital, Kilsby impresses right away with the richness and roundness of his tone in the opening lines. His rock-steady vocal projection is also a decided asset in these opening lines of what Ella O’Neill terms “expectant stillness”. Then, as the song moves into more ardent expression, at ‘Aber in Gemüte schwillt’ Kilsby opens up into full-throated ardour, his tone ringing. He sets out his stall admirably in this song. A little later, he and O’Neill treat us to Rebecca Clarke’s The Seal Man. This is a strange but remarkable song, which I’ve come to regard very highly. I’ve heard a number of very distinguished singers perform it on disc and Kilsby, who brings his own performative strengths to the song, need not fear any comparisons. Aided by marvellous playing by Ella O’Neill, Kilsby tells the story in a vivid fashion. His narrative is gripping, not least in the passage beginning ‘It was like a flame before them’, where his singing is impassioned.

We only get two songs in French, which is a bit of a shame since Kilsby’s French sounds excellent to my ears. He draws us into the song by Saint-Saëns very effectively. Weill’s Complainte de la Seine was written while he was in exile in Paris; we have a German writing most convincingly for Parisian cabaret. The poem that he set is quite morbid and Weill furnishes it with biting music. It may be a cabaret song but here we’re talking about very serious, not to say graphic fayre; ‘entertainment’ seems quite a way away. Kilsby’s delivery of the song is very characterful, not least in the penultimate stanza (‘Acceuil‘ le pauvre…’).

The Stenhammar song is an adventurous choice which takes us off the beaten track. I’d not heard it before and I was glad to discover it. Thank goodness the notes give us an idea of what the song is about (I’ll come back to this issue at the end of the review). Also new to me was Prokofiev’s ‘Trust me’. This is a strange song – Ella O’Neill rightly references its “ethereal but unsettling soundworld”. This is another song in which Kilsby’s even production and ability to sustain the line are decided assets.

Kilsby and O’Neill offer two items by Benjamin Britten. ‘My beloved is mine’ is especially compelling. Here, Britten surely used the text by Francis Quarles (1592-1644) to speak of his love for Peter Pears. Kilsby sings it very well indeed – the passionate melismas in the second stanza are very well negotiated, as the ecstatic rapture of the music in general. On this evidence Kilsby would seem to have a great affinity with Britten: I’d love to hear him sing the Wilfred Owen poems in War Requiem.

There are also two songs by the American, Jake Heggie. Interestingly, both were conceived for female singers but Kilsby makes a convincing case for a man to sing them. Mind you, I doubt that a male singer could successfully carry off the complete cycle Eve-Song from which ‘Snake’ is taken because Ella O’Neill tells us that the cycle “follows the biblical story of Adam and Eve from a feminist perspective”. I’d not encountered this song before but I think Heggie’s use of an insidious tango-like rhythm illustrates most effectively the temptation exerted by the serpent on Eve.

The last two songs on the programme bring us back to composers we’ve encountered earlier in the recital. First there’s Rebecca Clarke’s Tiger, Tiger, a setting of William Blake’s famous poem. Here, I was greatly impressed by the dramatic flair with which both artists deliver this impressive song. They close with another song by Jake Heggie in the form of ‘Animal passion’ from his cycle Natural Selection. This is a setting of words by the American poet Gini Savage. The words leave little to the imagination: this is an outrageous song – I don’t mean that as a criticism – which Kilsby and O’Neill deliver in an equally outrageous fashion. They enter into the spirit of the song fully and communicate it vividly to the listener. Ella O’Neill comments that “Laurence and I had enormous fun reimagining the song for male voice”. That’s evident from their performance: they go for broke and pull it off.

I haven’t mentioned every song on the disc – the Wolf and the Schoenberg offerings for example. That should be taken as implying that the performances are in any way inferior; on the contrary, the standard of performance is consistently very high. Laurence Kilsby’s singing has innumerable virtues. One is absolute clarity of diction. Another is the quality of vocal production; throughout its compass his voice is true and even and one is impressed by the flexibility of his voice. I enjoyed and admired every aspect of his singing. Ella O’Neill is an ideal partner; her pianism is terrific and, like Kilsby, she adapts to the wide variety of styles in this programme. Theirs seem to be an absolutely instinctive musical partnership.

The artists are recorded most successfully. Voice and piano are well balanced and both artists can be heard clearly.

In one respect the documentation accompanying this disc is excellent; in another respect it’s seriously deficient. I’ve already mentioned Ella O’Neill’s notes. She writes extensively on each song, introducing them to the listener in exemplary fashion. I wonder if when she wrote them she was aware that the booklet would be seriously flawed in one important respect. All the sung texts are provided but, unfortunately, there are no translations; instead, we are directed to a variety of websites for translations. Who on earth is going to flick from one website to another while listening to the disc? Ella O’Neill gives us a useful synopsis of most of the songs but the failure to provide translations is, frankly, shoddy. When Laurence Kilsby has put so much into communicating each text it’s very disappointing that he’s been let down in this respect.

But that’s the only negative feature of this disc. Between them these two excellent musicians have produced the most exciting vocal recital disc I’ve heard in a long while.

John Quinn

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Contents
Johannes Brahms
Unbewegte, laue Luft (Lieder und Gesänge), op.57 » no.8
Camille Saint-Saens
La Coccinelle
Hugo Wolf
Der Knabe und das Immlein (Mörike-Lieder, no.2)
Arnold Schoenberg
Brettl-Lieder (Cabaret Songs)
No.5 Mahnung
No.6 Galathea
Wilhelm Stenhammar
Flickan kom ifran sin alsklings mote (Two Songs from ‘Idyll and epigram’ op.4, No 1)
Rebecca Clarke
The Seal Man
Hugo Wolf
Nimmersatte Liebe (Mörike-Lieder, no.9)
Sergei Prokofiev
Trust me (Five Poems, op.23, No 3)
Hugh Wood
Horizon (Wild Cyclamen, Op 49, No 9)
Jake Heggie
Snake (Eve-Song, No 5)
Kurt Weill
Complainte de la Seine
Arnold Schoenberg
Schenk mir deinen goldenen Kamm (Four Songs, Op 2, No 2)
Benjamin Britten
Fish in the unruffled lakes (Six Auden Settings, No 4)
My beloved is mine (Canticle I, Op.40)
Rebecca Clarke
Tiger, Tiger
Jake Heggie
Animal passion (Natural Selection, No 2)