Stuart Skelton and Nina Stemme in the Metropolitan Opera's Tristan und Isolde (photograph by Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera)

Perhaps Skelton is not yet as comfortable with recitals as he is with opera and concerts. After all, the solo song recital is opera laid bare. There is no orchestra to cushion the sound; no other voices to complement or distract; no visual concealments of fancy costume and wig or a set to hide behind. Just two people, singer and pianist (three, if you count the page-turner), on a large wide stage, facing the music and the audience.

The program, primarily of songs of romance and longing, was a United Nations of composers and languages: English (three songs by Percy Grainger), French (four of Liszt’s settings of verses by Victor Hugo), German (Wagner’s Wesendonck Lieder, and Korngold’s Vier Abschiedslieder), Spanish (Joaquín Turina’s rarely heard Poema en forma de Canciones) and … Icelandic.

Percy Grainger (credit: The Grainger Museum)Icelandic? Well, as Skelton told us, this was the night for his first foray into that language, a journey inspired by his future father-in-law. He sang four songs, one each by Jón Þórarinsson (1917–2012) and Sigfus Einarsson (1877–1939), and two by Sigvaldi Kaldalóns (1881–1946).  The loveliest, most atmospheric, song was Kaldalóns’ Ave Maria, a setting of an Icelandic poem rather than the more familiar text we know from Schubert.

The Grainger songs started the program well, especially his inspired setting of Hard-hearted Barb’ra (H)Ellen (its few final stanzas unaccountably missing from the printed program), which Skelton delivered in true storytelling style. The Liszt songs, before the interval, were less successful; lots of emotive display, but not, to my mind, reaching the emotional heart of Hugo’s wistfully scented text.

Skelton was back in his element with the five Wesendonck songs, as he well might have been, since two of them, Im Triebhaus and Traüme, are embryonic precursors to the mighty Tristan to come. (I should mention that the Wesendonck songs, in Felix Mottl’s orchestral version, is on Skelton’s new album, Shining Knight, on ABC Classics.)

The four Korngold songs of farewell that followed were, as one expects of this intriguing composer, heart-on-the-sleeve, yet all the more enticing because of it.

The most interesting item (apart from the Icelandic bracket) was the Turina cycle of 1917, which is contained to the point of having its own extended piano introduction, or dedicatoria, evocatively played by Peirson. The four songs are florid, heartfelt, and suffused with Iberian character and charm. But it took until the last song, Las local por amor (Mad for love), for things to catch fire. There was just one encore (wise, considering the challenging repertoire that preceded it), Brahms’s refulgent setting of Mondnacht. Its intensity and inner glow were especially rewarding on this wet and chilly Melbourne night.

Stuart Skelton was in recital at the Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre on 3 August 2018.

ABR Arts is generously supported by The Ian Potter Foundation and the ABR Patrons.