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A Twitcher's Delight

Roderick Williams standing against wall

According to the RSPB, two-thirds of the British public found solace in birdwatching during lockdown, writes Natasha Loges. Might this signal the birth of a new generation of twitchers? 

If so, they will be delighted by tonight’s affectionate and thought-provoking celebration of birds – and a few other creatures. The programme combines French and English song from the 20th into the 21st century. A composer himself, baritone Roderick Williams feels at home with this music. In his recitals, he always tries to strike a balance between the familiar and the new, the consoling and the challenging, and tonight’s programme is no exception.

We begin with Gabriel Fauré’s late cycle Mirages, four songs evoking natural themes. Fauré set these poems by Renée Bonnière, the Baronne Antoine de Brimont, in the aftermath of World War I. An idealisation of the soul as a swan launches our evening, followed by watery reflections, then a depiction of a nocturnal garden, and finally, a lilting, erotically tinged dance. The 74-year-old Fauré gave the first performance with his protégée Madeleine Grey, although he was, by then, completely deaf. The songs are a distillation of his spare, effortless late style.

Events take a darker turn with Judith Weir’s cycle The Voice of Desire, composed for mezzo-soprano Alice Coote in 2003. Robert Bridges’ poem ‘The Voice of Desire’ reveals the hidden undertones of the nightingales’ song. Similarly, in ‘White Eggs in the Bush’, a translation from Hunter Poems of the Yoruba, the cuckoo and coucal foretell war and bloodshed in their song. ‘Written on Terrestrial Things’, a setting of Thomas Hardy’s ‘The Darkling Thrush’, offers respite as the bird’s cheery song emerges from the bleak winter. In ‘Sweet Little Red Feet’, (John Keats’s ‘Song’), the poet wonders why his beloved dove has died. As Weir puts it, ‘the nightingale lives in a darker emotional world than we can imagine; the blue cuckoo knows that the wars we blunder into will bring destruction; the thrush sings joyfully whilst we are mentally blank; the dove has died rather than face emotional suffocation from its adoring owner.’

Two cycles are at the heart of the rest of the programme: Ravel’s Histoires naturelles and Ryan Wigglesworth’s new cycle Vignettes de Jules Renard. Histoires naturelles is a 1906 cycle of settings of Jules Renard. We coolly observe a vain peacock, an obsessively tidy cricket, a swan baffled by his own reflection, a kingfisher (sung from the perspective of an admiring fisherman), and a belligerent guinea-fowl. Ravel dedicated ‘The Swan’ to the colourful saloniste Misia Godebska. Early listeners were outraged by the evocation of the popular style of the café concert in this music, but Roderick Williams loves the composer’s ‘dry, droll, farmyard language’. 

The seed for Wigglesworth’s Vignettes de Jules Renard was planted when Williams encountered his dazzling vocal writing in the 2017 opera The Winter's Tale. The cycle builds on the Renard texts Ravel set and shares the earlier composer’s pictorial approach. We take a detailed look at the humble chicken as she pecks, drinks and eats. The squat, sedate Toad is dismissed as ugly, but instantly returns the insult. The grasshopper is the focus of the final song; we admire his fearlessness and impressive leaps but recall his fragility when he detaches a leg whilst escaping. 

Williams’s lifelong relationship with English song is showcased in the second half of this evening’s programme. He is deeply committed to communicating with English-speaking audiences. ‘It is my intention to be understood, in real time, as I sing’. Musical appeal also matters; Williams champions the British songwriters of the twentieth century, many of whom wrote beautiful melodies which Williams finds ‘great to sing and relax into.’ 

A cuckoo’s song threads through Gurney’s ebullient ‘Spring’, from his Five Elizabethan Songs. In ‘Walking Song’, the poet strides through London, but longs to be a rook flying over his Gloucestershire village; he settles for loud cawing! Irish composer Ina Boyle follows with her lavish ‘The Joy of Earth’ before Moeran’s gently melancholy 'When smoke stood up from Ludlow', recounting an exchange with a wise blackbird. Britten’s ‘Proud Songsters’ muses on the miracle of new life, as the poet contemplates the young birds who did not exist a year ago. It contrasts with the beautiful Welsh folk-song arrangement, ‘The Ash Grove’, a tale of grief accompanied by the fluting blackbird. But in Finzi’s melancholy ‘Before and After Summer’, the bird is unnamed – and mute. We close with Adrian Williams's Red Kite Flying; this setting of the composer’s own text captures the quicksilver energy of the kite as it soars above earthly suffering. 

A Twitcher’s Delight seeks to draw us back into a close relationship with nature, offering loving observations of the details and quirks of the creatures with whom we share the world. 

 

© Natasha Loges

Running times

Start time: 7.30pm

Approximate end time: 9.40pm, including a 20 minute interval

Please note all timings are approximate and subject to change

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Programme and performers

Gabriel Fauré Mirages

1. Cygne sur l'eau (Swan on the water)

2. Reflets dans l'eau (Reflections on the water)

3. Jardin nocturne (Nocturnal garden)

4. Danseuse (Dancing girl)

Judith Weir The Voice of Desire

1. The Voice of Desire

2. White Eggs in the Bush

3. Written on Terrestrial Things

4. Sweet Little Red Feet

Maurice Ravel Histoire Naturelles

1. Le paon (The peacock)

2. Le grillon (The cricket)

3. Le cygne (The swan)

4. Le martin-pêcheur (The kingfisher)

5. La pintade (The guineafowl)

Ryan Wigglesworth Vignettes de Jules Renard (world premiere)

1. La Poule (The Hen)

2. Le Crapaud (The Toad)

3. La Sauterelle (The Grasshopper)

Ivor Gurney 'Spring' from Five Elizabethan Songs

Ivor Gurney Walking Song

Ina Boyle The Joy of Earth

EJ Moeran No 1 'When smoke stood up from Ludlow' from Ludlow Town

Benjamin Britten 'Proud Songsters' from Winter Words

Welsh Traditional The Ash Grove (arr Benjamin Britten)

Gerald Finzi 2. 'Before and After Summer' from Before and After Summer

Adrian Williams Red Kite Flying

Performers

Roderick Williams baritone

Andrew West piano

Part one

Ma pensée est un cygne harmonieux et sage
qui glisse lentement aux rivages d'ennui
sur les ondes sans fond du rêve, du mirage,
de l'echo, du brouillard, de l'ombre, de la nuit.

Il glisse, roi hautain fendant un libre espace,
poursuit un reflet vain, précieux et changeant,
et les roseaux nombreux s'inclinent quand il passe,
sombre et muet, au seuil d'une lune d'argent;

et des blancs nenuphars chaque corolle ronde
tour-à-tour a fleuri de désir et d'espoir...
Mais plus avant toujours, sur la brume et sur l'onde,
vers l'inconnu fuyant, glisse le cygne noir.

Or j'ai dit, <Renoncez, beau cygne chimérique,
à ce voyage lent vers de troubles destins;
nul miracle chinois, nul étrange Amérique
ne vous acceuilleront en des havres certains;

les golfes embaumés, les îles immortelles
ont pour vous, cygne noir, des récifs périlleux;
demeurez sur les lacs où se mirent, fidèles,
ces nuages, ces fleurs, ces astres, et ces yeux.>

My thought is a harmonious and wise swan
which glides slowly to the shores of boredom
upon the bottomless waters of dreams, mirages,
of echoes, fogs, shadows, of the night.

It glides, haughty king cleaving a free space,
chases a vain, precious and changing reflection,
and the plentiful reeds bow when it passes by,
sombre and silent, at the threshold of a silver moon;

and one by one each round corolla of the white
water lilies has flowered with desire and hope...
But always in front of all, upon the mist and upon the water,
fleeing towards the unknown, glides the black swan.

And then I said, ‘Handsome illusory swan, renounce, 
this slow journey towards troubled destinies;
no Chinese miracle, no strange America
will welcome you in safe havens;

the fragrant gulfs, the immortal isles
hold for you, black swan, perilous reefs;
remain on the lakes in which, ever faithful,
these clouds, these flowers, these stars, and these eyes are reflected.’

Translation © Christopher Goldsack via The Mélodie Treasury

Part two

Pattes jointes, elle saute du poulailler, dès qu’on lui ouvre la porte.
C’est une poule commune, modestement parée et qui ne pond jamais d’œufs d’or.
Éblouie de lumière, elle fait quelques pas, indécise, dans la cour.
Elle voit d’abord le tas de cendres où, chaque matin, elle a coutume de s’ébattre.
Elle s’y roule, s’y trempe, et, d’une vive agitation d’ailes, les plumes gonflées, elle secoue ses puces de la nuit.
Puis elle va boire au plat creux que la dernière averse a rempli.
Elle ne boit que de l’eau.
Elle boit par petits coups et dresse le col, en équilibre sur le bord 
du plat.
Ensuite elle cherche sa nourriture éparse.
Les fines herbes sont à elle, et les insectes et les graines perdues.
Elle pique, elle pique, infatigable.
De temps en temps, elle s’arrête.
Droit sous son bonnet phrygien, l’œil vif, le jabot avantageux, elle écoute de l’une et de l’autre oreille.
Et, sûre qu’il n’y a rien de neuf, elle se remet en quête.
Elle lève haut ses pattes raides, comme ceux qui ont la goutte. Elle écarte les doigts et les pose avec précaution, sans bruit. 
On dirait qu’elle marche pieds nus.  

Feet together, she jumps down from the coop, as soon as the door is opened.
A common hen, modestly attired, she has never laid a golden 
egg.
Blinded by the light, she takes a few hesitant steps in the barnyard. 
First of all she sees the heap of ashes, where each morning 
she frolics.
She rolls in it, wallows in it, and, with a swift flutter of wings, she puffs up her feathers and shakes off the night’s fleas.
Then she goes and drinks from the shallow dish the shower has just filled.
Water is all she ever drinks.
She drinks in little sips, straightening her neck and balancing on the edge of the dish.
Then she hunts around for her scattered food.
Hers are the delicate herbs, the insects and the stray seeds.
Tirelessly, she pecks and pecks.
Occasionally, she stops.
Upright beneath her Phrygian cap, bright-eyed, jabot displayed to advantage, she listens, first with one ear, then the other.
And, convinced nothing has happened, she renews her search.
She raises her stiff feet high in the air, as though she had gout. She spreads her toes and sets them down carefully, without a sound.
As if she were walking barefoot.

Translations © Richard Stokes from the complete Histoires Naturelles by Jules Renard in a parallel text edition, published by Alma Classics (2017)

Artist biographies

Roderick Williams is one of the most sought after baritones of his generation with a wide repertoire spanning baroque to contemporary which he performs in opera, concert and recital.   

He enjoys relationships with all the major UK opera houses and has sung opera world premières by David Sawer, Sally Beamish, Michel van der Aa, Robert Saxton and Alexander Knaifel as well as performing major roles including Papageno, Don Alfonso, Onegin and Billy Budd.

He performs regularly with leading conductors and orchestras throughout the UK, Europe, North America and Australia, and his many festival appearances include the BBC Proms, Edinburgh, Cheltenham, Aldeburgh and Melbourne.

As a composer he has had works premièred at Wigmore Hall, the Barbican, the Purcell Room and on national radio. In December 2016 he won the prize for Best Choral Composition at the British Composer Awards.

Roderick Williams was awarded an OBE in June 2017 and was nominated for Outstanding Achievement in Opera in both the 2018 Olivier Awards for his performance in the title role of the Royal Opera House production of Monteverdi’s Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria and in 2019 for his role in ENO’s production of Britten’s War Requiem.  He is Artist in Residence with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra from 2020/21 for two years.