Interview, James Newby on I Wonder as I Wander

Released in January on BIS, the young British baritone James Newby's debut solo recording I Wonder as I Wander (featuring Beethoven's An die ferne Geliebte, Britten folk-songs, and lieder by Schubert and Mahler) has received widespread acclaim, with BBC Music Magazine praising his 'elastic vocal tone, sense of drama and attentive articulation' and the Sunday Times his combination of 'rare communicative zeal with nuanced insights' in the excerpts from Mahler's Des Knaben Wunderhorn. I spoke to James via Zoom about his route to becoming a singer, the artists who inspire him in lieder, his partnership with pianist Joseph Middleton, and the operatic roles which might figure in his future...

Which singers have been your major influences and inspirations in song repertoire?

I always say that my ideal baritone in Lieder is something in between Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Bryn Terfel, who are both amazing in their own ways. The other two singers I particularly admire are both tenors: I listen to Christoph Prégardien a lot and really like his insightful way with text and his ease of delivery. And I also love Werner Güra for similar reasons – again, the vocal production always seems very natural, and that’s something I definitely aspire to in my own singing. In terms of coaches, Eugene Asti worked with me all the way through since I started at Trinity College London, and he’s been amazing. I’ve also learned so much through working with Joe [Middleton], and two other people I really trust are my first teacher Alison Wells and my current teacher Robert Dean.

How did your partnership with Joe come about?

It began in 2017 with some Mahler songs as part of Leeds Lieder, and then we starting working together more after I graduated; we also did An die ferne Geliebte together, which I'd initially learned with Graham Johnson during my time at Guildhall. It was actually Joe who suggested me to BIS for this recording, and I think he specifically mentioned me to Robert Suff who was the producer on it.

What was your path to becoming a singer, and was there a specific moment when you realised you wanted to make this your career?

I sang in a small choir when I was at school, and to be honest I absolutely hated it - I rebelled against it as much as I could, but fortunately my mum made me stick at it! Then we went on a school trip to Gloucester Cathedral where I sang a little solo in a Howells piece; Neil heard me and asked if I’d ever thought about going for a choral scholarship, so I went along and sang to Adrian Partington, the Director of Music at Gloucester, and they gave me one! At that point I was singing tenor – I’ve always had a fairly strong head-voice, and I don’t ever really remember my voice breaking as such…It was more of a gradual transition downwards, and it was when I was around eighteen or nineteen that I started singing as a baritone.

I think the catalyst for feeling that I really had something to say as an artist was the Wigmore Hall Song Competition in 2015 and winning the Schubert Prize for that. It was a difficult time for me, as my sister had passed away the previous week, and there was a theme of death running throughout the programme I’d chosen for the competition. So there’s a part of me that feels like I owe all of this to her in some way, in terms of having a reason to sing and a story to tell.

You obviously have a real affinity with German repertoire: did you study languages at university?

No, I went straight from school to music college, but I’m in living in Hannover at the moment – I’ve been an ensemble member at the Staatsoper for a year and a half now, and it’s been pretty amazing in terms of learning the language as well as exploring new roles. My German’s improving all the time: in fact I was just listening back to the recording and noticing the various little things that give me away as a non-native speaker!

What sort of operatic repertoire would you like to be singing by the time you’re forty?

I’d really like to do Billy Budd, and further down the line perhaps some of the Verdi roles, but I don’t know if my voice will ever develop in that direction and I really wouldn’t want to push it if it’s not meant to be…I’m only 28, so forty still seems like a long way off to me! In terms of the nearer future, the Mozart roles are where it’s at - I’d love to do Don Giovanni again, and Papageno, which is just so much fun to act. I’ve also got a Belcore [in L’elisir d’amore] coming up, which is a role I have slightly mixed feelings about: on the one hand I do love digging into text and into the psychology of characters, and Belcore is a bit straightforward and one-dimensional in that respect, but on the other hand the music’s just brilliant!

Do have a favourite venue in terms of performing song-repertoire?

Wigmore Hall’s a very special place for me – I’ve always given my best performances there, and hopefully I’ll be back in the not-too-distant future. And when I was studying at Guildhall I got to sing An die ferne Geliebte in the Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, which was pretty cool!

How have you been spending your time in lockdown: focusing on learning new repertoire, or getting the hang of socially-distanced performances?

It’s sometimes hard to keep the motivation going with things as they are at the moment, as so many projects are on hold: this year I was meant to be part of the ECHO Rising Stars project, but for the obvious reasons that hasn’t really got going yet…But there’ve been a few performances here and there: I did a recital on Radio 3 over the summer, then a Beethoven concert in Brussels for about fifty people in October, and some small-scale things at the opera-house here. I haven’t really gone in for the sort of set-ups where the pianist plays in one room and you’re in another – I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with that, and it’s been lovely to see what colleagues have been doing over lockdown, but from a communication point of view it’s just not really for me.

I’ve also been learning Winterreise for a gig with Joe at the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona that’s coming up in June, and in terms of future albums he and I are hoping to record a recital of English song in the summer…We’ll be doing Finzi’s Let Us Garlands Bring, which I did in the final of the Wigmore competition, and it’ll be the first time I’ve sung the whole thing since then!