Soprano and Guitar at St Gabriel’s

On the Sunday afternoon of November 24th, St Gabriel’s Church, Pimlico, hosted the inaugural recital by a new soprano and guitar duo. The partners are soprano Emily Jennings and guitarist Cassandra Mathews.

Emily and Cassandra are both graduates of The Royal College of Music. Emily is a Britten-Pears Young Artist and has an international and varied performing career. Cassandra is holder of the 2012 Lennox Berkeley Award for Guitar. Her very busy career includes the performance of new works for guitar.

The recital was entitled ‘Twilight Passages: Songs of Beauty Youth and Longing’. The principal works were the Songs from the Chinese by Britten, and the Songs of the Half-light by Lennox Berkeley¹. The Britten songs were first performed by Peter Pears and Julian Bream at the 1958 Aldeburgh Festival, and the Berkeley by the same artists at the same festival, in 1965.

Emily sang with purity of tone and pitch, and with effective range of tempi² and dynamics. Hers was a very assured account of both of these sets. Julian Bream’s work with Britten and Berkeley led both composers to a great understanding of the technical and expressive resources of the guitar, and Cassandra more than rose to the demands of these cycles with superb, confident support of the vocal line.

The recital opened with Britten’s setting of ‘I will give my Love an Apple’, and closed with his ‘Sailor Boy’. The other delights presented were ‘Shall I sue?’ and ‘Flow my Tears’ by the great Dowland, and Cassandra’s arrangement of two Vaughan Williams settings. These were the ‘Sky above the Roof’, and ‘Linden Lea’, and a particular pleasure as performed here at St Gabriel’s.

We very much look forward to further programmes from Emily and Cassandra.