Geoffrey Mogridge reviews Ilkley Concert Club, James Newby & Jong Sun Woo, King’s Hall, Ilkley, Wednesday, 10th December 2025.
The tenor Alessandro Fisher was forced to cancel his Ilkley Concert Club appearance because of a severe throat infection. Thanks to the perseverance of pianist Jong Sun Woo and the availability of baritone James Newby, currently in Leeds for rehearsals as Count Almaviva in the Marriage of Figaro at Opera North, the recital was saved.
James, together with Leeds Song director, the pianist Joseph Middleton, had previously given a lunchtime recital themed around The Shipping Forecast, at London’s Wigmore Hall. That programme was expanded by James and Jong Sun to over twenty songs, grouped under four sub-headings: Mysteries of the Deep, Invitation to the Voyage, Exotic Isles, and Desert Island Discs. Each group anchored by a song from Edward Elgar’s orchestral cycle of five Sea Pictures - settings of poems by five different authors. They were first performed at the 1899 Norfolk and Norwich Festival under the composer’s baton. The contralto soloist for that performance, Dame Clara Butt, was famously dressed as a mermaid.
Rarely comes the opportunity to hear these lovely songs with a baritone soloist. James Newby’s beautifully nuanced rich and velvety tones, were a perfect match, allied to crystal clear diction. Jong Sun’s kaleidoscopic spectrum of pianistic colours made me forget the absence of an orchestra. I wish they could have included The Swimmer, the final song of the set.
Other songs more familar to us interpreted by a soprano or mezzo included Henri Duparc’s L’invitation au voyage and the traditional, unaccompanied, Blow the Wind Southerly. The latter forever associated with contralto Kathleen Ferrier.
Mysteries of the Deep embraced such novelties as Bantock’s Song to the Seals and Rita the Pirate, from The Thought Machine by Cheryl Frances-Hoad - the only living composer represented in the selection. Of particular note in the exotic isles group were the Songs for Ariel by Michael Tippett, This Island, by Sergei Rachmaninov and Schubert’s Auf dem wasser zu Singen (D774) - To sing on the Water.
James and Jung Son concluded their ingeniously crafted programme with the traditional O Waly Waly (arranged by Benjamin Britten) Kurt Weill’s My Ship (from Lady in the Dark) and Sleepy Lagoon by Eric Coates. An appreciative King’s hall audience clamoured for an encore: James and Jong Sun duly obliged with Cole Porter’s delightfully chic Tale of the Oyster.
You can see James Newby as Count Almaviva in The Marriage of Figaro, at Leeds Grand Theatre on Jan 30, Feb 1, 7, 14, 18 & 20th.
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