Alexandra Cook (mezzo-soprana), who sand at the Rhodesian Academy of Music’s lunch-hour concert this week, affirmed the excellent impression she made at her recital some months ago.
A varied programme gave her an opportunity to show the smoothness of her production throughout the range of her voice. The wide-spanning melodic arcs in He Hath Regarded, from Bach’s Manificat, caused her no discomfort.
Hugo Wolf’s Der Genesene an die Hoffnung makes taxing demands on the lower register, but she captured its sombre dignity exactly without in any way forcing her resources.
This refusal to push her technique to its limits is one aspect of her intelligent singing. Another is her unaffected presentation – no archness or fuss.
What, in the final analysis, makes her singing so exceptional is her ability to articulate a phrase so that it makes musical and dramatic sense even when one hasn’t followed the words. Brahms’ Sonntag was traced with instinctively right emotional inflection.
An occasional tremor on sustained notes stems, I suspect, from nervousness rather than from breathing problems. No one who sings so splendidly has any cause to be nervous.
Hugh Fenn’s sensitive accompaniment contributed to her success.