Worth the Price

A long drive mitigated by congenial and erudite company, through bosomy green hills under what felt like permanent soft mizzling rain, from one choice little festival on the Welsh borders, Presteigne, to another altogether more remote — Machynlleth, close to the coast, a tiny town (for all that a Welsh king once located his court there), where, in a converted nonconformist chapel, surprising and rewarding events take place.

Not so the first I attended, a recital of poetry and song occasioned by the first world war, trudging through well-worn trenches and pastoral hankerings, the recitation shambling, the singing insensitive, the piano overweening. One left depressed by the subject, and without the compensation of catharsis. But all was utterly changed in the same surroundings only an hour or so later, with a masterclass given by that Welsh national treasure Dame Margaret Price, working with two young baritones (I’ll give the names — Gerard Collet and Johnny McGovern — in the strong hope that we’ll be hearing more of them) and their gifted accompanists, each pair allotted half — six songs — of Schumann’s op.39 Liederkreis.

The choice was inspired — from the very first bars (after all that mediocre Englishry) a composer writing for the piano, not the harmonium! True for Schumann even on an off day, but here he is at his greatest: this cycle, 12 interlinked settings of Eichendorff, is arguably (I’d say unarguably) his supreme achievement in song.

It brought out the best in the young artists and inspired the old artist to a display of her powers at once amusing, instructive and moving. ‘Oh, I can’t sing!’ she’d impatiently disclaim, then disprove herself again and again, with phrases, stanzas, occasionally a song in its entirety.