Review

Martin Adamswas in the NCH for the last of three concerts exploring the art songs of Germany, France and Russia.

Biggs, Ó Cuinneagáin
John Field Room, NCH
By Martin Adams

This was the last of three concerts exploring the art songs of Germany, France and Russia. The first two were impressive in their presentation of music, spoken commentary, and slides illustrating the people and cultures involved. However, this concert had the edge in performance of the songs. Conor Biggs made the music seem to spring from the poetry, an aim he cherishes and which reflects the sequence of events when the composer wrote the music.

To some extent, this was because of Biggs's remarkable fluency in the Russian language. It was also because Russian composers strove to write with a deep awareness of the language's inflections. But more than anything, it was because Biggs sang as if he was a Russian who just happened to be born in Ireland. Even more than when he sings in German (a language in which he has long been fluent), he seemed to contain the soul of the poetry within himself.

Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov had a prominent place in the programme, and rightly so. The musical and expressive insights that these composers showed left you in no doubt of the music's purpose and status. Although it was written for domestic performance, light and pleasing parlour music it is not.

The impeccable partnership between the singer and the pianist, Pádhraic Ó Cuinneagáin, was especially valuable in the sinister song that opens Mussorgsky's Songs and Dances of Death. Kolygyel'naya means "lullaby", but the child's sleep is the sleep of death, and the way in which these musicians portrayed Mussorgsky's dialogue between Mother and Death was full of scary insight.

This was a rewarding evening. If more of the world's great voices had Conor Biggs's artistic intelligence, music would be vastly enriched.