Art Song Perth: 25th anniversary recital

CONCERT

Art Song Perth: 25th anniversary recital

Church of the Resurrection, Swanbourne

FOUR STARS

What a pleasure it is not only to hear but to see Aldo Di Toro in recital. The art of bel canto flows through the veins of the Perth-raised, Italian-based tenor, and his glorious contribution to this first concert in Art Song Perth’s 25th anniversary year series similarly injected a powerful cocktail of romance, nostalgia, joy and sadness into the veins of the capacity audience, resulting in a high that will no doubt last for days – if not weeks.

But Di Toro was but one of four singers on the varied and attractive program presided over by piano accompanist and Art Song Perth Artistic Director Marilyn Phillips. Joining Di Toro were soprano Stephanie Gooch – who performed with him in last year’s Phantom of the Opera here in Perth – and emerging artists mezzo-soprano Madeleine Joyce and baritone Lachlann Lawton.

Gooch gave us some powerfully rendered Mendelssohn and Strauss lieder and songs by Amy Woodforde-Finden and Frank Bridge from the English tradition. Joyce tackled David Tunley’s Wedding Masque and three of Manuel De Falla’s Six Popular Spanish Songs with confidence and aplomb. Lawton’s Vaughan Williams and Tunley – Go Lovely Rose, written when the Emeritus Professor at UWA’s School of Music was just 16 – were delivered with clarity, intelligence and a subtle musicality.

But it was Di Toro alone who seemed utterly to inhabit the music, and whether it was Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti, Puccini, Liszt or his beloved Tosti his unalloyed delight in this repertoire shone through in his absolute mastery not just of vocal but of bodily gesture. Especially of note was his ability to work the church’s acoustic as much as the poetry. In Liszt’s Pace non trovo and Tosti’s L’alba separa dalla luce l’ombra, for example, the rhetorical and dynamic ranges were enormous; but at no point did anything feel overdone. This was ecstatic singing in all senses of the word, which took you out of yourself and along for the ride.

Phillips’ support throughout was indispensible, not just in the bare-bones sense of providing the musical accompaniments but of bringing a judiciously applied sense of colour, drama and poetic imagination not only to each solo song but also to the rousing set of four Brahms gypsy songs, for all four voices, which brought this highly enjoyable recital to a close.