Patricia Petibon lives it up at Wigmore Hall

Patricia Petibon soprano 
Susan Manoff piano

Recital: "La Belle Excentrique"

Songs and piano solos by: 
Reynaldo Hayn
Erik Satie
Manuel Rosenthal
Gabriel Faure
Francis Poulenc
Fernando J Obradors
Manuel de Falla
Joaquin Turina
Joseph Canteloube
Leonard Bernstein
George Gershwin
Agustín Lara

Wigmore Hall, London, 16 December 2015

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A pianist wearing an elephant nose?  A soprano in a chef's hat and apron?  Rubber ducks, balls and assorted ridiculous paraphenalia pulled out of the piano and flung into the well-heeled Wigmore audience?  This was not an ordinary song recital.

Patricia Petibon

Patricia Petibon was making her Wigmore Hall debut with a highly original programme of turn of the 20th century music.  The range was enormous from deeply felt and exquisitely realised laments, to fiery Spanish showpieces, to the gloriously eccentric creations of Satie and Rosenthal.  This in itself was bewildering for the audience as the tone went from high art to farce with hardly a break between. 

Petibon has a very fine voice, able to ripple and flutter through treachorous texts and fill the room with glorious ringing tones.  To this she adds a highly expressive face and a marvellous sense of fun.   How many times do we hear and see the ironic creations of Erik Satie given straight-laced;  the humour po-faced; apart from a smirk at the end from the performer the demeanour little different from if it was a Hugo Wolf recital.

Petibon and her partner in crime Manoff would have none of this.   The culmination was in a fabulous performance of Leonard Bernstein's setting of La Bonne Cuisine - a cookery book totally not intended to be song lyrics.  Bernstein's setttings of Plum Pudding, Ox-tails and Rabbit were savoured, relished.  Was this a recital, or a student revue, or old fashioned cabaret?

Petibon is a true original and let's hope we see more of her in London.  Until then anyone unfamilar with her art could do no better than her wonderful performance on an Opus Arte DVD with Les Arts Florrisants in Rameau's Les Indes Galante.