This was billed as an operatic monodrama for mezzo-soprano and chamber ensemble. Frida Kahlo, as most of us know, was a Mexican artist who painted many self-portraits, ‘I paint myself because I am often alone and because I am the subject I know best’. There was a wonderful exhibition dedicated to her life recently at the V&A and there is also a well regarded film, starring Salma Hayek. Frida enjoys a high level of fame and fascination. The composer, Paul Max Edlin has taken words directly from her diary and set them for voice and seven instruments.

This hour long piece, consisted of twelve tableaux passages describing the birth, life and death of Frida Kahlo. They were interspersed with ‘Reflections’, or interludes, which tended to be purely instrumental, evocatively foretelling the end to her short life. The ensemble, the East London Music Group, played with passion and commitment and we were also treated to recorded and sampled sounds from a Magnetic Resonator Piano, as well as a conventional piano. The conductor, Matthew Hardy, who is the group’s founder and Artistic Director, kept it all together with much sensitivity.

The elfin, bare-footed, mezzo-soprano, Katie Bray (fresh from winning the prestigious Joan Sutherland Prize in the 2019 BBC Cardiff Singer of the World competition), sang Frida’s words with tremendous passion. Love and pain were conveyed equally sympathetically, be it declaring love for her husband, the Mexican painter and muralist, Diego Rivera, or describing her leg being amputated. The music was often agitated – frenzied, high pitched strings, or ominous, from the melancholy, lower keys of the piano. It all echoed Frida’s various states of mind. The last word we heard was, ‘Frida’ as the music quietly and hauntingly subsided. You could have heard a pin drop at The Jacqueline du Pré Centre for Music.

 I would love to see this piece evolve and become properly staged. Let’s hope it develops and is given the chance to grow further. We were lucky in Oxford to experience it here first.      ★★★★★    Karin André     4th July 2019