Joubert - Jane Eyre

The Guardian 60

Fredrick/Stout/Thomas/Milhofer/English Symphony Orchestra/Woods
(Somm Recordings)

John Joubert remains best known for choral music, but the composer, 90 this year, has written no fewer than eight operas. Jane Eyre, which he worked on as a side-project for 10 years and completed in 1997, remained unperformed, apart from in a problematic one-off reduction, until the Birmingham concert last October from which this recording was taken. Setting Kenneth Birkin’s libretto, he mercilessly selects just six scenes from Charlotte Brontë’s novel, writing music that is warm and glowing yet astringent, too. He establishes Jane’s rebellious streak right at the start, giving her a short but impassioned musical motif that recurs in her love duet with Rochester and at their eventual reunion. Inevitably, the distillation of the novel into its most dramatic episodes makes the overall tone somewhat overwrought. Any lack of studio polish is overridden by the flow conductor Kenneth Woods brings to the score, and by the principal singers, especially April Fredrick, who gleams in the title role.