Time Well Spence...
- 1 hour ago
- 4 min read
Nicky Spence is without question one of the most accomplished British singers of his generation. This Scottish tenor is still relatively young at 43, and appears to be building his career with exemplary care and good sense. Starting off as a lyric tenor and singing roles such as Don Ottavio, he has now branched out into what might be broadly called Jugendlicher Heldentenor territory, making something of a specialty of Janacek’s anti-heroes. He has also sung Siegmund and Erik and I’d be surprised if Lohengrin does not enter his repertoire before too long.
His recital at the Wigmore Hall on Saturday 9th May ‘My Father’s Son’ centered around the parent child relationship. Spence and his husband, pianist Dylan Perez, have a son, and his singing takes on added poignancy knowing he has experienced parental love as both son and father.
Spence has a superb voice. To put this into some sort of vocal context referencing his peers, his tenor is more substantial than Alan Clayton’s and while certainly less heroic than David Butt Philip, it is far better controlled. He might lack some of the vocal glamour of Freddie di Tommaso but is considerably more versatile. His sound is silvery but also warm and substantial. There is a very pleasing natural resonance and vibrancy; his vibrato is controlled and unobtrusive.
All but one of the songs in this recital were sung from memory. Spence has a benign and relaxed platform manner; he has a large personality, but this is always placed at the service of the music. His intonation and diction are both impeccable. His singing is tasteful, without being at all precious.
The enterprising and eclectic programme was generally most attractive. Spence and his associate pianist Malcolm Martineau began with Herbert Howell’s setting of Blake’s ‘The Little Boy Lost’, a lovely song that deserves to be better known. This was followed by Britten’s ‘Midnight on the Great Western’ from ‘Winter Words’. A haunting setting of a haunting poem by Thomas Hardy, this was given a sympathetic and sensitive performance by Spence and Martineau, but for me, the spirit of Peter Pears hovers over ‘Winter Words’ even more than other Britten settings, and the empathetic magic he brought to bear was missing. Well known songs by Faure, Tippett, Tchaikovsky and Hugo Wolf demonstrated the duo’s versatility, as did lesser-known songs by Libby Larsen, ‘Pregnant’ from ‘The Birth Project’, amusing and touching, Britten, The Larky Lad from his late cycle ‘Who are these Children’ and, rather remarkably, Victoria Wood’s ‘Litter Bin’. As sung by Spence, seriously, with understated pathos, this song, recording the day-to-day callousness inflicted on the innocent by the damaged and the brutalized, easily held its own in illustrious company. Frederick Rzewski’s ‘No Good’ from ‘Dear Diary’, written for ‘a speaking pianist’, gave Martineau a chance to demonstrate his versatility, but this was not a distinguished composition. ‘Proud Songsters’, again from ‘Winter Words’, just missed the ecstatic astonishment and celebration Pears brought to the lines ‘No finches were, nor nightingales and thrushes/But only particles of grain,/ And earth and air and rain.’ but ample recompense was made by a quite superb performance of ‘Shy Geordie’ from ‘Songs of Childhood’ by Buxton Orr. Prior to this Buxton Orr had been just a name to me, but this wonderfully touching song makes me eager to hear more. Nicky Spence has recorded a CD of Orr’s songs which I shall certainly write about in the near future. In many ways a hopeful (naïve?) counterpart to ‘Litterbin’ this song describes a mother’s love for an illegitimate baby, but also the longing of ‘Shy Geordie’ to be part of this love:
But oh! the bairn at Annie’s Briest
The love in Annie’s e’e –
They mak me wish wi’ a’ my might
The lucky lad was me!
The second half of this wonderful recital saw Nicky Spence addressing the maternal experience far more directly with songs by Ireland, Schumann, Barber and Britten from the nursing mother’s point of view, all sung with delicacy and consummate taste. Thomas Dunhill’s greatest (only?) hit, a setting of Yeats’ poem ‘The Cloths of Heaven’ was beautifully done, with some exquisite soft singing. Mahler’s ‘Um Mitternacht’, the only item for which Spence used the music, remained rather score bound, but the trumpet toned cries of ‘Herr’ at the song’s climax were thrilling. Andre Previn’s setting of Emily Dickinson’s ‘Will there really be a morning?’ continued the existential questioning. The less said about Tim Minchin’s ‘Lullaby’ the better. I am sorry this was included in a recital that otherwise so movingly expressed the power of parental love. Lines such as
What more can I do to put a stop to
The mind-numbing noise you are making?
Where is the line between ‘patting’ and ‘hitting’?
When is rocking ‘rocking’ and when it is ‘shaking’?
are presumably meant to be cleverly ironic and amusing. For this father, sitting next to his son, they are tasteless and vile.
Good humour was restored by another Buxton Orr song ‘The Boy in the Train’. This young traveller is far more cheerful than Britten’s ‘journeying boy’, and the heady excitement of travelling by steam locomotive is beautifully conveyed:
Whit wey does the engine say ‘toot-toot’?
Is it feart to gang in the tunnel?
Whit wey is the furnace no pit oot
When the rain gangs doon the funnel?
Michel Legrand’s ‘Pieces of Dreams (Little Boy Lost)’ was a pleasantly whimsical end to the recital but I was pleased our performers gave us Britten’s arrangement of ‘O can ye sew cushions?’ as an encore, as this was far more in keeping with the caliber of previous items.
It was sad the Wigmore Hall was only half-full. Singing of this quality deserves the widest possible audience. As for Malcolm Martineau, he has been at the top of his profession for so many years that there is a danger he is taken for granted, so let me end this review by saying he was consummate in all aspects of a demanding but richly rewarding programme. All in all, a great evening…
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