Music at Paxton: Rosie Lavery soprano and Anna Michels piano

Paxton House - 04/06/23

Paxton House was the venue for Sunday’s concert by soprano, Rosie Lavery, and pianist, Anna Michels, a taster for the Music at Paxton Festival in the last week of July, and continuing Paxton’s long-standing association with Live Music Now Scotland.

Rosie and Anna, post-graduate students at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, have known each other since they were thirteen, and recently teamed up for LMNS, performing in care homes – “singing Abba” - and residential schools as well as presenting well-chosen programmes of Scottish-themed music such as this one. The first and last pieces, ‘Eriskay Love Lilt’ and ‘Ae Fond Kiss,’ are well-known songs, both beautifully performed with Fraser’s harp-inspired accompaniment given a light touch by Anna.

Between these two works we reach some unexpected territory.  I’d take any excuse to hear Richard Strauss’s beautiful ‘Morgen’ but was delighted to hear that it was included because it’s set to a text by John Henry Mackay (1864-1933) a Scot who lived much of his life in Germany.  The long piano introduction is the perfect showcase for Anna’s talents and the interplay of that theme with the different melody in the voice is carried off to perfection by Rosie. Later in the programme there’s a similar effect in Britten’s setting of the’ Last Rose of Summer’, when in the last verse the soprano soars calmly over the turbulent accompaniment.

Much of the concert celebrates work by Scottish composers, some less-well known than they should be.  I hadn’t previously heard of Claire Liddell, but her ‘Five Orkney Scenes,’ written in 1975, provide compelling settings of poetry by George Mackay Brown which highlight the beauties of island life, the sense of community, rituals, and celebrations of love.  But underlying these are the tragedies, “the crab-eaten corpse of Jock/washed from a boat.”  ‘Beachcomber’ with its exuberant piano part is a wild child’s view of what she might glean in a week on her beach, but on Sunday – we might hear the mischievous voice of Mackay Brown here – “for fear of the elders/I sit on my bum!” A lovely set of songs, which, as Rosie says, deserves to be heard more often.

Two songs by James Macmillan are in Scots, which Rosie speaks and sings well.  It’s great to hear the dialect words of the traditional song “O shairly ye hae seen ma luv” and William Soutar’ s poem “O luely, luely cam she in”,enunciated so clearly in a voice free of affectation!  The Soutar song is a gem, one of Macmillan’s best settings for voice.

Only token excuses are offered for possible Scots connections to the two operatic excerpts. Puccini’s ‘O Mio Babbino Caro’is a demanding choice, but Rosie, a prize-winning student at the Alexander Gibson Opera School, has a voice which rings securely throughout the range, and she acts the part of the pleading daughter with great verve. Her comic talent is to the fore in Lady Billow’s address to the council in Britten’s ‘Albert Herring.’ She convinces as the aristocrat condescending to the masses, boasting of her generosity, while failing to disguise her disdain.

Before the set of songs by Ronald Stevenson, Anna plays a piano solo by another Ronald – Ronald Center, (1913-1973) an Aberdonian composer, whose work was championed by his friend, Stevenson.   Anna has researched and given lecture-recitals on his work, and her virtuosic performance of an excerpt from his Piano Sonata suggest this is another Scottish composer of whom we should know more.  Ronald Stevenson’s settings of Scots poems by Hugh MacDiarmid and others are better known, but few of them are easily accessible - some on a fine 2020 CD by my EMR colleague, the bass Brian Bannatyne-Scott.  Rosie’s performance of the five songs suggests that the songs also work well for soprano. Her assumption of the voice of the gullible young woman in ‘Halloween Sang’ is particularly effective.

Rosie Lavery and Anna Michels are highly talented artists and wonderful stage performers, who clearly have a great future ahead of them, as soloists or working together.  Look out for them in concerts over the next year.