If Morgan Hayes( H, 22-) was an ABRSM examiner, he would have earned £ 320 doing this
The Wykehamist
SongFest
If Morgan Hayes( H, 22-) was an ABRSM examiner, he would have earned £ 320 doing this
It is, I think, something of a small miracle that forty teenagers can be persuaded to stand alone before their peers and sing. That they do so willingly, and indeed with evident enthusiasm, speaks well of this institution.
SongFest has, as evidenced by its sheer scale, quickly carved out a particular place in the College’ s musical calendar: far from the grandeur of the Choral Society concert or the anarchy of the Staff Revue, it holds its own as an evening of solo and small-ensemble singing, accompanied at the piano, and covering repertoire so varied as to defy any attempt at categorisation. This year’ s programme ranged from Handel to Hammerstein, from Schubert to( Claude-Michel) Schönberg, with one performer( on whom more later) venturing so far outside the tradition as to require a moment’ s adjustment from the audience. In short, it was SongFest. And, on the whole, it was very enjoyable.
Will Knapman( B, 21-) opened proceedings with If I Can’ t Love Her from the stage adaption of Beauty and the Beast. The high notes were clean, the climax well-managed, and the emotional commitment largely convincing— a reliable opener that set a commendably high bar for those to follow. Ranbir Khanna( H, 24-) performed Schönberg’ s I Dreamed a Dream with a warmth and clarity of diction that proved a pleasant surprise; the low notes in particular landed with pleasing weight, and the song suited him well.
Richard Wu( K, 25-) delivered what was, for me, the first genuinely arresting performance of the evening. His Mendelssohn, It Is Enough, was sung with an evenness of tone and precision of intonation that is rarely encountered at this level; more importantly, the character was conveyed with a quiet conviction that the more overtly theatrical entries of the evening occasionally sacrificed. One rarely gets goosebumps at a school concert; Richard served them on a platter.
Monty Weaver( K, 22-) brought ambition and emotional directness to Strauss’ s Allerseelen, his dynamic arc well-shaped and his high notes largely achieved. Asher Li( E, 21-) gave a thoroughly impressive account of Stars from Les Misérables; his tone ideally suited to the genre, the emotion genuinely felt, the whole performance transporting in a way that made us briefly forget we were in Michlā. These are not small achievements.
Much pleasure was also derived from Noah Wong( F, 21-), perhaps the evening’ s most theatrical proposition, whose Mozart( Non più andrai) was delivered with the energy of a man who has decided, correctly, that a Mozartian aria is fundamentally a comic enterprise. Noah threw himself into it with total commitment: the dynamic contrasts were real, the character wholly florid, and the audience, no doubt grateful for the injection of wit at that particular point in the programme, responded with corresponding delight, in no small part thanks to the intoxicating effect of watching someone genuinely enjoy themselves.
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