A slight variation on my usual but it's been a slow week and there were plenty of performances worth commenting on, both good and bad (and terrible). The Classical Brit Awards are a slightly painful mish mash of top notch artistry with the worst of commercial "classical" music. However the line up of stars was impressive on paper (Netrebko was on the bill, I went to Vienna to hear her... I didn't much care what the others did) and if anything it showed the true stars from the pretty pop opera stars that I know and hate.

We opened with a duet from Andrea Bocelli and Sarah Brightman. From everything she's done in her life I'd have expected Brightman to be impressive live. I wasn't at all prepared for the twee warblings that emerged from her throat. Much is made of her ability to sing comfortably through three octaves, up to the F above High C in the theory (impressive on paper), but it doesn't much matter when it all sounds like it's being squeezed from a kitten. Bocelli sounded strong singing in her company (although came undone when paired with stronger partners later) and belted out the notes with reasonable tone. It was pretty overblown stuff called "Canto della terra", not unpleasant just not terribly powerful.

With the departure of Nigel Kennedy vacancies had appeared in the evening one of which was filled by Danielle de Niese. The current belle of Glyndebourne Opera. She sang quite well with lots of colour and feisty performance. The highest stuff seemed to be stretching her range with one particularly harsh sustained note. I had no complaints though, I'd take her over an egotistical fiddler any day.

Steven Isserlis grounded the evening with virtually the only traditional classical performance. He played the Sarabande from Bach's 5th Cello suite and this was moving stuff. It's quiet, slow and meaningful yet he played with such skill that even this audience (which had a large young, whooping, female component) was reduced to absolute silence. Curiously I think his microphone had been left on, so there was a rather heavy breathing quality to the whole thing that was actually quite effective. Not ideal but it didn't ruin the performance.

Next came Josh Groban. Now I must confess that I have something of a soft spot for Groban's voice. He's irritatingly good looking but don't let that make you believe he's another of the pretty warblers. He can genuinely sing and he does so without the faux opera pretensions that plague much of the singing that classical crossover seems to bring. Singing "February Song" he had me hanging on his every word (and the aformentioned female component clearly weren't complaining). He came back quite quickly to sing "Smile" by Charlie Chaplin. This stetched him a little more and the shift into falsetto wasn't entirely clean but he has great stage presence and his voice remains an absolute dream no matter what he's singing.

The second more traditional performance came from the unusual two violin and guitar piece performed by David Garrett, Valeriy Sokolov and Xuefei Yang. It had a level of Garrett flair with a totally pointless section where he fell to his knees, I'm not sure why... I can't imagine it made the playing any easier. They are however an undeniably talented young trio and were a pleasure to listen to. Solo guitarists are a rare breed and that's probably a little unfair since the instrument makes a lovely noise so this was a welcome addition to the programme.

At this point in the evening I glanced at the programme and realised that apart from the divine Netrebko the rest of the evening was purely filled by pretty warblers. My hopes were not high. Thankfully the next pretty warbler was Hayley Westenra, the prettiest of them all. She's also probably the best of them vocally although she did herself no favours in her choice of song. Paired with Jonathan Ansell (male but still a pretty warbler) they sang "Un giorno per noi". All well and dandy you'd think, but it happens to be on one of Josh Groban's Albums. I wept to think that he stood in the wings and could have sang it much, much better. Where Groban delivers this with moving clarity, Ansell laboured it with pseudo opera vibrato and tone. It didn't do the song any favours and served only to make me wish that Groban was singing it. Hayley Westenra sings quite nicely but the piece works better as a solo number.

Next up after Andrew Lloyd-Webber had received his lifetime achievement award which in the context of these awards, I totally agree with, we received a chunk of his Requiem, Pie Jesu. Now forgive me, but as sung by Sarah Brightman, this bordered on the unpleasant. I felt desperately sorry for Andrew Swait, the boy treble, who sang really well, impeccably in fact but Brightman actually has the worst tone of any singer I've ever heard (I'm not sure I'm even exaggerating here). Somehow she's sounds curiously like Chinese opera singers, having a strange nasal quality. I'm struggling to see how she ever made it in the music business although maybe in better repertoire, she emits cat like noises so unsurprisingly she was probably good in "Cats", she might be stronger.

The evening closed with a Bocelli and Netrebko duet. In theory some proper singing. However when paired with Netrebko it becomes quite clear that Bocelli doesn't quite have it. Singing "Libiamo ne' lieti calici" (yup, La Traviata, so I'd heard Netrebko sing this before) was perhaps a bad idea. Not the easiest piece rhythmically owing to his blindness there was some disconnection with the orchestra and David Charles Abell had to work very hard to keep time. Bocelli's voice which sounded quite rich next to Brightman felt thin when heard next to Netrebko's. Whilst this was more of cameo from her and far from the greatest performance she was ever going to give, her voice still has a weight and sheen that far outpaced his. In reality a pointless world debut duet, it'll never happen again because there are far better tenors in the world to partner her.

As an evening it was pretty good fun. The London Chamber Orchestra were stunning throughout, providing a variety of classical excerpts as stage hands scurried around. David Charles Abell kept everything flowing throughout carfefully covering every entrance and exit with some entirely appropriate bit of music. Myleene Klass was a reasonable Compere. She wasn't particularly funny but she kept the evening on the move and managed to navigate the stage in her large dress with much aplomb. The (free) programme could have been checked slightly more thoroughly though with a couple of amusing bloopers. Xuefei Yang is probably very young but I seriously doubt she was born in 1997. "Chess" the musical, which I'm hearing Josh Groban and Idina Menzel sing in concert next week, is attributed to Andrew Lloyd-Webber, which is a crediting that would probably offend both the actual authors and Lloyd-Webber himself. Of the awards I totally agreed with Sir Colin Davis being awarded best Male and Netrebko got Best Female (I'm hardly going to disagree with that). Best Album showed the frankly criminal state of popular classical music. Not one of the nominees was really a classical album, the vast majority being popularist pop opera singers performing lightweight repertoire. The winners "Blake" are too young and too pretty to be truly fine singers, serving up pleasant music of no particular merit. An entertaining evening that's being shown on ITV next week. I'm not convinced I'll be watching but as a taster of a variety of styles it's a good evening.

Posted 9th May 2008 by Robert Walport