SeatonMusic enjoyed a romantic evening - read this review by Pater Dawson.

Seaton Music welcomed two talented young musicians for the second concert of their series, writes Peter Dawson.

We were invited to forget the wet drizzly evening outside with an energetic and moving programme of songs under the title Come to Me in My Dreams.

Nicholas Mogg (baritone) and Jâms Coleman (piano) both studied music at Cambridge and continued their studies at the Royal Academy of Music.

Nicholas is developing a career in operatic and lieder singing and has appeared in festivals in the UK and Europe. Jâms Coleman is not only a vocal accompanist but also performs as a concerto soloist, and works as a conductor and musical director.

Their programme featured settings of poems by several romantic poets including Tennyson and Matthew Arnold, German writers Goethe and Eichendorff and French enfant terrible Charles Baudelaire.

Setting the scene with one of Ivor Gurney’s Elizabethan songs, Sleep, the programme presented works seeking to escape from reality to another world – Roger Quilter’s Now Sleeps The Crimson Petal, Robert Schumann’s Moonlit Night and A Beautiful Foreign Land, Gabriel Fauré’s After a Dream, and Henri Duparc’s Invitation to a Journey.

Other works dramatically presented the dangers of the night, when things are not as they seem – Robert Schumann’s Forest Dialogue, and two settings of Goethe’s famous Erlkönig, first by the relatively unknown singer-composer Carl Loewe and then the familiar (but very demanding!) setting by Schubert.

They completed their programme with Six Christmas Songs by Peter Cornelius, one of which, The Three Kings, is frequently featured in Christmas carol services.

The music showed the skill of the two musicians to tell a story and evoke characters through music, to express through music emotions of longing and searching, excitement and fear.

The range of subtleties in the voice and the restrained but expressive qualities in the accompaniment made for a memorable evening.

The audience’s enthusiastic applause was rewarded with an encore – Benjamin Britten’s setting of the folksong The Foggy, Foggy Dew.

SeatonMusic’s next concert, on Thursday, December 6, when they welcome Sheku and Isata Kanneh-Mason, is already sold out – admission for members and ticket-holders only. There will unfortunately be no tickets available on the door.

After that, Seaton Music look forward to seeing you at their next event - a piano recital by Joanna MacGregor on Thursday, February 21, 2019.