★★★★☆
The six wives of Henry VIII strut their stuff with hip-hop ballads every night in the West End in Six. Over at the genteel Wigmore Hall, however, here was a chance to hear these tragic queens — five sixths of them anyway — in a more reflective mood. Try Me, Good King: Last Words of the Wives of Henry VIII is a song cycle by Libby Larsen written in 2000. I last heard her music at the same address in songs from The Birth Project, about pregnancy and motherhood; she likes to tackle subjects that the great lieder composers strangely overlooked. Larsen’s regal heroines were passionately delivered by the soprano Louise Alder in the climax to a lunchtime recital in which all the music was written by women.
In their last words Henry’s wives were not captured at their most effervescent. Two of them were about to be decapitated, and one shortly to die from complications of childbirth. Nevertheless, Alder skilfully brought out the contrasting moods — a proud, defiant but ultimately spent Anne Boleyn; Jane Seymour in a postnatal glow; a chirruping Anne of Cleves, possibly aware that her fate was better than the alternatives; and finally a doomed, near-hysterical Katherine Howard. It seemed like Larsen missed a trick by not penning a coda from the one wife who survived the Tudor tyrant; “Parr’s last laugh” might have made a more empowering finale.
The short, punchy work showed Alder’s flair for theatricality but it was not the best music on offer. That was a spellbinding selection from Lili Boulanger’s Clairières dans le ciel, 1914 settings of symbolist poetry which are dramatic, mysterious, and set voice and piano in a fascinating skirmish. Alder brought a rapt quality to vocal music — almost uncomfortable in its confessional intensity. Joseph Middleton stirred oily depths in the piano line, including, in Si tout ceci n’est qu’un pauvre rêve, morbidly repeated echoes of Wagner’s Tristan.
Boulanger was flanked by two composers still better known as muses than creators. Three Rückert settings by Clara Schumann were fresh and ardent, and a murkier trio by Alma Mahler showed off the richness of Alder’s middle voice. The soprano is a compelling performer with an increasingly powerful instrument — although both in the German set and in an opening set of songs by Amy Beach there were more than a few moments when she could have lowered the volume and pulled a bit harder at the text.
On demand at wigmore-hall.org.uk and on BBC Sounds
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