Hugh Cutting is still sometimes described as a rising countertenor. That should surely now be unconditional. Cutting has risen, almost to the top, and 2025 has been a stellar year. This enthusiastically performed and received recital, a world away from the general run of pre-Christmas concerts or countertenor recitals, and accompanied by the eclectically matched eight-strong Refound Ensemble, showed why.
Themed recitals are common, but Cutting’s programme of songs and music, all connected to the theme of night, was built on levels of thought and performative imagination that few such programmes would even attempt, much less bring off. The pieces ranged from the baroque to the brand new, via Schubert, folk song and Don McLean. Few familiar pieces on the programme were played as written, with Cutting preferring arrangements mostly by members of the ensemble. It was compelling from first to last, more cabaret than concert.
The calms and charms of night came first. Even here, though, there was instant originality in a lilting Auden setting by Geoffrey Burgon, once famous for the Nunc Dimittis from the BBC’s 1970s Le Carré adaptations. Then, without a break, as was most of the programme, we had Endymion’s soulful song to the moon from Cavalli’s La Calisto and Purcell’s Fairy Queen aria hymning the pleasures of the night, to which Cutting’s lustrous countertenor was ideally suited.
Of the two premieres, Piers Connor Kennedy’s Morpheus, a dark and expressive Rupert Brooke setting, was particularly successful, crisply scored and sung with nice subtlety. Elena Langer’s Fabulous Beasts, settings of medieval lyrics about birds and beasts, linked by virtuosic clarinet playing by Magdalenna Krstevska, was odder and quirkier, but too disjointed.
Oberon’s “Welcome, wanderer!” from Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream was done in a brilliant arrangement that captured all the transgressive eeriness of the score. Then a darker and more dramatic turn, with Schubert’s Erlkönig and Richard Rodney Bennett’s Baby, Baby, Naughty Baby each unleashing alarming nocturnal demons. Don McLean’s gentle 1970 song Vincent, sung by Cutting in baritone, trod the same knife-edge in a different way. The black humour of William Bolcom’s ghoulish Black Max was terrifically done, and Weill’s Speak Low was a seductive reminder at the end that the night is also made for love.
