North Terrace

Main Prize - Concert 2 BBC National Orchestra of Wales Ryan Bancroft Meigui Zhang, soprano  (29, China) Donizetti : "Quel guardo il cavaliere" ( Don Pasquale ) Bizet : "Me voilà seule... Comme autrefois" ( Les pêcheurs de perles ) Lehár : "Meine Lippen sie küssen so heiß" ( Giuditta ) It's hard to know what to say about a programme and performance like this.  The singer has an attractive voice, it's generally well deployed, she's visually appealing, but there's not a lot more to it than that.  That's surely enough, you say, and yes, in normal life, and outside the major houses, yes, it is.  But this is an international and prestigious competition, and here, it's not enough.  It's a little like my problem with Sungho Kim's programme last night, we've heard it all done a thousand times before, and Zhang brought nothing new to it.  As usual with me, it's the French repertoire that ruffled my feathers the most, I felt sh...

Song Prize - Recital 2 5) Meugui Zhang, soprano  (29, China) - Simon Lepper, piano Dell'Acqua : Villanelle Debussy : Apparition Wolf : Die Kleine Berg : Nacht Yi Zhou : The Phoenix Hairpin Meigui Zhang is a coloratura soprano, and accordingly began her recital with a twittering romance popular as a showcase for that type of voice, before getting down to more serious stuff with Debussy's  exquisite "Apparition" from the Four Early Songs.  Both songs, setting French texts, suffered from the same problem; although Zhang produces the right overall sound in French, her consonants are barely audible, rendering the text mushy.  This was not a fault which reappeared in the two German-language songs (I think it's probably impossible to sing in German without consonants!) which were, consequently, rather more satisfying, with winsome charm enlivening the Wolf, and a heady sensuality infusing the Berg.  Finally, a composition whose date I cannot trace, but which would appe...