When Deborah Warner took over as artistic director of the Ustinov Studio at Bath’s Theatre Royal, she announced her intention of programming opera, dance and song alongside theatre. Launching her second season there, tenor Ian Bostridge gave a memorable recital, proving just how appropriate a space it is for such performances. The Ustinov is small and darkly intimate, and Bostridge and his pianist, Julius Drake, used the acoustic to great effect, with a pianissimo that would be impossible in most venues carrying wonderfully here.
Recently recovered from a chest infection, Bostridge exercised caution and abandoned the demands of Britten’s Michelangelo Sonnets in favour of a Schubert sequence, while retaining the cycle Winter Words, Op 52, setting eight poems by Thomas Hardy and first performed by Britten and Peter Pears exactly 70 years ago. Britten’s instinct for word-setting and Bostridge’s own instinct for conveying meaning and emotion with disarming clarity made each song a little gem: the opening and closing pieces, with their references to the passage of time, carried a suitably philosophical weight. Bostridge’s gift for narrative elevated Hardy’s descriptions into tiny monodramas, as in At the Station, Upway – the tale of a boy with his violin and a handcuffed convict. In all these, the peerless Drake brought out the wit and elegance of the piano writing, with such characterisation and dramatic detail as to complete a vivid aural picture.
Their choice of eight Schubert lieder formed an ideal complement, balancing favourites such as An die Musik with songs invoking the moon, such as An den Mond. Bostridge’s mellifluous line and careful inflection of key words always a delight. In this context, An Mein Klavier, Christian Schubart’s poem in praise of the piano, seemed by extension to be a paean from the singer to Drake’s pianism, every line immaculately voiced.
Three Britten folk songs were the ideal end, with Drake’s underlining of the dissonance at the opening of Oliver Cromwell matched by Bostridge’s final, gIeeful challenge: “If you want any more you can sing it yourself!” But the audience did want more and they were obliged with another sprinkling of moonshine.