Performing Mahler and Schubert, New Zealand baritone Julien Van Mellaerts makes his debut with the Israel Camerata Jerusalem Orchestra

Photo:Diana Roberts

“Songs of a Wayfarer”, the Israel Camerata Jerusalem’s concert on May 4th 2019 in the Recanati Auditorium of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, was conducted by the Camerata’s music director Avner Biron. Soloists were baritone Julien Van Mellaerts (New Zealand) and Israeli horn players Alon Reuven and Ruti Rozman Varon.

 

The serenade - the late-18th-century "evening piece", music for entertainment on festive gatherings - was a genre that Wolfgang Mozart, who adored parties, found particularly congenial. Serenade No. 6 in D major, K. 239, "Serenata Notturna" (1776), its key being that which Mozart favoured for serenades and cassations, is scored for two small "orchestras," its form looking back to the Baroque concerto grosso, with all of the work’s three movements focusing on alternation and interchange of the solo concertino and the orchestra grosso. In a polished performance, the Camerata players highlighted the charm and humour of the three compact movements - the refined, joyful march (with a timpani solo!), the hearty, somewhat bucolic Minuetto, its Trio left to the concertino group alone, and the spirited Rondo, with its suspenseful transitions; violinist Natasha Sher ‘s playing had much presence.

 

Remaining in the Classical style, we heard Concerto for two horns and orchestra in E flat major, a work attributed to Joseph Haydn, with some postulations that it was composed by his younger brother Michael Haydn; however, certain historical and stylistic points suggest the composer to have been Francesco Antonio Rosetti (born Franz Anton Rösler). This is an attractive work, an agreeable concert piece abounding in a sense of well-being and offering some excellent writing for French horns; but what I found most impressive at the Tel Aviv concert was the commanding performance of Ruty Rozman Varon and Alon Reuven throughout, their precision, intonation, fine duetting and smooth, luxuriant tone addressing the work’s various gestures, its virtuoso moments and its moods. Indeed, we experienced the “real-life heroes of the orchestra” playing with apparent ease!

 

With the heyday of the serenade as an orchestral genre in the 18th century culminating in the works of Mozart, the late Romantics revived it, in their hands, revisiting the past but in the language of their own idiom. Referring to Antonin Dvorák's Serenade for wind instruments, ‘cello and double bass in D minor Op.44, Brahms wrote the following to violinist Joseph Joachim in 1879: “It would be difficult to discover a finer, more refreshing impression of really abundant and charming creative talent.” 18th-century wind music often included a double bass for harmonic support; here, Dvorák supports that practice, but with the addition of a ‘cello. It is not the norm to hear a wind ensemble work as part of an orchestral concert; Maestro Biran, however, is known for his resourceful programming. The performance was a real treat, with a fine line-up of wind players giving vibrant expression to the work’s somewhat whimsical salute to Classical forms (homage to Mozart) and its use of Czech folk dances - the (second movement) Minuetto indeed a sousedska (similar to the Austrian Ländler), with a furiant as its Trio, as well the polka-type theme in the fourth. Together with the ensemble’s articulate playing and warmth of timbre, expressive melodic playing was presented by Muki Zohar (oboe), Eli Eban (flute), Itamar Leshem (horn) and other players, not forgetting the strings.

 

Making his debut on the Israeli concert scene, baritone Julien Van Mellaerts (b.1988, New Zealand) opened with Gustav Mahler’s “Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen” (Songs of a Wayfarer), musical settings of four of  six poems written by Mahler himself following his failed romance with soprano Johanna Richter from the time he was working as a conductor in Kassel. The Camerata performed the work in Arnold Schoenberg’s chamber orchestra setting. Van Mellaerts’ singing gave genuine and fervent expression to the songs’ layers of meaning and key words, spotlighting moments of tenderness and those extolling the beauty of nature, as he undertook changes of both vocal colour and facial expression with each rising wave of despair. Take, for example, the end of the second song, its joy and nature imagery dissolving into dejection; or the contrasts between utter sadness alternating with outbursts of cascading anguish as in “I have a gleaming knife” (song no.3), the work concluding with the subdued, emotionally drained resolution expressed in the fourth song, its chromaticism and major-minor duality representing the journeyman’s love and sorrow now intertwined, as  

“...Under the linden tree

that snowed its blossoms onto me –

I did not know how life went on,

and all was well again!

All! All, love and sorrow

and world and dream!”

Performing “Songs of a Wayfarer” is no mean task for a young singer. Easily contending with the orchestra, Van Mellaerts’ voice is fresh, substantial and stable, his foray into higher registers (end of song no.2) pleasing. The Camerata instrumentalists merged the work’s folk-like simplicity and sophistication with exquisite utterances of timbral beauty.

 

Following the intermission, Julien Van Mellaerts returned to perform three of Max Reger’s orchestral arrangements of Schubert Lieder. Starting with an aethereal, gossamer-light reading of “An die Musik” (To Music), lyrics: Schober, he later gave a rapturous, subdued, somewhat passionate but no-less-controlled performance of “Du bist die Ruh’” (You are repose), lyrics: Rückert. As to Franz Schubert’s “Erlkönig” (Elf King), the eighteen-year-old composer’s setting of a Goethe ballad -  four minutes of high drama involving three active players and a narrator - Van Mellaert’s singing of it was all energy, capturing the macabre aspects of the terrifying night ride and its sensationalist setting; voices representing the boy, the father, and the lurid Elf King himself could have emerged as more individual. Avner Biron’s treatment of Reger’s arrangements steered away from the leaden performance of them sometimes encountered in the concert hall.

 

Winner of the 2017 Wigmore Hall/Kohn Foundation International Song Competition and the 2017 Kathleen Ferrier Awards, Julien Van Mellaerts was awarded the Tagore Gold Medal on graduation from London’s Royal College of Music. His international performing repertoire includes oratorio, Lieder and opera, the latter including contemporary works. In April 2019, he toured with pianist James Baillieu for Chamber Music New Zealand; he will make his Wigmore Hall recital debut in 2020. Today, the singer resides in London. Julien Van Mellaerts is certainly an artist to watch!