Anti-war Recital at The Royal Hospital, Kilmainham

national | arts and media | news report Monday October 31, 2005 17:47 by Sean Crudden - impero sean.crudden at iol dot ie Jenkinstown, Dundalk, Co Louth. 087 9739945

Song Recital by Wolfgang Holzmair

An audience of 300+ people heard a breath-taking recital by Wofgang Holzmair on Sunday afternoon in the great hall in The Royal Hospital, Kilmainham.

Before the interval at Sunday afternoon’s recital in The Royal Hospital, Kilmainham, Wolfgang Holzmair (baritone) sang a selection of songs taken (mostly?) from Des Knaben Wunderhorn by Mahler. His accompanist for the recital was Roger Vignoles.

Holzmair is a proud man but he seeks to communicate with his audience and to entertain. He has a trim, lithe figure and fine dark features with a twinkle in his eye. The range of vocal and bodily and facial expression he employed to convey the wonderful Mahler compositions could hardly be matched integrally by any other performer in the world. Holzmair is unique at least. I do not know enough about it to say that he is the best.

However my paranoid mind was troubled by a hard brassy tone which the singer unveiled a few times. I don’t quite get the convention (and the way we "hear" a classical singer has a lot to do with convention) he was using at these points. There is no danger of my replicating these tones because I had my tonsils surgically removed when I was 9 or 10.

After the interval Holzmair gave three groups of songs and two sweet encores. The first group was by Bela Bartok followed by Six German Folksongs by Johannes Brahms and the third group was by Leos Janacek.

I should say that the singer was hand-in-glove with his accompanist. The color, intelligibility and variety of Roger Vignoles’ piano accompaniment played a massive part in this recital.

Readers of indymedia will be pleased to hear that the program as a whole had a distinct anti-war cast.