Vaughan Williams: Silent Noon

Sidney Outlaw sits down for his interview with Plushmusic.tv’s Sandy Burnett, and within seconds they’re practising their Oprah hugs. ‘Good for you!’ Sidney cries in an eerily accurate impression of the woman he calls ‘The Deity’. ‘Good for you!’
Sidney’s ebullient personality wins him many admirers. It has also been known to save his skin. He arrived at this year’s Wigmore Hall/Kohn Foundation Song Competition without an accompanist. John Reid stepped up to the plate – and the men had only a hour’s rehearsal before they climbed the stairs to the Wigmore stage.
‘You know within 30 seconds if a partnership’s going to work,’ says John. ‘As musicians you can always do enough, but that spark is either there or it isn’t, and you can tell pretty much straight away.’
The spark is there, as this beautiful and unexpected Vaughan-Williams song Silent Noon ably demonstrates.
2009 brings three international debuts for Sidney Outlaw, singing the role of Guglielmo in Mozart’s Così fan tutte in Germany as well as his debut in Tel Aviv in Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream as Demetrius. In addition he will make his debut with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra this autumn.
But, as Sidney is the first to point out, at this level, mere versatility is not enough. The broadcaster Sir John Tusa, (among many other things, Chairman of the Wigmore Hall Trust) put it this way: ‘Those people who just sing the notes are not interesting. They leave you cold. There may be singers who are less than perfect, but character is what the art song is about.‘
Certainly, a cast-iron sense of who you are is essential. And Sidney Outlaw knows it: ‘For me, singing is like speaking,’ he says. ‘After all, I sing every day, without thinking about it, and whether or not there’s anyone around to hear. I certainly don’t want my body to feel contrived when I sing on stage.’
On the evidence of this song, one would be hard put to spot a single unnatural bone in his body.

Tags

Wigmore Hall, lieder, Song Competition, Sidney Outlaw, John Reid, and Vaughan-Williams