Denise Leigh - SopranoReviewsAug 6 2004By Glyn Mon Hughes, Daily Post I C Liverpool (UK) THERE have been many high points at this year's Chester Summer Music Festival. Few can have matched the performance by soprano Denise Leigh (below), accompanied by Murray Hipkin. Denise was catapulted to fame after winning Channel 4's Operatunity, where she prevailed over 3,000 other entrants and sang the part of Gilda at a performance of Rigoletto at English National Opera in London. Now she's singing in concert halls around the country, she's broadcasting and she's bringing out her own CDs. Her performances are made all the more special considering that she is blind. For her Chester recital, Denise chose an amazingly demanding programme, putting Mozart's Exultate Jubilate in the same half as the Four Last Songs by Richard Strauss. And then singing Handel, Dvorak, Verdi, Gounod, Hageman and a Gershwin encore . . . and sounding every bit as bright and alluring as she did at the outset. Hers is an amazing voice. It has power, it has a huge range, it is beautiful. Her technique is excellent: she's able to ornament her lines as need be. Trills, for instance, are not inaccurate warbles but spot-on notes. The opening Exultate Jubilate went at a fair old pace, especially into a brilliantly exciting Alleluia at the end. Her Strauss interpretation was warm and expansive, especially September which was lyrically and intensely performed. Indeed, if anything, her voice seems especially suited to the interpretation of Strauss, a composer who demands considerable physical dexterity as well as subtlety. The second half was a clever amalgam of favourites - The Song to the Moon from Dvorak's Rusalka, for instance, and Caro nome from Verdi's Rigoletto: both excellently phrased and interpreted - and lesser-known pieces, such as Se Pieta and Piangero from Handel's Julius Caesar. She was sensitively accompanied right through the performance by Murray Hipkin and, in her typically humorous way, sent the audience home with the thought that "If you've enjoyed tonight, I'm Denise Leigh. If you didn't, I'm Lesley Garrett". © owned by or licensed to Trinity Mirror Plc 2004 icLiverpoolTM is a trade mark of Trinity Mirror Plc. | |
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©2008 Denise Leigh
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