Reclaiming Love: An Alternative Valentines – Song in the City’s contribution to LGBT History Month including rare Smyth & Grieg plus Brahms’ Love Song Waltzes

Reclaiming Love: An Alternative Valentines – Britten, Grieg, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Cole Porter, RVW, Brahms; Song in the City, Sam Cobb, Charlie Morris, Jonathan Hanley, Thomas Litchev, Gavin Roberts, Anna Reiley; St Giles Cripplegate
14 February 2025

Billed as an alternative Valentines, we had an engaging selection of songs as the performers shared what love meant to them, including rare Smyth and Grieg, ending with a satisfying account of Brahms’ Love Song Waltzes in Neil Jenkins’ fine new translation

As its contribution to LGBT History Month, Song in the City presented Reclaiming Love: An Alternative Valentines at St Giles Cripplegate on Friday 14 February 2025, when soprano Sam Cobb, alto Charlie Morris, tenor Jonathan Hanley, baritone Thomas Litchev and pianist Gavin Roberts (artistic director of Song in the City) performed a selection of songs chosen by the performers that share what ‘love’ meant to them including Britten’s Tell me the truth about love, Grieg’s Elsk (from Haugtussa), Ethel Smyth’s Possession, Mendelssohn’s Ich wollt’ meiner lieb’ ergösse and Nachtlied, Schumann’s In der Nacht (from Spanisches Liederspiel), Cole Porter’s In the still of the night, Britten’s Canticle I: My beloved in mine and RVW’s It was a lover and his lass, then the performers were joined by pianist Anna Reiley for Brahms’ Love Song Waltzes (Liebeslieder Waltzer) in a new English translation by Neil Jenkins.

We began with all four singers leaning on the piano and giving us a charming joint version of Britten’s Tell me the truth about love, the four different voices each contributing a sense of character. Then Thomas Litchev sang Grieg’s Elsk (Love) from Grieg’s 1895 song cycle Haugtussa (the only song cycle he wrote). The song is a declaration of love for a young man (in the cycle the shepherd that the young woman is in love with). Here, singing in wonderfully clear Norwegian, Litchev gave a vivid, almost compelling performance with a strong sense of the song’s narrative. It made you wonder why the full song cycle is not done more and we perhaps hoped that Litchev might be performing the whole at some point. Then Sam Cobb gave us Ethel Smyth’s Possession, one Three Songs, published in 1913. A song about setting the loved one free, given a touching yet intense performance by Cobb. The music has interesting chromatic hints in the melody, this is some distance from the English parlour whilst the piano accompaniment seemed to hint at French inspirations.

Sam Cobb and Charlie Morris joined forces for Mendelssohn’s duet, Ich wollt’ meiner lieb’ ergösse (I would that I could pour my love), a Heine setting that was engagingly impulsive with joy overflowing from all three performers. There was more Mendelssohn with Morris’ performance the Eichendorff setting Nachtlied and here the night was dark and serious, only getting warmer towards the end as morning is promised. There was another duet with Schumann’s In der nacht from his Spanisches Liederspiel. This started as a solo from Cobb, with Schumann very much in Bach mode as Cobb’s long chorale-like line unwound over the more Bachian counterpoint in the piano to wonderful effect and then tenor Jonathan Handel joined in to create real magic. As a change of texture, Gavin Roberts was joined at the piano by Anna Reiley for a engaging piano duet version of Cole Porter’s In the still of the night.

Jonathan Hanley returned for Britten’s My beloved is mine, with Roberts at the piano. This setting of Francis Quarles is astonishing in so many ways, notably for the combination of subject matter and date, coming as it did at a period when homosexuality was still illegal, yet Britten and Pears performed it in public. Roberts kept the complex piano part light and relaxed so that Hanley’s lyric tenor could float over with beautiful tone. Hanley made the melismatic sections suitably ardent with the faster episodes vivid and equally ardent, but then the final section saw things quietening down, both performers making the music finely concentrated, ending in hypnotic fashion.

The first half ended with Hanley and Litchev in a delightful rendition of RVW’s duet, It was a lover and his lass, not particularly well known yet featuring some lovely writing for the two voices. And the two singers clearly enjoyed themselves.

After the interval the four singers plus Roberts and Reiley performed Brahms’ Love Song Waltzes, Op.52 using Neil Jenkins’ English translation. Two songs from Brahms’ Neue Liebeslider, Op.65 were included, thus ensuring each singer had a solo number, and the vocal numbers were interspersed with movements from Brahms’ Waltzes, Op.39.

There was something subtly subversive about programme Brahms alongside Smyth. Of course, the two knew each other but Smyth in her autobiography had some rather tart things to say about Brahms’ attitude to women in general, and women composers in particular!

“As the great Brahms recently proclaimed:
‘A clever woman is a thing of naught!’
So let us diligently cultivate stupidity,
That being the only quality demanded
Of a female Brahms-admirer!”
            Ethel Smyth Impressions that Remained (1919)

Brahms’ Liebeslieder Waltzer Op.52 remain something of a challenge to bring off in performance. For a start there is the composers ‘ad libitum’ against the voices, though few are daring enough to miss the voices off. The songs work best as chamber music, four singers and two pianists, but we require something more than four fine solo voices; too much blend and we veer towards choral bland, not enough and the four voices compete rather than cohering. The four singers at St Giles Cripplegate were clearly experienced consort and ensemble singers, so the performance featured four contrasting voices coming together as a very fine ensemble, characterful and expressive. Add into the mix Neil Jenkins’ clearly and admirable English translation, presented with wonderfully comprehensible diction, and you had one of the most satisfying performances of the work that I have heard in a long time.

Each singer got their solo moment, but what the piece was really about was the delightful interplay between different groups of voices. The four singers here were having fun, the music by turns flirty, serious, or melancholy, but always a sense of interaction between the four. And whether slow and charming or vivid and fast, their phrasing was beautifully apposite.

Dare one say it, a complete performance of the pieces can be in danger of being a bit samey, with Brahms exploring similar textures, but here the inclusion of the Op. 39 piano-duet waltzes provided punctuation points, grouping the songs into coherent paragraphs.