Music / Michelangelo Visions, Jeremy Kleeman (Bass-Baritone) and Jack Symonds (Piano) for Art Song Canberra. At Wesley Music Centre, September 20.  Reviewed by MICHAEL WILSON.

On being reminded that Michelangelo Buonarroti was a seriously good poet, as well as easily being in world history’s top ten as both a painter and sculptor, one wonders what he might have done behind a camera had chronology allowed. 

This highly intellectual recital by pianist and composer Jack Symonds and bass-baritone Jeremy Kleeman took the form of three song cycles drawing on Michelangelo’s deeply reflective, allegorical and often tortured verse.

The richness of the subject matter, the contrasting compositional approaches and the sheer quality of performance made for a rare experience, especially in the expression of Dmitry Shostakovich’s Suite on Verses of Michelangelo Buonarroti which comprised the second half of the program. Assembled in twelve parts (but arranged in four ‘movements’ of different moods) and drawing on sonnets on varied subjects, it’s not the most immediately accessible work.  It consists of clashing dissonances, almost uncomfortable dynamic contrasts, punishing and relentless percussive piano lines, intervals that must be very hard for the vocalist to pitch and some dark subject matter in the poetry – all sung in beautifully articulated Russian by Kleeman.

A recording would not be an easy sell, but to see it performed live was startlingly rewarding.  Michelangelo is revealed as variously tortured, longing, in awe of God’s power, despondent and entranced by passion.  While the second, third and fourth songs (Morning, Love and Separation) provide a lighter ‘pastoral’ mood, the later movements are dramatic, daunting and sometimes violent.

The afternoon began with Hugo Wolf’s Drei Gedichte (four poems) von Michelangelo, which mix the form and feeling of Schubert and Schumann lieder with the more expansive and theatrical ambitions of Wagner.  Although essentially a failure in compositional forms other than lieder, Wolf’s musical setting of the sculptor’s feelings on releasing human forms from blocks of marble is brilliantly evocative.

Similarly, Jack Symonds brand-new six-song cycle In Stone (commissioned by Opera Queensland) similarly reflects on carving stone, on the physical trauma Michelangelo suffered in his painting of the Sistine Chapel, and on an artist moving towards his own death.  Moving between the meditative and the manic, Symonds’ style is modernist and unsubtle, but with moments of essential beauty and revealing drama.

Kleeman has the vocal quality of a lyric baritone – colourful and with gentle vibrato – while being gifted with a true bass range and incredible power when he needs it.  Indeed, at times the volume he managed – standing before the piano at full-stick – was too much for the small recital room, seeming to make every interior fitting vibrate. It’s an extraordinarily adaptable voice, and Kleeman’s musicianship with this most challenging repertoire proved to be second-to none. While his movements were free and confident, there was no eye contact at all with the audience – clearly a deliberate choice given the introspection of the verse.

Symonds was flawless at the piano, reacting intuitively to the singer, while driving the storyline forward, and marking the changing of moods with deliberate gestures and dynamic shifts.

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