Even before lockdown, some in the classical music industry were beginning to have conversations about how to cut down on air miles. And one thing the Wigmore Hall has shown in the past three weeks is that a series built entirely on UK-based artists can be thoroughly satisfying – even though most have been playing it safe repertoire-wise.
Safe doesn’t have to mean comfortable. The tenor Allan Clayton and pianist James Baillieu began their recital with Schumann’s 12 Kerner Lieder, which ended in a bleak atmosphere of unease and quiet resignation. Earlier, though, there were moments when Clayton, glancing at his score, seemed to be missing the last ounce of certainty in his interpretation. When did this change? Perhaps with Baillieu’s eloquent postlude to Stille Liebe, in which the piano says what the narrator knows he can’t. Certainly after this Clayton was in his element, his face betraying the hint of a smile as he nailed the octave leap to the first high note of Frage, his voice soaring through those top notes gloriously, yet with every note finessed to the end.
Clayton and Baillieu returned to the world of 19th-century wanderlust in their encore, Liszt’s Wanderers Nachtlied. In between came half a dozen British songs, among them Bridge’s Journey’s End, wistful with a sinister edge, and three by Britten: Clayton’s characterisations of the social-climbing narrators of Sally in Our Alley and The Plough Boy were deliciously done; I Wonder As I Wander was haunting in its unadorned simplicity.
