Review: James Gilchrist & Alison Nicholls; Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall, University of York

11:15am Friday 9th May 2008

THE university's Spring Festival Of New Music jumped into life on Tuesday, with a bracing song recital from an established duo.

James Gilchrist's intelligent tenor drew added spice from Alison Nicholls's nimble harp in an evening devoted to recent English song.

It got off to almost too good a start. Alex Roth's Romantic Residues sets nine poems by Vikram Seth, recollecting amatory encounters, successful, unrequited or imaginary. Roth's light-fingered treatment seemed to distil the poetry's whimsy to a tee. The duo coloured its humour precisely.

They showed an almost equal empathy for the clean-cut folkiness of Howard Skempton's Three Songs for Jennie, to mixed texts by Bromsgrove poets. Nicholls had the spotlight to herself in Birtwistle's Crowd (Celtic lyre) and made the most of its sharp accents.

Only two-thirds of Jonathan Eato's ambitious new Bright Blades and Heart Grey, six Paul Celan poems translated by Michael Hamburger, were heard here. Eato's inspiration was a flamenco cantor, a flavour not easily replicated by an English tenor. Gilchrist found plenty of anger for the motto phrase Go blind now, today', but allowed it to spill over into too much else. Final judgement must be reserved for a complete performance.

Sally Beamish's crafty Four Songs from Hafez suffered from over-elaboration of poetry that is already highly aromatic. But Nicola LeFanu's Alkman the Choirmaster, setting a John Fuller poem, evoked its early Greek subject's enthusiasm and regrets with a telling touch.