Wednesday 8th June, 2016
To the list of pop-opera crossover odd couples – John Denver and Placido Domingo, Freddie Mercury and Montserrat Caballé – is now added Van Morrison and Bryn Terfel. The Northern Irish singer-songwriter and the Welsh bass-baritone shared a stage on Tuesday at the Festival of Voice in Cardiff in what was advertised as a “one-time-only performance”.
To the list of pop-opera crossover odd couples – John Denver and Placido Domingo, Freddie Mercury and Montserrat Caballé – is now added Van Morrison and Bryn Terfel. The Northern Irish singer-songwriter and the Welsh bass-baritone shared a stage on Tuesday at the Festival of Voice in Cardiff in what was advertised as a “one-time-only performance”.
Morrison is now Sir Van and, while his Welsh co-star is so far gazetteered only as a CBE, he is unofficially a king in Cardiff, and the four-level Donald Gordon Theatre at the Wales Millennium Centre had sold out at up to £85 a ticket.
Few music teachers or producers would recommend either man’s build-up for this gig. The previous day, at the east Belfast church that is mentioned in his song On Hyndford Street, Morrison had performed that number and two others at the funeral of his 94-year-old mother, whose singing talent he inherited. Terfel meanwhile had hurtled round from Llandaff Cathedral, where he had just completed a Bach, Handel and Mozart recital.
In trademark hat and shades, Van and his band began with a tour of his back-catalogue of morosely romantic and spiritual songs, including Enlightenment and By His Grace. Then, about half an hour into the gig, the burly Morrison was instantly dwarfed when Terfel, hot-tonsilled from the cathedral, walked on stage in sports jacket and jeans.
Van Morrison on saxophone. Photograph: Polly Thomas
There must have been a collective hope that Wales’s blue-eyed boy would join a duet of Brown Eyed-Girl, or that the singers would do a Moondance à deux. In fact, Van and the man he introduced as his “very special guest” chose two satisfyingly more imaginative collaborations.
Taking alternative verses, and sharing the choruses, they sang Morrison’s The Beauty of the Days Gone By, a haunting reflection on the pleasure and regret of memory, and then the North American folk-song Oh, Shenandoah! The Missouri fur traders to whom the tune is attributed could never have hoped to have a richer and more spine-tingling rendition than this. With Morrison lifting his voice to its limits to meet Terfel working in the balladeer middle of his range, there was a lovely sense of two deeply committed musicians working with mutual respect. During Terfel’s solos, his co-star accompanied him on guitar or sax.
They will surely come under pressure to renege on the promise to do this only once and over a greater distance than this interlude. It would take an unexpected series of results for Wales and Northern Ireland to meet in the Euro 2016 football finals that start on Friday, but all who saw this musical international friendly will remember it as an extraordinary match.
