GRAMOPHONE: From Where I Sit – March 2022
Recent times have taught us to take nothing for granted – so dare I get too excited about the rescheduling of live events with the great Dame Janet Baker with whom I shall be bound to three UK festivals this year: Newbury, Ryedale (in her home county of Yorkshire), and Champs Hill where the inviting barn/concert hall of Mary Bowerman awaits. Dame Janet and I have met previously – socially and professionally – but her modesty and sensitivity are always disarming. The very first time we met for a public event she put a gentle hand on my shoulder and asked if I was ok. ‘Nervous’, I replied. ‘So am I’, she whispered just before we stepped out.
I shall avoid spoilers here, I promise, but a couple of thoughts have resurfaced whilst pondering what I might choose to discuss or indeed listen to in these close encounters. First off there is the unique timbre of the voice. The great ones are all instantly recognisable. I remember being on a one-off professionals edition of the Radio 4 quiz Counterpoint back in the day with Humphrey Burton and Humphrey Carpenter and one of the buzzer questions was ‘Who is the singer here?’ I think I hit the buzzer on the second note and remember quipping to Ned Sherrin ‘Gosh, if they’re all that easy I’m a shoo-in’…
But can Dame Janet herself listen to her own voice objectively? Does she recognise its uniqueness? Or is it for her like listening to someone else? However she might choose to reply to such questions, one thing is certain: she has known herself and her instrument better than many singers I have encountered over the years; and she has always been led by her instincts and her heart in her choices of repertoire. One can hear in her voice that direct lineage to the great British choral tradition – but her ‘Englishness’ is tempered with a temperament that is somewhat unexpected. Her affinity with French music, for instance, reveals a seductiveness that one does not hear coming. English and German song are delivered with an inwardness and confidentiality that is disarming and not in the least precious. There’s a plangency as well as a purity about the voice. An underlying drama prevails.
I remember how blown away I was by the first performances I saw of hers onstage – Julius Caesar and Mary Stuart. It was her sheer physicality that caught me unawares. Brave, abandoned, like she had somehow rediscovered her body after the stillness and concentration of the recital platform and all the Bach passions and angel’s farewells and songs of the earth that defined her.
Dame Janet will always tell us that she is merely ‘the middle man’, the connecting tissue, if you like, between composer and audience. But consider Mahler’s Rückert lied ‘Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen’ – a song about the isolation of the creative artist. There’s a line which speaks of being ‘at peace in a still land’ (‘Und ruh’in einem stillen Gebiet’) and Baker replicates that stillness by draining all colour and vibrato from the sound. It has been much imitated. But if you ask her about it she’ll say ‘Isn’t it in the score?’. No, it isn’t, Dame Janet. It’s all yours – and it’s called ‘artistry’.
