Elgar and Mozart
I : Beth Taylor at the Wigmore Hall
The Scottish mezzosoprano Beth Taylor has a voice so dark and arresting that newcomers make immediate note of it.
Who is this woman? Connoisseurs find it easy to remember when they have heard her before. You can hear why Stuart MacRae has written a “Medusa” song cycle for her: it will have its premiere in Edinburgh this August. Here is a voice of purpose, of passion, of danger.
And it’s a voice that has covered quite a spectrum of music. In summer 2022, Taylor was the disguised and troubled Bradamante in Glyndebourne’s production of Handel’s “Alcina” – a role to which she returns at Covent Garden this autumn. In April 2023, she was the Sorceress in Purcell’s “Dido and Aeneas” to the Dido of Joyce DiDonato at the Barbican and subsequently. In August 2025, she sang in Mahler’s Third Symphony at the Albert Hall Proms. In October 2025, she sang the title role of Rossini’s “Ermione” – driven, tormented – at the Cadogan Hall.
I believe that once she would have been called a contralto. In truth, though, hers – with its tremendous chest presence and its heroically glowing top notes – would never be an easy voice to categorise. On Sunday 19 April afternoon, she, with accompanist Hamish Brown, gave a Wigmore Hall recital that covered five composers – two women (Hedwige Chrétien and Alma Mahler) and three men (Hamilton Harty, the young Welsh composer Cameron Biles-Liddell – who was present – and Elgar: “Sea Pictures”). Both top and bottom of the voice were in splendid shape. In between, however, her vibrato was more intrusive than I’ve heard it before; and on this occasion this slight tremulousness was concomitant with less impressive diction than on previous occasions. Whether or not the poetry of “Sea Pictures” is much good – people have debated this since the premiere – Elgar makes it part of the music, so that the words have mattered with singers from Clara Butt (who sang the premiere, dressed as a mermaid) to Janet Baker. Although Taylor’s voice remains exciting and unusual, she did not make the great impression for which I was hoping. Even so, there’s no doubt about the singular impact of her voice; I always wish we heard more of it.
II: Gerontius at the Barbican Hall
Elgar composed “Sea Pictures” in 1899, “The Dream of Gerontius” in 1900. The chance to hear both in a day is rare, but it occurred on the Sunday of Taylor’s recital. That evening, at the Barbican Hall, Antonio Pappano, the London Symphony Orchestra, and the London Symphony Chorus gave a powerful but marvellously unforced account of “Gerontius” (a choral work Elgar did not like to call an oratorio), a score that can easily sound overwrought. I don’t think that it’s just because Pappano was recently conducting “Siegfried” at Covent Garden that I heard Wagnerian qualities in this performance of Elgar’s score. Gerontius, the central singer of Elgar’s work, is on his deathbed, passing into other realms of spirit – although he’s like Faust, he’s also closely related to Wagner’s Tristan and to Amfortas (“Parsifal”). This end-of-life quest for redemption and epiphany is part of the Wagnerian project, but part too of much nineteenth-century art. Pappano didn’t work any feverish frenzy in Elgar’s score up into Wagnerian proportions – he simply made Elgar’s grand, heroic work sound wonderfully unexaggerated.
The British tenor David Butt Philip – who sings such Wagnerian roles as Lohengrin and Stolzing – sang the role of Gerontius with exceptionally beautiful tone, attack, and diction. The bass William Thomas also made an outstanding effect – I hope we hear much more of him. I also hope that London hears Beth Taylor sing the Angel before long (she has already sung it elsewhere), but on this occasion the singer was Emily D’Angelo – the Canadian mezzo who has become a regular feature of London’s musical life since 2021. She does have the secret of combining eloquent diction with an enlivening vibrato that never impedes her line. Dressed almost spectrally, she made the Angel an enthralling part of Elgar’s strange and singular drama.
III : Jonathan Biss and Mark Steinberg in Mozart
On Wednesday April 22, pianist Jonathan Biss and violinist Mark Steinberg gave the first of a pair of evenings of Mozart violin sonatas at the Wigmore Hall; I’m sorry I couldn’t also attend the second. Despite the renown of both musicians, the fascination lay in the music – above all in how Mozart kept reapportioning the two voices, piano and violin.
Who was accompanying whom? At times, violin followed piano like a delayed echo. At times, the violin was secondary – but often acting as a gorgeous ornament, as in sequences when it played only sustained single notes while the piano burbled briskly away. At other times, the violin was the principal melodist. What’s so Mozartian – so modern and so exemplary – was how the changing distribution of labour was part of the suspense and part of the entertainment.