Cassandra Wright / Arvostelut

“In the highly resonant surroundings of Oxford’s Holywell Music Room last night, the finalists of the 2021 Bampton Opera’s Young Singers’ competition each presented widely varied challenging twenty-minute programmes. In a unanimous decision the Judges awarded First Prize to soprano Cassandra Wright. Her performance showed her beautiful use of vocal colours and musical phrasing. She effortlessly moved between the elements, portraying each character clearly and conveying the text with care. Cassandra was superbly supported throughout the programme by the attentive playing of her fine accompanist Ilan Kurtser who also unanimously won the accompanists’ prize,” said one of the adjudicators tenor Bonaventura Bottone in an official statement.

Wright’s gleaming soprano is immensely agile (a pre-requisite for this score), while the orchestra projected the quicksilver idea of a ‘Scherzino’ to perfection. Moving between humming and full voice, Wright had a freedom of utterance that seemed perfectly suited to Knussen’s score. The music is masterly: the gleaming, glittering scoring of the orchestral ‘Transformation’ and the following ‘Arietta 2’ was perfectly judged, Wright’s pitching at speed a thing of wonder, while the orchestral ‘Sea Interlude’ drew most atmospheric playing from the assembled musicians.