So, the evening session in Bourgie Hall.  Gemma Summerfield sang first, kicking off with two Mendelssohn songs.  Die Liebende schreibt showed off proper Lieder singing.  It was restrained and pure with every word distinct.  Hexenlied was appropriately more dramatic but still quite correct with a good sense of story telling.  A very good start.  Ravel’s Cinq mélodies, which followed displayed excellent French in varied moods and some lovely piano playing from Sebastian Wybrew.  There was more of the same from both of them with a lovely version of Korngold’s Drei Lieder before things wrapped up with stylish and entirely idiomatic versions of Bridge’s Go Not Happy Day and Love went a Riding.  The latter was an object lesson in how to tell a story without going over the top.  This was a very, very fine set and jumped Summerfield to the top of my provisional “leader board”.

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