Singer, pianist and executive producer all contribute a preface to this disc, saying how good the songs are and (the producer) how well they are performed. Nostalgia is mentioned, and it is true that there is a little tug on the heart towards what Betjeman called “that Edwardian erstwhile”. Still, songs such as these, or at any rate some of them, are just beginning now to stand on their merits without too much association with front parlour, antimacassar, aspidistra and the terrible sadness of the First World War. Bless this house, for instance, can be valued as a well-made melody with sincere and heartfelt verses. Others speak for themselves in the effect they have when introduced into a concert programme at the Wigmore Hall in recent years with “Pale hands I loved” (Kashmiri Love Song), Roses of Picardy and A brown bird singing. The composers of those songs, like Eric Coates with his Birdsongs at Eventide, did have something which was distinctly of their period and which gains, rather than depreciates, with the passage of time.
Nostalgia is still more powerfully engendered by Robert White’s singing. He is of the old school, brought up on McCormack rather than Pears, and he knows by training and instinct what legato means. His voice has deepened, with loss of quality on the upper notes (none heard here above the A flat) when these are sung loudly. He still produces his voice with an evenness which I really wonder whether any from our younger generation of tenors (fine artists as many of them are) could command supposing they wanted to. As for the McCormack influence, it is remarkable how free he is of the dangers of imitation; yet at times (“you’ll come back to us” and “where’er they may be”, for instance, in God be with our boys tonight) the memory is in the voice, present almost as part of the song itself. Many charming and graceful things are done, by pianist as well as singer, and charming things are told in Robert White’s insert-notes, not least in his recollection of Little grey home in the West sung impromptu to some surprised and delighted dinner guests by HM The Queen Mother.
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