Review: Nightsongs/Patrick Wolf, Tyntesfield

Being whisked away to an out-of-town location for a night at a grandiose gothic manor is not your typical Valentine’s Day activity. But for about 100 Patrick Wolf fans, this red letter day really was a one-off. 

By no means was this just a Patrick Wolf performance in an unusual setting. On arrival, the guests were briefed on the story of the house, the grounds and the family who built and owned if for almost 200 years. 

Guided by candlelight from the visitor centre to the house, the blindness to one’s immediate surroundings, the stars showing their full splendour above and the occasional twinkle of lights from Nailsea gave a sense of complete removal from the city. The absence of that relentless sensory overload served as a perfect precursor to what lay ahead. 

First impressions are everything, and the turrets and bay windows of the Bath stone house’s façade, lit from the front in all their glory, dwarfed the crowd gathered in front of the five wooden chairs at its base. Dressed from head to toe in black and brandishing a dove saw each, the Reckless Sleepers filed across the courtyard in unison and took a chair each, sawing pieces from their chairs’ legs in an unnerving installation befitting of such an occasion. 

On a tour of the house and its contents, the a cappella sounds from various singers around the stairway and landing filled the house, creating an eerie ambience as guests explored the bedrooms, the study, the library and the drawing room. 

And that ambience continued as the guests moved up the hill and filed into the wooden pews in the chapel, whose stained-glass windows overlooked the house below. As Patrick Wolf began, it felt less a performance and more a shared experience, such was the intimacy of the setting and the occasion. With barely a word from Wolf until the closing stages, his voice filled the chapel and the stone walls held the sound perfectly.  

He moved effortlessly between keyboards, organ and violin and on an extended rendition of Peter Pan looped the sounds made on harp as he crossed the stage to return to his keyboard-organ setup. There were no smartphones filming or recording as the dim light caused various gilded items around the chapel to shimmer. And when that light caught Wolf’s face during Teignmouth, it was as though the pomp and flamboyance of his more upbeat offerings had never existed; here was a man wearing his heart on his sleeve and performing as though this was the only gig he’d play that mattered. 

As his performance drew to a close with an impassioned Damaris and a heartfelt Bluebells, he began to engage with the crowd, after preferring to talk through his bares-all lyrics for much of his set. He explained the research he’d carried out while preparing for the event and the time he’d spent in the summerhouse, working on a new song inspired by the house and its story. If the intimacy of the performance had begun to remove the barrier between artist and audience, his sharing of his own impressions finished the job.

Photo by Paul Blakemore