Preview - Tenor Toby Spence with LSO at the Barbican on January 15
Published: 12 January, 2012
by SEBASTIAN TAYLOR
Islington resident tenor Toby Spence is singing Mahler with the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Thomas Adès, the British composer, at the Barbican on Sunday evening.
He’s the soloist in a selection of Mahler’s settings of folk tales about soldiers, spirits and lovers drawn from Das Knaben Wunderhorn, the 19th-century collection of German poems.
The delicate settings for tenor and orchestra are framed in the concert by two works by Adès, his piano concerto In Seven Days and his famed 2007 work, Trevot.
The Barbican concert coincides with the last performances of Wagner’s Meistersinger at the Royal Opera House, where Spence drew plaudits for his performance as David the apprentice.
Last autumn, his performance as Lensky in the ENO’s new production of Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin drew similar praise.
Ahead, too, Spence is taking on the role of Captain Vere in the ENO’s new production of Britten’s Billy Budd at the Coliseum in June.