Each of the recitals in this series illustrates the range, character and repertoire of a particular voice-type. With Alastair Miles’s disc (6/00) we had the lyric ‘singing bass’ (basso cantante, basse chantante); this disc of John Tomlinson’s has, I suppose, the rest. That includes the ‘deep bass’ (profondo), the dramatic and the comic. Missing is the ‘black’ bass of German tradition, to which this singer is well suited, so perhaps there is a further volume to come.
Or perhaps the present collection postulates another type, which might be called the ‘character-bass’, as in the term ‘character-actor’. Tomlinson has of course a quite exceptionally powerful and sonorous voice, of the kind that makes you sit up because suddenly, on stage or on the platform, somebody is producing a sound twice as voluminous as anybody else’s. Going with this are exceptional vividness of characterisation and clarity of diction. No singer has everything, and evenness of emission, elegance of vocal style and Italianate richness of timbre are qualities either less in evidence or (in the last item) not at all. It is no use, for instance, expecting the Verdi arias to be sung as by an English Ezio Pinza, or, for that matter, the Handel as by a latter-day Peter Dawson. His voice also is that of a bass, so that, quite apart from the style (the lyricism), Prince Igor’s aria sits uneasily in matters of timbre and tessitura. On the other hand, as character-singing, each item in this remarkably varied programme makes a strong and distinctive appeal.
In Handel, the absurd Polyphemus and the braggart Harapha fill every musical phrase with their not very musical characters. In Mozart, Osmin, keeper of the harem, does likewise, and in the course of doing so all of these manage to exhibit some startling vocal accomplishments, expecially in probing the depths of the bass range. With Verdi, in exchange for Italianate richness Tomlinson can give us a living sense of the indignation and bitterness by which these patrician characters are possessed. The Russians, too – jolly miller, roistering Prince and sensual Khan – are real people. The Gilbert and Sullivan seems to me less satisfactory: irregularity in length of syllable (however slight) pulls laboriously on the Mikado’s song, and the policemen are less amusing (not more) for the stage-comic’s northern accent (if any local accent is to be imposed – these coppers being out to apprehend the pirates of Penzance – presumably it should be Cornish).
Consistent throughout the record is the excellent playing of the Philharmonia under David Parry, and Andrew Porter’s booklet-notes are in a class of their own. I’m not sure about the ‘bonus’ track of Godunov’s Coronation scene, with its different acoustic and its place among the extremity of non-sequiturs in following Offenbach and Sullivan.'