"Say it with flowers," a famous advertising slogan once urged. Perhaps Barbara Bonney has taken that slogan to heart, for the first half of her latest Wigmore Hall recital carried more than a whiff of being the musical equivalent of Interflora. She gave us roses and posies by Strauss, more roses and water lilies by Grieg and another posy by Mendelssohn, before turning to nocturnal treescapes by Wolf, Brahms and Strauss. This felt, on occasion, like overkill.
The concert formed part of the Wigmore director's festival series, a personal choice of music by William Lyne, who, for 36 years, has made the Wigmore one of the greatest classical music venues, and who retires at the end of this season. On this occasion, "Bill" as Bonney affectionately calls him, simply selected seven composers from her colossal repertoire and left the choice of songs to her.
The result was something of a trip down memory lane, since the entire programme consisted of material that Bonney had already sung at the Wigmore on a regular basis. Comparison with some of those previous recitals, many of them glorious, reveals a certain slippage in technique and methodology. Many of Bonney's strengths remain (the vocal utterances poised between chastity and sexuality; the sedate, cool glamour of her appearance), but her voice is no longer what it was. Beauty and fullness of tone now seem confined to her upper registers. Lower down, a breathy tremulousness has crept in. Where the vocal line has to float and hover, such as in Schubert's Nähe des Geliebten or Brahms's Die Mainacht, she can still be extraordinary. But elsewhere, you are acutely conscious of problems: in Strauss's Ich wollt ein Sträusslein binden, the brilliance of her high-lying coloratura is suddenly muddied by shallowness of tone as her voice descends.
Her breath control also seems less immaculate than on previous occasions. Towards the end of Schubert's Ganymed, she suddenly runs out of steam. The huge, arching phrases of Strauss's Die heiligen drei Könige and Beim Schlafengehen are cut in two where most singers would take them in a single breath. Her choice of both songs seems strange, since they were originally written to be performed with orchestra rather than piano. Malcolm Martineau, elsewhere an unfailingly sensitive accompanist, cannot really bring either of them to life.
