Age does not wither Sir John Tomlinson. In fact it sometimes seems to make the British bass, who is beginning to resemble Brahms in old age, a more questing artist than ever.
On the opera stage, with an orchestra to compete with, the years have begun to show in the huge voice. Yet here, pacing around the Wigmore platform to vary the dramatic effect, with Christopher Glynn’s well-judged piano playing his only partner, Tomlinson sang Jeremy Sams’s new English translation of Schubert’s posthumously packaged Swansong collection (Schwanengesang) with remarkably few signs of vocal strain at all.
Sams’s translations are unaffected and idiomatic and Tomlinson’s delivery, with the translations held in his hands, projected them absorbingly. His diction is so clear that it was possible to follow the verse without needing to read along from the programme. And since Tomlinson is never less than dramatically aware, the reward was an unusually direct Lieder experience.
Tomlinson was at his most commanding in the darkest and most anguished songs, such as Atlas and Doppelganger, which were formidable. Less expected, perhaps, was the sweep of even tone in the opening Love Message and the clipped brightness he achieved in Leave-Taking. Yet whenever Schubert requires his singer to scale down and sing softly, as in Serenade, Far Away, or Her Picture, Tomlinson had to rely on vocal craft rather than beauty of tone.
The wit and wisdom of the closing Pigeon Post showed characteristic artistry and Tomlinson was obviously feeling bucked enough by the experience to treat us to Wotan’s closing scene from Das Rheingold, in German this time, as a thrillingly voiced encore.
