We all know the Adagio, and the violin concerto is performed often, but the work composed by Samuel Barber I love to hear is Knoxville: Summer of 1915, for voice and orchestra. Its lullaby sway expresses a lot: innocence, wonder, isolation, drowsy-eyed observation, and that’s just the first few minutes.
Anna Leese hears something altogether different. “When I listened, I heard my own childhood,” she says. The soprano performs the work in a beautifully programmed concert with Christchurch Symphony Orchestra on November 30, and also appears in the evening’s other major piece, Mahler’s Symphony No 4 – a child’s view of his own world followed by a child’s view of heaven. “I related to the Barber so closely growing up in hot Napier summers; the murmuring of adults where you’re not really listening but everyone sounds content, like you have a full tummy after Christmas dinner.”
I like to think these are the sorts of I-know-what-you-mean descriptive tidbits Leese shares with her students at the University of Waikato, where she is a teaching fellow. She’s also just submitted her own final paper as a doctoral candidate, which looks at the relationship between singers and composers, and how they can benefit each other. One result of her research was the opera The Strangest of Angels, co-composed with Kenneth Young, which was staged with NZ Opera in 2022.
“I entered into the project mainly because I didn’t think there was enough classical songwriting in New Zealand,” Leese says. “When I asked composers why, they told me they didn’t feel they had enough training and weren’t confident doing it.”
There are exceptions, of course. David Hamilton and Janet Jennings immediately spring to mind. Both composers benefit from a lifetime of singing. According to Leese, this is key.
“I found many of the great composers were either singers themselves or were married to singers who know a lot about voice. Mozart could have been a professional singer but chose not to become a castrato, and instead he spent his life chasing sopranos.”
So far as we know, Barber didn’t chase sopranos, but he was, for 40 years, in a relationship with Gian Carlo Menotti, the composer of some 25 operas, including the yuletide perennial Amahl and the Night Visitors. Barber was also a gifted baritone. In other words, he understood singers.
“[Knoxville] must have been written for someone like me,” Leese says. “It goes up high but in a way that’s helpful, and then it’ll sit around on the high notes without being demanding on my voice type. For me, it’s perfect.”
Christchurch Symphony Orchestra, with Anna Leese: Boulanger, Barber, Mahler, 7.30pm, Saturday November 30, Christchurch Town Hall.
