Classical review: Emma Versteeg, Edinburgh Usher Hall

QUITE apart from its musical pleasures – and its outstanding value for money – this latest in the Usher Hall’s morning series of Emerging Artists concerts had the audience seated behind it in the choir stalls, bringing us right up close to the stage.

This set-up lent a welcome intimacy to a winning 50-minute performance by Edinburgh-trained soprano Emma Versteeg, accompanied by pianist Sam Hutchings, featuring an array of classically adapted folk songs.

Her programme highlighted both the diverse cross-cultural palette that folk music has offered for composers of different eras, with selections from Ravel’s Cinq Mélodies Populaires Grecques, Haydn’s Scottish Folksong Arrangements and Hugo Wolf’s Italienisches Liederbuch, plus pieces by Britten and Copland drawn from their respective native traditions. The opening two Ravel items, a bridegroom’s wedding-day greeting and an invocation to the Virgin Mary, straightaway highlighted Versteeg’s vivid, vibrant timbre, beautifully measured tempos and supple, expansive phrasing, contrasting breathless though crisply articulated ardour with softly devotional serenity.

She continued to demonstrate this assured versatility, putting herself thoroughly through her paces in such chalk-and-cheese material as Copland’s hauntingly simple, forlorn Long Time Ago and Wolf’s wilfully quirky, madcap Mein Liebster ist so klein, while maintaining an impressively graceful equilibrium amid the wayward piano tangents of Britten’s The Ashgrove.

There were occasional hints of strained shrillness and moments of overwrought diction, but these were far outweighed by the singing’s balance of freshness and charm with securely grounded technique.

Rating: ****