Contemporary Award

The NMC Songbook
Various artists
NMC NMCD150

In his review of the “The NMC Songbook”, David Gutman took the opportunity to highlight a few of his personal favourites: “In Hugh Wood’s George Herbert setting, careful workmanship does not preclude a Tippettian sense of exaltation. I hear a similar sense of engagement in Simon Holt’s unaccompanied declamation (evoking a real-life incident in rural India) and Brian Elias’s more subdued John Clare solo. The way in which the items are juxtaposed can be crucial too; the cooler limpidity of Howard Skempton and Gavin Bryars is doubly welcome in context.” DSG also pointed out that “only a critic or a fool would listen to the entire collection at a sitting. Much better to study at leisure what should prove to be an important cultural document.”