Elizabeth Watts & Audrey Hyland, Sage Gateshead

RENOWNED for having the very best musicians, Newcastle International Chamber Music Society invited soprano Elizabeth Watts to return following her last successful appearance here in 2009.

Having won the Song Prize at the 2007 BBC Cardiff Singer of the World Competition in 2007, it was very appropriate that she began with a small collection of songs by Schubert and Richard Strauss.

The six Schubert songs covered a wide range from the gentle, rather sweet An den Mond, D.193, through to a vivid portrayal of a wronged woman in Die Männer sind méchant, D866/3.

The different sound world of Richard Strauss was equally well interpreted by both singer and pianist from the romantic Das Rosenband via a very dramatic performance of Schlectes Wetter to a surprisingly wide range of feeling in Strauss’s last song Malven (Hollyhocks).

It was already apparent that Miss Watts was in magnificent voice, beautifully controlled and with truly sympathetic accompaniment so that the meaning of every song was perfectly conveyed.

This hardly prepared us though for a magnificent performance of Berlioz’s Les Nuits d’Été where each of the songs was utterly compelling.

To choose just one example, in Sur les lagunes, the voice sounded utterly desolate, barely sounding at times, giving the soaring passionate ending of each verse even greater meaning than usual.

Words are hardly adequate to describe the impact this performance made but it was unforgettable.

After such emotion, the encore of Reynaldo Hahn’s exquisite À Chloris was just perfect.

Peter Bevan