Terfel follows his inner lieder

Bryn Terfel will bring his father on this trip to New Zealand. Photo / Supplied

Next Saturday Bryn Terfel will be on the Auckland Town Hall stage in a concert that stacks lieder by Schubert and Schumann up against Celtic perennials such as Danny Boy and the Welsh Ar hyd y nos, better known as All Through the Night.

When I talk to him, he is at home in Wales, contemplating Mt Snowdon through the lounge window, admitting that "the Welsh way of life is part and parcel of my individuality".

Terfel is proud of his Faenol Festival, which he founded nine years ago. "It was a monumental decision to be an entrepreneur for the whole month of August," the singer reflects. "Worrying about toilets, parking facilities and ticket sales was something out of my comfort zone."

Yet the rewards for any entrepreneurial anguish have included "cracking opera nights" with audiences of up to 7000 enjoying the voices of Renee Fleming, Rolando Villazon and Angela Gheorghiu.

It was in Wales, winning the lieder section of the Cardiff Singer of the World Competition 20 years ago that he got his first break but, Terfel stresses, not his first job. "I still had to go out and audition," he laughs.

Now he sighs that there aren't so many maestros around but, in those early days he "always took on board whatever those wonderful people told me to do. If you have a conductor like Carlo Maria Giulini telling you to do something, then you bloody well have to do it."

The present tour Downunder is a family affair. "My father's 70," says Terfel. "He's always dreamed about visiting New Zealand. And, as he's a sheep farmer, this trip's like manna from heaven."

The singer has been focusing on the concert stage recently, revisiting favourite venues from Carnegie and Wigmore Halls to Toronto's Roy Thomson Hall. "They're like good restaurants," he jests. "You're bound to go back there."

Scaling his magnificent voice down to recital mode "is like a Lewis Hamilton Formula One oil change," Terfel reflects. "It's such a health check for your singing. It brings you down from what could be seen as the automatic pilot of the opera stage. Every move and colouration of sound has a meaning and the most important thing is your connection with the audience - the way that you tighten that string through words and music is unique."

The first half of Terfel's Auckland programme centres on the poetry of John Masefield.

"Those descriptive wonderful poems have been set by many composers and sometimes famously," he says. "Frederick Keel's Trade Winds was sung countless times by those old bass-baritones and we can learn so much from that old-fashioned singing."

Composers include John Ireland, Peter Warlock and Roger Quilter. Quilter is singled out as quintessentially English. "Whenever I sing his songs, you can imagine an English countryside and a cup of tea in a nice china cup."

He pays fond tribute to Benjamin Luxon, the baritone who brought so many of the good old ballads back into circulation, a man the student Terfel first met when Luxon took masterclasses at the Guildhall School of Music.

"I wasn't a fan of the masterclass format because people would come in for one day, muck about with your technique and singing and leave you in tatters," Terfel remembers. "Benjamin worked with us twice a week for six months and really got involved."

We chat momentarily about Gilbert and Sullivan turning up on his upcoming album, provisionally titled Bad Boy Bryn, which includes a Boito aria that calls for some "crazy whistling ... so my sheep dog trial days come in handy".

It is clear this man really knows his music and worries that younger singers do not explore the repertoire as much as they should.

His advice to the young?

"Use your time at college to learn the repertoire. Don't sit around in foyers sipping coffee and chatting. Go to the libraries, learn these songs and listen to different singers."

One hopes all our would-be young divos and divas make it to the Aotea next Saturday.

Performance

Who: Bryn Terfel in Recital
Where and when: Auckland Town Hall, Saturday June 20 at 8pm