Brighton Year-Round 2025
Caroline Goodwin and Zhanna Kemp Soprano and Piano Recital St Nicholas Church
Caroline Goodwin and Zhanna Kemp
Genre: Live Music, Music
Venue: St Nicholas Church, Dyke Road, Brighton
Festival: Brighton Year-Round
Low Down
Caroline Goodwin and Zhanna Kemp have assembled a fine collection of women composers’ songs.
Gloriously rendered, with musical discoveries in nearly every song
Review
Regular guests soprano and pianist Caroline Goodwin and Zhanna Kemp arrived at St Nicholas for another innovative recital. This time it’s around Christmas, the last concert till January 21.
As ever they bring rarities and Goodwin’s fine and rich soprano voice with it’s strong lower register. Kemp as ever consummate.
When they were last here, three months ago to the day, I mentioned to amusement:” Carolina Bellavittoria on whom I can find nothing”, and here has written three songs. Well these are by Goodwin herself. ‘Padre nostro’ a prayer is a piece she performed last time and brings the same rapt attention to the opening of a Yuletide or seasonal concert.
Theophile Adam (1803-58) known for Giselle and a few operas, wrote Cantique Noel as a typically French product of 19th century piety see best expressed in Gounod. But here Adam surpasses himself and produces a dramatic sceana that should be far better known
Pauline Viardot (1821-1910), sister of the great soprano Malibran (1808-36), was also a famous singer. Her songs from after her concert retirement are becoming far better known though and she’s a name to be conjured with again. Her ‘Divine sommeil’ is another pietistic piece but again a striking one with a fine peroration to end it.
Florence Price (1887-1953) is another composer now famous after emerging from obscurity. Much of her huge output was rediscovered in a Chicago attic in 1993. Bi-racial she’s a Black composer who passed herself as Mexican to serve the notorious “colour car” to education.
Her ‘Song to the Dark Virgin’ which the duo have performed before is remarkable for its restraint and melodic sweep. Normally Price might invoke some of the music of Haarlem, but here it’s subsumed in other traditions. It’s strong and memorable though
After a brief unannounced riff on Scott Joplin we move to Handel’s ‘Rejoice Greatly’ from Messiah. With its long melismatic line suddenly risen all bright and ecstatic and trills almost out of Acis and Galaitea (“hush ye warbling minstrels”) it’s a sterling silvered centres to the recital. In 4/4 time, pianist Ambrose Page later suggested a version of Handel’s in 6/8 time might go even better! Well, we’ll see. This of course sounded glorious enough.
A pianistic interlude – Tchaikovsky’s ‘Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy’ from ‘The Nutcracker’ of 1890 in Mikhail Pletnev’s arrangement is a delight in Kemp’s hands. Goodwin protests she can’t dance… Kemp keeps the crisp frosty harmonies of the right hand to the fore.
A piece by Vivilov of whom I know nothing but qho was passing off the ‘Ave Maria’ as by Caccini to get it published, was accidentally omitted.
Bellavottoria. Well it has been whispered these are Goodwin’s own compositions. And how they fit in. Her ‘Draw Nigh to God’ (‘Appressatevi a Dio’) seems perfectly 19th-20th century and Italianate. It’s very good that Bellavottoria is becoming better known.
After the first song the Bellavottoria is interrupted by Faure’s ‘Noel’ which comes like a balm of nativity in Faure’s earlier melodic idiom.
Bellavottoria’s compositional range is remarkable. This song ‘Christmas Song – just a Tender Word’ is a mix of Broadway, Lloyd-Webber and the British musical revival. With its parlando opening and really memorable melodic line (arching on “just a Tender word”) this is a true small jewel, and is perhaps closest to her true vein. And should be in other recitals than Goodwins and Kemp’s. Again this is all gorgeously rendered, and again with musical discoveries in nearly every song
An encore by Catherine Davis a carol we all know (“a ratatat-tum”) furnished a glowing encore as we head out towards Christmas.
