Jonathan Dove reviews

It is possible to feel that contemporary classical music occasionally takes itself a mite too seriously, and is no fun anymore. Then along comes Jonathan Dove’s An airmail letter from Mozart. Imagining how, in the whirl of modern jet travel, the great composer might have negotiated protracted periods of absence from his beloved Constanze, Dove spins 15 minutes of variations scored for single strings and two horns, on a theme from a Mozart Divertimento.

Elan, intelligence and passionate engagement: Scottish tenor Nicky Spence brings it all to his exemplary performance of Out of Winter, the opening cycle on this disc of songs by Jonathan Dove. Spence’s enunciation of the text (by the late Robert Tear, in response to Britten’s Winter Words) has crystal clarity, while his singing runs the full gamut from the aching lyricism of Song I to the elated peroration of Song VI’s conclusion.

Many contemporary composers write for choirs, few with the sharp imagination and genuine originality of Jonathan Dove. The second movement of The Passing of the Year, a cycle for double chorus and piano commemorating the composer’s mother, is typical of Dove’s limpidity of thought and freshness: setting William Blake’s The narrow bud opens her beauties to the sun, he starts with filigree piano, then a soprano solo evoking the delicacy of spring’s awakening, before employing imitative fluttering figurations to suggest flowers blossoming.

The Sacconi Quartet commissioned Jonathan Dove’s song-cycle In Damascus to ‘reflect aspects of the conflict in Syria’. To that end it sets texts by the contemporary Syrian poet Ali Safar. Tenor Mark Padmore brings to the cycle’s opening two songs, and to its pained conclusion ‘My country’, exquisitely poised legato singing, sweetly tuned and with immaculate articulation.

A daringly slow tempo – far slower than most choirs could manage technically – with no sense of strain whatever in supporting the voices; the little dynamic swell on ‘vengeance’ in verse two; a perfectly poised pianissimo to start verse three. Already in Gibbons’s Drop, Drop, Slow Tears there are numerous indications of the elevated artistry Paul McCreesh and the 22 singers of his Gabrieli Consort bring to this beautifully planned and executed programme.

Paul Spicer’s notes highlight the affinities between Jonathan Dove’s operatic work and these sacred pieces: the opening item, Bless the Lord, O my soul, is highly dramatic in its bold dynamic contrasts and the declamatory ejaculations that propel the music forward. This is very definitely a piece that is headed somewhere, fuelled by the swiftly rippling organ accompaniment, dispatched by the dextrous Jonathan Vaughn with a flick and a flourish.

The Book of Tobit is one of those intriguing scriptures that didn’t quite make it into either the Jewish or the Christian canon. Perhaps the tale of a monster fish whose internal organs turn out to have healing properties was just too folkloric to be sacred, but it makes a fine story for an opera.

Jonathan Dove honours its Jewish folktale roots by making part of his nine-strong instrumental ensemble a traditional klezmer band. But on the whole the vocal style is in Dove’s recognisable voice and listener-friendly modemode – and nothing wrong with that.

A log of wood singing 'make me' is hardly a typical operatic opening. Geppetto is initially cautious ('talking wood, that’s not good'), but curiosity is aroused for adult and child alike from the first notes of Jonathan Dove's lavish and fantastical new opera genuinely for all age-groups.

Collodi's story is much darker than Disney's film, and any Jiminy Cricket associations are literally squashed in the second scene when Pinocchio throws a mallet and kills Rebecca Bottone's Cricket as it cheekily pricks his conscience.

Jonathan Dove’s one acter, first given by Almeida Opera 14 years ago, is a gem of a piece from a composer who rarely puts a foot wrong in the opera house. And it’s all the better thanks to a sharp-eared libretto from the playwright, Nick Dear, who well knows how oddly the human heart can beat. Who but Dove and Dear could have made something so romantic and so tender out of an ordinary able seaman falling for a pretty girl dreamed up in a personal ad by a con artist?