LF 26: The Diary of One Who Disappeared
Dirleton Kirk 19/9/26
Nicky Spence (Tenor)
Victoria Simmonds (Mezzo-Soprano)
Jeremy Denk (Piano)
I had been looking forward to hearing Joshua Ellicott singing Janacek’s unusual song cycle/mini opera, ‘The Diary of One who Disappeared’, in Dirleton Kirk, but was sorry to hear that he was unable to sing. Compensation was on hand, on discovering that the Festival had managed to book Nicky Spence, fresh from his success last week at the Last Night of the Proms, but more importantly, a Janacek specialist, who has recently recorded the work. More of that later.
The concert kicked off with the effervescent Jeremy Denk, whose wonderful piano playing has been a welcome recurring feature of this Festival, playing Bach’s Partita in A Minor. I am usually a bit dubious about hearing Bach played on the piano, an instrument which did not exist in the composer’s lifetime, but Mr Denk’s playing was so persuasive and captivating that I was fully accepting of the anomaly by the end. The Partita’s 7 movements were tackled with a bravura and elan which took the breath away, torrents and torrents of notes tumbling into the little church in Dirleton. Bach’s astonishing invention and genius never cease to delight and amaze, making it even more bizarre that his work was ignored for decades, and dismissed as the old fashioned burblings of a dreary north German choirmaster.
Mr Denk then played Beethoven’s late piano sonata, No 110 in A Flat Major, a piece that demonstrated that at least Beethoven had not forgotten Bach. It’s a curious piece, seemingly conscious of its references to older music, and not one that I knew well. Mr Denk gave it the full works, perhaps a little too much in the narrow confines of Dirleton. The Steinway grand he played on seemed to me better suited to the Usher Hall, or even St Mary’s, Haddington, and the full force of his playing was relentlessly loud, despite the many nuances of his touch. The lower notes in particular threatened to overwhelm the ears, and it became almost unbearable at times. All this was a pity, as Mr Denk’s interpretation was marvellous, and he clearly was in absolute command of the technical requirements of the sonata.
After the interval, when we could wander in the early autumn sunshine of Dirleton, we heard Janacek’s interesting song cycle, ‘The Diary of One who Disappeared,’ first performed in Brno in 1921, when the composer was 67. This was written for tenor, mezzo-soprano, three offstage female voices, and piano, and was based on an anonymous series of articles in a Brno newspaper, supposedly written by a semi-literate village farmer, about a young farm boy who falls in love with a Romany girl, and abandons his conventional family and community to run off with her.
The 22 songs are short and not so sweet, mostly sung by the tenor, Jan, with several interventions by the gypsy, Zefka, and occasional chorus comments. The whole piece lasts just over half an hour, and the vocal lines are largely written in Janacek’s individual ‘speech melody’ style, where the words are sung in declamatory fashion, mimicking speech rhythms in the Czech language. I must here declare a personal antipathy to this style of singing, which will probably put me in a minority of listeners. I have sung in productions of Janacek a few times, notably ‘The Cunning Little Vixen’ at the Bregenz Festival and ‘Jenůfa’ in the Nederlandse Opera in Amsterdam, and I must confess to not being a fan of the composer’s writing for voice, which I find bitty and ungrateful to sing. It may well be that the sopranos and tenors would disagree, as they seem to have been given much more lyrical music to sing, but the ‘speech melody’ style seems to me too much speech and not enough melody.
However, this performance was excellent, within the confines of what I have just written, and in Nicky Spence, we had as good an advocate for the composer as we will find anywhere. At the age of 43, he is at his peak as a dramatic tenor, and his understanding of the Czech language and his powerful projection were undeniable. Again, I must say that perhaps the little church at Dirleton was not ideal for this piece, as at times, it threatened to blow the roof off, and us out of the church altogether. Victoria Simmonds as Zefka could have been a little more seductive in her attitude, but she sang well and provided an excellent foil for Mr Spence’s Jan, who seemed powerless to resist the temptations of the Romany girl. The work is of its time perhaps, as the wicked gypsy temptress luring the unsuspecting Czech boy to his doom is a somewhat hackneyed storyline nowadays, but it is certainly a strong piece of drama, quite different from any conventional song cycle. The three offstage voices of Virginia Wilson, Caroline Trutz and Susan White, members of the Robin Chapel Choir in Edinburgh, blended well together in their role as a sort of Greek/Czech chorus, and Jeremy Denk was the unobtrusive but masterful accompanist.
This was an exceptional concert, but one which might have benefited from transfer to St Mary’s, Haddington, where the big performances might have suited the bigger space.
