From Russia and Hungary With Love

Morningside United Church, Edinburgh, 3/10/25

Wendy Leung (piano), Beatrix Milan (soprano), Giselle Dias (mezzo)

In the early evening of 3rd October, while Storm Amy delivered a full-featured sampling appetiser for her overnight rages, three young musicians delivered a programme of song and beguiling melody.  Hungarian soprano Beatrix Milan was accompanied by Chinese pianist Wendy Leung; they were joined for two operatic duet numbers by guest Portuguese mezzo soprano Giselle Dias.  ‘From Russia and Hungary With Love’ was an hour-long skilfully-curated selection of art, art-folk and operatic song, themed around the joys and sorrows of love, principally from Hungarian and Russian composers, though single items of Polish pianism and Czech opera also made the cut.  All songs were sung in their original languages.  Wendy played from a tablet, while Beatrix sang from memory, with the exception of the duets where the singers sang from sheet music.  The apocalyptic weather meant that the turnout was disappointing, if not perhaps exactly surprising.

The programme opened with Glinka’s ‘The Lark’, a yearning melody so beautiful that Balakirev recomposed it into a virtuoso piano piece, which has unfortunately eclipsed the original in popularity – it was lovely to hear the original song for once.  And hear it we did, as it became immediately clear the value Beatrix places on communicating the words, delivering them with crystal clarity of diction.  This was to be a constant of her performance and, although I cannot number Russian and Hungarian among my languages (my Russian is limited to what I have gleaned from following libretti of Russian operas and songs; my Hungarian is more limited to vestigial fragments from a cycling holiday in Hungary in 1991), the words were clear enough to be looked up in a dictionary, should the listener take the notion to do so.  The piano mimicked the birdsong; the voice carried the text of the billet doux encoded in the eponymous bird’s song.

Three Bartók folksong settings and one by Kodály followed, dealing with the youthful thrills of clandestine courtship and the contrasting anxieties of absence and infidelity.  There is a directness and a candour in these songs which is very attractive and they received a characterful interpretation.  I particularly loved the subtle modality in the melody of the Kodály, elegantly aired with mutual sensitivity and responsiveness by vocalist and pianist.  However, an issue arose which, if I mention it with reluctance now and not again (though it was never absent), I can feel I have done my job.  That issue is intonation.  A little imprecision in folksong can be dismissed as characterful, but phrases ending flat by a quarter-tone or more is a different matter.  The deceptively simple beauty of folksong needs that precision.  How much more must the emotionally charged sound world of opera demand it?  As a vocal coach herself, Beatrix knows this better than me, how fixable it is, and how to fix it.  It is as much, if not more, an aural issue than a vocal one.

Next up, two Hungarian art songs, one each by Kodály and Ferenc Farkas.   Kodály’s ‘Nausikaa’, the Phaeacian princess bewailing the loss of “the one that got away”, Odysseus, as his ship disappears over the horizon, was even more austerely modal than the folksong and quite scrumptious.  In Farkas’ ‘Paprika Jancsi szerenádja’, a puppet version of Harlequin serenading Columbine, or Petrushka serenading the Ballerina.  Whatever the parallel, the clown puppet Paprika will die of his unrequited love for Jancsi.  A melancholy waltz benefitted from achingly beautiful tone production.  A first hearing for me of both.

In an instrumental interlude, Wendy Leung played Chopin’s Waltz in A-flat major, Op.69, No.1.  It’s a deceptively challenging piece of dreamy chromatic elegance that is always on the edge of turning into a mazurka, and much of its charm lies in just how much teasing rubato with which it can be infused without losing the vital pulse.  Wendy took no risks but it was very lovely nonetheless.  The love connection?  Composed as a bittersweet farewell to Chopin’s ex-fiancée.

The second half of the programme transported us to the lush musical language of the late romantic operatic stage, with a basket of popular goodies, beginning with ‘Song to the Moon’ from Dvořák’s ‘Rusalka’.  The eponymous water nymph pleads with the moon to carry her message of devotion to her beloved Prince and keep him safe.  It is a beautiful aria with a well-deserved place in the repertoire outside the opera house.  Beatrix’ Czech diction is no less impressive than her other languages and her expression conveyed the emotional content of the music very effectively.  I prefer more in the way of operatic messa di voce, which has the added advantage of allowing the piano to assist with intonation (I know, I promised not to mention it again).  The piano accompaniment was as sensitive and responsive as it had been earlier, but there was a bizarre departure from the familiar score.  The brief orchestral interlude, which occurs twice, involves anxious chromatic pleading from the violins, answered by the consolatory arpeggio from the harp.  Both times, it is marked “in tempo, pochettino più mosso”.  It was rendered as a rapid Lisztian cascade, very impressive and virtuosic, but not at all what  Dvořák wrote.  Very odd in such a well-known piece.

For two Tchaikovsky operatic duets, Beatrix and Wendy were joined by mezzo Giselle Dias.  The first of these, ‘Uzh vecher’ (It’s already evening) is an idyll of calm in the tragic opera ‘The Queen of Spades’, where the heroine Lisa and her friend Polina sing about the beauty of a May evening in the countryside.  Tchaikovsky’s genius with contrasts shows us innocence and beauty – later in the opera we will see the ugliness and devastation wrought by a gambling obsession.  Beautifully performed.  It was followed by an even more gorgeous duet, ‘Slyhalil’ vy’ (Have you not heard?) from the beginning of ‘Eugene Onegin’, where the two very different sisters, introverted and deeply-feeling Tatyana and extrovert bubbly Olga, get very different meanings from a lovesong they are overhearing, foreshadowing the tragedy of misunderstanding, jealousy and pride that will unfold.  Exquisite and my highlight of the evening.

Staying with ‘Onegin’, Beatrix gave us the whole of the ‘Letter Scene’, in which Tatyana pours out her heart in a letter to Onegin.  It is an extraordinary aria in multiple sections, where she struggles with unfamiliar passion, self doubt, tender longing and resolve, in a maelstrom of conflicting emotions.  An impressive range of vocal timbres was displayed, and mostly harnessed effectively to expressive purpose, repaying Tchaikovsky’s trust in what I consider to be his best soprano role.

The concert concluded with the aria ‘Hej, rózsám!’ (Hey, my rose!) from Imre Kálmán’s most popular operetta ‘Csárdáskirálynő’ (The Csárdás Queen).  The eponymous heroine is a stage performer, the prima donna Szilvia, in love with the heir to the throne Edvin.  The aria is her ‘grand entrance’, in the role of a gypsy mountain girl who chooses her freedom over attachment to any fickle lover.  Before performing it, Beatrix thanked her collaborators Wendy and Giselle and confessed a special affinity for the music of Kálmán, as not only her compatriot but from the same town, Siófok on the southern shore of Lake Balaton.  I cycled through the town en route to Budapest in my 1991 trip – it is a really nice location right enough – never realising the Kálmán connection.  The aria is a stylised csárdás and a proper Hungarian knees-up and a hoot: it got a rousing stylish performance.