Twentieth-Century English Songs
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Composer or Director: Peter Warlock, Ivor (Bertie) Gurney
Label: Classics
Magazine Review Date: 4/1994
Media Format: CD or Download
Media Runtime: 68
Mastering:
ADD
Catalogue Number: PCD1065
Tracks:
Composition | Artist Credit |
---|---|
Down by the Salley Gardens |
Ivor (Bertie) Gurney, Composer
Anthony Rolfe Johnson, Tenor David Willison, Piano Ivor (Bertie) Gurney, Composer |
(An) Epitaph |
Ivor (Bertie) Gurney, Composer
Anthony Rolfe Johnson, Tenor David Willison, Piano Ivor (Bertie) Gurney, Composer |
Desire in Spring |
Ivor (Bertie) Gurney, Composer
Anthony Rolfe Johnson, Tenor David Willison, Piano Ivor (Bertie) Gurney, Composer |
Black Stitchel |
Ivor (Bertie) Gurney, Composer
Anthony Rolfe Johnson, Tenor David Willison, Piano Ivor (Bertie) Gurney, Composer |
My Own Country |
Peter Warlock, Composer
Anthony Rolfe Johnson, Tenor David Willison, Piano Peter Warlock, Composer |
Passing by |
Peter Warlock, Composer
Anthony Rolfe Johnson, Tenor David Willison, Piano Peter Warlock, Composer |
Pretty Ring Time |
Peter Warlock, Composer
Anthony Rolfe Johnson, Tenor David Willison, Piano Peter Warlock, Composer |
Author:
Sheer joy, as it turns out. But I really didn't think it was going to be, for Rolfe Johnson presents in the first of the Songs of Travel such a mild-mannered, drawing-room vagabond. The music tells of ruggedness, the words of passionate affirmation and defiance, and here in this singing is a voice-character that you feel could never step out alongside such a traveller. And what a half-hearted gesture he makes with the portamento up to ''All I ask, the heaven above''. Then, with the second song (''Let Beauty awake'') he serves much more credibly as Stevenson's wayfarer and Vaughan Williams's fellow-countryman, so that from then onwards everything comes together and an hour of great and uninterrupted pleasure lies ahead.
A very special contribution is David Willison's. As he has shown in his records with Benjamin Luxon, he has an almost infallible touch in such things as these: surely the best of our pianists in this repertoire. The accompaniments to the Songs of Travel and Butterworth's A Shropshire Lad do not appear to be difficult, and the composers (better community-members in this respect than their successors) have placed them well within the scope of an amateur. But what a richness of texture they have when played with such intelligent and sensitive professionalism. The flavour of chords and sometimes concealed part-writing in Vaughan Williams's ''Bright is the ring of words'', for instance; the pictorial line of the phrases in ''Loveliest of trees''; the suggestion (perhaps) of a village fiddler's melody in ''The lads in their hundreds'', both from A Shropshire Lad. Everywhere he brings a touch which clarifies and endears.
Rolfe Johnson's singing too is masterly in so many respects. There is not so much of what I gather is (or used to be) designated ''hairpin legato'', that habit of swelling slightly on individual notes, that for myself often registers as a tiresome feature of his style. He phrases with easy breadth, and brings off perfectly points of unsuspected difficulty such as the ending of ''The Roadside fire'' from Songs of Travel. In ''Whither must I wander'' he catches the emotion but does not overplay it, while in Butterworth's ''Is my team ploughing?'' he differentiates the voices of dead and living without exaggeration.
The recordings, dating from the mid-1970s, are fine (though I wondered whether the sudden prominence of the piano in ''Think no more, lad'' was due entirely to the 'bigger', more Brahmsian build of the writing). The songs, to my mind, rank with the best in any language. John Ireland's writing may have a strength that still eludes me, but for the rest (including the lovely things by Gurney and Warlock) they belong (to adapt Housman) to ''the land of found content''.'
A very special contribution is David Willison's. As he has shown in his records with Benjamin Luxon, he has an almost infallible touch in such things as these: surely the best of our pianists in this repertoire. The accompaniments to the Songs of Travel and Butterworth's A Shropshire Lad do not appear to be difficult, and the composers (better community-members in this respect than their successors) have placed them well within the scope of an amateur. But what a richness of texture they have when played with such intelligent and sensitive professionalism. The flavour of chords and sometimes concealed part-writing in Vaughan Williams's ''Bright is the ring of words'', for instance; the pictorial line of the phrases in ''Loveliest of trees''; the suggestion (perhaps) of a village fiddler's melody in ''The lads in their hundreds'', both from A Shropshire Lad. Everywhere he brings a touch which clarifies and endears.
Rolfe Johnson's singing too is masterly in so many respects. There is not so much of what I gather is (or used to be) designated ''hairpin legato'', that habit of swelling slightly on individual notes, that for myself often registers as a tiresome feature of his style. He phrases with easy breadth, and brings off perfectly points of unsuspected difficulty such as the ending of ''The Roadside fire'' from Songs of Travel. In ''Whither must I wander'' he catches the emotion but does not overplay it, while in Butterworth's ''Is my team ploughing?'' he differentiates the voices of dead and living without exaggeration.
The recordings, dating from the mid-1970s, are fine (though I wondered whether the sudden prominence of the piano in ''Think no more, lad'' was due entirely to the 'bigger', more Brahmsian build of the writing). The songs, to my mind, rank with the best in any language. John Ireland's writing may have a strength that still eludes me, but for the rest (including the lovely things by Gurney and Warlock) they belong (to adapt Housman) to ''the land of found content''.'
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