Search - Jonathan Lemalu, Roger Quilter :: Love Blows as the Wind Blows: English and American Songs / Jonathan Lemalu

Promises Kept

Grady Harp | Los Angeles, CA United States | 11/30/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Some months back Jonathan Lemalu was introduced to us with a collection of Opera Arias, a recording that showed great promise of an important voice but also one that raised questions about the durability of the vocal technique. He sounded promising: with this excellent recording he shows that those promises are being kept!



In an entertaining potpourri of English songs the handsome and charismatic New Zealand baritone proves that he can complete with the likes of Thomas Hampson and Bryn Terfel and while he has not yet the finesse that only comes with time (he is a young 29!), the communicative powers are clearly present.



Lemalu's voice is rich and dark when the music demands (as in Barber's 'Dover Beach' accompanied by the Belcea Quartet) and yet he can lighten the tone and color and take on the technically difficult light and airy tunes which abound on this recording. His astute and sensitive collaborator is Malcolm Martineau who provides just the right mood for each of the songs selected. He seems completely at ease in this medium and his enunciation is crisp and clear. He makes the listener feel assured that here is a new star on the rise in the bass-baritone cadre, He is a joy to hear! Recommended. Grady Harp, November 05"

Third Time's a Charm for Larger-Than-Life Lemalu and His Tra

Ed Uyeshima | San Francisco, CA USA | 11/14/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Having just come home from Jonathan Lemalu's recital with pianist Malcolm Martineau in Berkeley, I am convinced that the New Zealand-born Samoan is fast moving to the front ranks among bass-baritone singers. His third solo disc, the second to be released in 2005, is further evidence of his burgeoning talent, this one focusing exclusively on an eclectic mix of English and American songs accompanied again by Martineau. With an ebullient personality that comes across on record as well as on stage, Lemalu has a large, rich voice capable of surprising nuance and particularly resonant in its middle and lower ranges. Only 29 years old, he carries a tone more callow than his more mature colleagues like Bryn Terfel, but Lemalu's more youthful sound, as well as his large-scale theatrical sense, is placed at a greater advantage with this program than in his previous opera arias disc. That's because the 25 tracks here are short pieces from a variety of sources ranging from poems about childhood to well-known passages from Shakespeare to off-kilter cabaret songs.



There was a tantalizing glimpse of Lemalu's affinity with English art songs on his 2002 debut recording, for example, John Ireland's strapping "Sea Fever". Here he tackles two more Ireland works with the melancholy swoon of "Santa Chiara" and the rollicking "When lights go rolling round the sky". Lemalu also tackles Roger Quilter's "Four Shakespeare Songs, Op. 30", with ease. He downshifts his powerful chest voice to enhance the open yearning of "Who is Silvia?", deliver the vocal pizzicato of "When the daffodils begin to peer", perform the sonorous "How should I your true love know?" and provide a confident reading of the advisory "Sigh No More, Ladies". As an intriguing contrast, Lemalu sings Gerald Finzi's more animated version of "Who Is Silvia?" written a decade after Quilter's, the second of a five-Shakespeare song cycle called "Let us garlands bring".



Lemalu achieves a particular depth of pathos on "Fear no more the heat o' the sun". Accompanied by the assured Belcea Quartet, Samuel Barber's "Dover Beach Op. 3", the longest continuous piece on the album at nearly eight minutes, is a moving and eloquent sea metaphor for finding love against the most dire of odds. The quartet shows up again to great effect on four highly atmospheric songs from George Butterworth's "Love blows as the wind blows" starting with the haunting "In the year that's come and gone" and ending with the reflective "On the way to Kew". Sounding very much like pieces from his epic "Peter Grimes", Benjamin Britten's "Tit for Tat" provides the source for three selections ideal for Lemalu's immaculate taste - the wistful "A Song of Enchantment", the mournful "Silver" and the more emphatically dramatic title song.



Richard Rodney Bennett provides three selections from "Songs Before Sleep" written expressly for Lemalu, all based on nursery rhymes, including the energetic "The Mouse and the Bumblebee" and the pensive "As I walked by myself". The comical side of Lemalu's personality pops out in William Bolcom's "Cabaret Songs", the first two bordering precariously on camp - the Kurt Weill-sounding "Black Max" about a dastardly pimp, the quixotic "George" about the life and death of a drag queen, and the moving "Waitin". This is an exquisite recording of a major talent that continues to grow."