Bravery and beauty as music crosses nations, generations

This concert, entitled 'Music Unites Us All', was an exercise in crossing boundaries.

From the way the performers came together onstage and in their opening bars expressed solidarity and allegiance to their respective homelands, to their diverse range of ages, experience, and emotional perspectives, to even how I sit here to write this review, from halfway across the world.

The theme was an especially important one in light of recent world events.

I'm conducting my first internet review of a concert relayed to me through the wonders of technology. Naturally, there will be some limitations to my personal experience of a "live" performance.

The primary facet of music making - the impetus of communication - came through in abundance, even listening in online.

I could feel that intensity in Lorna Case's beautiful and scene-setting Santuzza ('Voi lo sapete',) which opened the show. I enjoyed the way Case stay centered in the emotion of each character at each point.

Her back story is as complex as the characters she portrayed in the evening. I was moved to discover that following her time as Lieutenant in the army, she returned to a point health-wise where she could sing opera. The repertoire she performed clearly meant a great deal to her, and it seemed she could directly relate to the "larger than life" emotions of a lot of the characters she portrayed.
She sang manfully on despite battling severe allergies, and her fierce determination imbued the characters and her artistic choices with meaning. The stage came alive around her in a particularly earth-warmed 'Bali-Hai'.

Russian mezzo-soprano Viktoriya Koreneva relished the shifts from classical balance to comedy in her selections. She seized her opportunities with aplomb. Taking charge and looking like a worthy sparring partner for Case in their duet, she later let her hair down in selections from Rossini and Strauss. Clad in dashing trousers, she seemed to move effortlessly between comic and serious roles, femininity and masculinity, taking the challenges in her stride, and offering a thoughtful, balanced programme.

She is a polished young artist, and both she and bass Kofi Hayford displayed a warm stage presence and easy technique. He presented a particularly accomplished 'La Calumnia', and masterfully used the patter to build an escalating sense of Basilio's scheming excitement. He also proved he could play to the subtleties of characterisation and tiny emotional turning points, and displayed confidence in moving between eras and musical styles.

Hayford has a sonorous instrument and a generous demeanour onstage. He relished the opportunity to collaborate with other musicians. The inclusion of instrumentalists seemed a bit like an afterthought, and their involvement could have been more equally distributed between the artists - perhaps by way of inclusion of a male-female duet. As a result it was a bit jarring when it occurred, and did not integrate as seamlessly as one would hope.

The diversity of the programme certainly made things interesting, and an all-chestnut showcase would have rung a bit hollow. But a stronger theme was needed to tie the programme together. The theme of unification could have been developed further - there was a wide selection of both well-known and obscure Russian music included, but noticeably absent were the American (Rodgers and Hammerstein excepted) and the Ghanaian songs.

The selection of talented artists did complement each other very well, and offered clear-eyed interpretations and a high level of commitment to their art.