Brighton Year-Round 2025

Emily Jennings and Cassandra Mathews

Emily Jennings and Cassandra Mathews

Genre: Live Music, Music

Venue: St Nicholas Church, Dyke Road, Brighton

Festival: Brighton Year-Round

Low Down

Review

Making a welcome return after just a few months to (again) substitute for another performer, it’s a real treat to have soprano Emily Jennings and Cassandra Mathews on guitar return with a new programme.

Emily Jennings, a 2023-24 Britten/Pears artist, is a pure-toned soprano with a voice that encompasses far more than lyrics. Cassandra Mathews is a consummate guitarist, a first-class graduate of the Royal College of Music. Jennings says this is her favourite recital space.

The parameters are similar. After Schubert’s torch song ‘An die Musicke’ a hymn to his art sung by Jennings with a deep soprano reach.

Dowland, familiar territory here follows in ‘Can she excuse my wrongs?’ a favourite of 1590s court life. And a mandatory flirty nod to Gloriana, or Elizabeth, herself. Mathews emulates the lute as Jennings uses her deeper soprano notes to recall the male tenor and counter tenor range, by then soars both in climactic moments and in others where she sings sotto voce.

‘In darkness let me dwell’ seems more personal, Jacobean and tenebrous, though that took can function as a court illusion. It certainly sounds note Jacobean, more melismatic and more disturbed. It’s the kind of song, indeed the song, leading many to take Dowland’s self-description as “Semper Dowland semper Dolans” where Dowland would be pronounced to rhyme with “Dolans”. Certainly always Dowland always in the dumps is a self-identification parade of one, however fashionable.

This is still remarkable for drawing out the melodic line on the rack of a long melodic fade refreshed with stand of ardour. There’s a sexual sense of “die” (of course) but this trope here is exquisitely wrought over the pared lute or guitar line. It owns enormous expressive power ending on an unresolved minor. Jennings sings this raptly.

The second of Lennox Berkeley’s ‘Songs for the Half Light’ Op 65 from 1965, written for Peter Pears and Julian Bream was trialled here. Now we’re treated to all five, the poems written by Walter de La Mare.  They’re brief, pithy and suddenly ecstatic. Jennings has made these songs her own.

‘Rachel’ about a singer winds in its doubleness, a woman singer singing about another woman singer. Berkeley’s melodic line echoes that edgy angular yet still lyrical line some tonal British composers leaned on in the late 1960s-60s. ‘Rachel’ is a praise song with a humorous kick to it.

‘Full Moon’s is the duo’s anthem.  Long drawn-out melismas – perfect for a crepuscular song- allow Jennings to enunciate a clarity of line and word, blanched with a chiaroscuro shadowing of the moon.

‘All that’s past’ carries an unquiet running to its arc, plucked by Mathews like time rippling fast. It’s shadowy and flickering, and restless.

‘The Moth’ doesn’t flutter vocally but circle and stray with a flying crooked gift. It’s also memorable in its pitch and yaw.

‘The Fleeting’ seems to invite another fast shadowy ante-nocturnal. Suddenly the guitar drops away leaving the voice exposed for while paragraphs. Jennings can really apply power to her vocal register on occasion and you see what a contained singer she is for the rest of the programme. She clearly enjoys a wide range of expression. This programmer still invites a range but it’s never forced. It’s a quietly spellbinding piece.

Berkeley was very much in Britten’s circle (indeed he was in love with Britten in the 1930s). Their mutual friend Julian Bream transcribed Britten’s Second Lute Song from Britten’s unjustly panned festival opera Gloriana from 1953 (the second Elizabeth loved it apparently but courtiers were incensed the first wasn’t treated with cheery Judi Dench-like reverence; and envious critical knives were out).

The Earl of Essex’s plea to prove himself as a genocider in Ireland (spoiler: he failed but Cromwell made up for it) is at the heart of the opera. The opening is stunning, as Jennings again takes and erases Pears from the song and applies a much more intricate melodic palette to this cod-Tudor dash of genius. It’s a more cunning but also elegiac rendering. You believe in the courtier lions and Queen’s shadows. It was close to midnight for everyone. Mathews picks out a brief solo line as exuent. But Jennings too has made this her own.

Manuel de Falla managed to wrench Spanish music back from France, though his friend Debussy came with him as it were, in musical influence. The three songs of the Seven Folk Songs are folk-inflected and pithy.

‘El piano moruno’ extols love in one of Falla’s best-known melodies. Where the seductive woman is sure of what she wants. The bright etched clarity of folk desire in the stark yet languorous hat of midday seems to seep through.

”Asturiana’ involves the place and the naming of home. Southern Spain here is given a long intro on guitar, winding and again rapt as Jennings swifts in with a paradoxically slow winding melody. It never rises above a whisper and seems a sleeping country at 3am.

‘Hola!’ embodies a confident macho claiming his girlfriend despite her mother. He seems more persuasive than forceful thankfully, and the song is one of joy. It’s another famous melody, Jennings pitching great tied top-notes in phrases with expressive leaps and ariosos. A delighted delightful end. Exquisite and again a hidden gem. Jennings, recovering from a cold and only yesterday performing at Bristol Cathedral, doesn’t show a moment of strain. Back in February, this duo are already gaining an enthusiastic following.

Published October 30, 2025 by Simon Jenner