Arundel Festival review: Summer Songs, at Arundel Baptist Church

ON a perfect summer’s afternoon, what better way to spend it than to listen to beautiful music on a theme of birds and nature?

Clad in gauzy green and turquoise, soprano Jane Weeden and pianist Margaret McDonald entertained a small, select audience with a variety of delectable songs ranging from the 17th to the 21st centuries.

Their first set included The Wakeful Nightingale (John Weldon) and the much-loved The Silver Swan (Orlando Gibbons).

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

All nature was celebrated in one of Haydn’s literally evergreen arias from his Creation: With Verdure Clad, followed by Mozart’s glorious solo Laudate Dominum from his Solemn Vespers. How Lovely are Thy Dwellings is probably more familiar in Brahms’s setting, but Samuel Liddle’s version of Psalm 84 was very expressively performed

Three gently contrasting lullabies followed, by two 20th century American composers, Samuel Barber and George Gershwin (no prizes for guessing which was the latter!), neither being outdone by one from British composer Arnold Bax – in this group, Jane and Margaret were in their element.

Three very different songs were next: Puccini’s movingly operatic O Mio Babbino Caro , Richard Strauss’ sublime Morgen and Armstrong Gibbs’s relatively unknown The Fields are Full, all demonstrating the versatility of the performers.

For me, the unexpected high spot of the afternoon was undoubtedly The Aviary, by Sir Richard Rodney Bennett, who died only last year. The Bird’s Lament and The Early Nightingale (both with words by John Clare) and The Lark, a setting of Coleridge, were three representatives of this remarkable Song Cycle, which certainly deserves to be performed more frequently.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

A delicious cream tea followed, with a retiring collection in aid of Orphan Support through Living World Ministries. This charity is run by Jane’s husband Mark, who will be travelling to Kenya in September.