Kiri Te Kanawa 70th Birthday Gala Tour

Kiri Te Kanawa 70th Birthday Gala Tour
Llewellyn Hall, Canberra. 16th May 2014 and touring Australia and New Zealand in May and June.

Attending the Canberra performance of Dame Kiri Te Kanawa’s 70th Birthday Gala Tour, I was delighted to find this ageless performer sounding so very like her recorded self. In interview on the day preceding the performance, Dame Kiri stated that there are works (which she said are obvious) that she no longer sings; evidently the highest notes of her career might not sound as sweet and controlled now as they did, and she therefore has confined her repertoire a little. But what she sang, she sang exquisitely.

 

The programme is varied, including some less-well-known pieces; a little Handel; a few pieces by Puccini. It even includes “Scarborough Fair” and “Danny Boy”. And if you think of those as pretty ordinary songs, you haven’t yet heard Dame Kiri sing them. The majority of the programmed pieces perhaps lack the grand emotionality of some of her bigger successes and are less grand technically. But two of three encores she was gracious enough to give were particularly moving: Puccini’s “O Mio Babbino Caro”, and Vandross’s “Dance With My Father”.

 

The programmed pieces allowed Dame Kiri to draw us in both technically and emotionally.  Technically, it allowed us to appreciate the trills and cadenzas of Vivaldi’s “Io Son Quel Gelsomino”, the soaring peaks of Handel’s “Se Pieta”, her agility in Granados’s “La Maja y el Ruiseñor” and Canteloube’s “Baïlèro”, and her ability to have a whispered note carry unamplified to the back of the concert hall in Obradors’s “Del Cabello Más Sutil”.  Emotionally, it let us appreciate the playfulness of her exposition of Puccini’s “Sole e Amore” (which, originally composed standing alone, later became part of La Boheme), the joyous frolic she makes of Cantaloube’s “Malurous Qu’o Uno Fenno”, and the lover’s immanent sorrow in protestations of love in Hahn’s “À Chloris”.

 

The eminently watchable piano accompaniment that Terence Dennis provides for Dame Kiri was faultless, letting every sung note in such a melodically strange piece as Debussy’s “Romance” sound exactly right. Dennis is one of those pianists whose hands express visually his understanding of the piece he is playing, and his interactions with Dame Kiri were entertaining in and of themselves.

 

Dame Kiri was actually a little unwell for this performance, with a cold; but, unless you were particularly attuned to the accuracy with which she sings, you couldn’t have picked it, the flawlessness of her technique being such as to overcome without damage such passing ills as will prevent a lesser mortal from performing without damaging both song and layrnx.

 

John P. Harvey

 

Dame Kiri’s remaining performances in Australia and New Zealand are as follows:

 

Adelaide Festival Theatre, 18 May 2014

Sydney Opera House, 20 May 2014

Aotea Centre, Auckland, 24 May 2014

The TSB Showplace, New Plymouth, 29 May 2014

Dunedin Town Hall, 1 June 2014

Napier Municipal Theatre, 3 June 2014.

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