I first met baritone Robert Rice – “Berty” to everyone who knew him – in April 2013, when he gave the first of three challenging song recitals for York Late Music.
Our introduction was brief.
“Hi, I’m Steve.”
“Berty,” he replied.
“Seriously?”
He performed my song cycle Songs for Fred with pianist Elizabeth Mucha, the first of which sets David Irwin Phillips’ poem Coalface Blues. The poem is written in Yorkshire dialect. Berty asked whether he should sing it exactly as written.
“Yes,” I said. “As if you are Arthur Scargill.”
“Seriously?”
At that point, we were even.
Berty’s closest collaborator at York Late Music was the composer David Power. With pianist Will Vann Berty recorded a wonderful CD of David’s songs in 2022, 29 Songs (Prima Facie). In a moving Facebook post, Will wrote:
“I’m looking at the CD now but haven’t yet summoned up the strength to listen to it.”
They also collaborated on a remarkable York Late Music concert in February 2024. Writing in Musical Opinion, Paul Conway noted that:
“At the programme’s heart was a succession of songs by Herbert Howells (1892–1983) and Cecil Armstrong Gibbs (1889–1960) featuring texts from Walter de la Mare’s 1913 book of rhymes for children, Peacock Pie.”
The concert included nine new commissions. Of Herbert Howells’ and Philip Cooke’s settings of de la Mare’s Full Moon, Conway wrote simply:
“Both songs were exquisitely rendered.”
There are many touching posts on Remembering Robert Rice, recalling different memories of the man and musician – and the affection people clearly felt for him.
Many of them seemed to coalesce around this reflection from Tom Robson:
“Berty was one of the kindest and most gentle humans anyone could meet, incredibly talented, devastatingly humble, and full of humour.”
Reading the many tributes, I’m reminded again of the man I met that afternoon in York – warm, funny, generous, and quietly brilliant.
He was one of those souls who made the light shine that little bit brighter.
Steve Crowther