Sophie Bevan, Hampstead Parish Church - music review

A winning box of varieties from young soprano Sophie Bevan
6 November 2013

Winner of multiple awards, the young soprano Sophie Bevan has been entrancing operatic audiences for some time as the Woodbird, Susanna and her namesake Sophie in Der Rosenkavalier. Last night she proved as appealing a presence on the concert platform with a solo recital that covered several centuries and a bewildering variety of styles, from Purcell to Grieg and from Vaughan Williams to Fats Waller.

It was not well-considered programme planning: more like a big bag of pick ’n’ mix, naughty but nice. Applause after every three-minute song in the first half only exacerbated the disjointedness. But there were wonderful songs here — Brahms’s In Stiller Nacht, Wolf’s Verborgenheit and Strauss’s Morgen among them — and Bevan brought to them a range of vocal colouring, expressive phrasing and exceptional musical intelligence.

Her pianist partner Sebastian Wybrew was equally outstanding, deploying rhythmic flexibility and fine grades of pianissimo, sometimes to extremes, but always to compelling effect.

The second half morphed from Quilter (Fair House of Joy and Love’s Philosophy) and Vaughan Williams (Silent Noon) to Ivor Novello (Someday my Heart will Awake and We’ll Gather Lilacs), George Gershwin (Someone to Watch Over Me), Fats Waller (Ain’t Misbehavin’) and Jerome Kern (Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man). The jazz songs were sung pretty straight, but not without style and long before the end all hearts had been won.

The recital was part of the newly established Hampstead Arts Festival, whose imaginative programming includes all four quartets by Zemlinsky, played by the Brodskys, and a jazz recital by Gwilym Simcock.

The Festival runs until Dec 3 (0844 8700 887, hampsteadartsfestival.com)

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