With “Shapes of Sleep”, guitarist James Boyd, inspired by night, dreams, melancholy and the moody, timeless nature of the East Anglian landscape where he makes his home, has put together a programme in which he inverts “the new moon with the old moon in her arms” by cradling Tippett’s The Blue Guitar and Britten’s Nocturnal in the arms of Dowland’s music. The effect is quite beautiful: Tippett’s colourful evocation of both Picasso’s painting and the Wallace Stevens poem that it inspired rises effortlessly out of Dowland’s Chromatic Fancy before sinking into another Dowland fantasy; Boyd’s transcription of Dowland’s Flow my teares then prepares the way for Britten’s variations on Come heavy sleep.

Boyd’s interpretative approach is based on the human voice – his training included vocal studies with countertenor Charles Brett – and this comes across in a lyrical style enriched by a gorgeous tone and generous tempi (some may find them too generous: Boyd’s Nocturnal is around 20 minutes compared with Bream’s 14 minutes or so). But what most impresses is a sense of naturalness, of ebb and flow, recalling both Bream’s and Segovia’s willingness to savour the moment. This is particularly evident in Flow my teares: Boyd’s playing seems irradiated by the import of the original song’s text.>BR>
This impressively eloquent recital has been perfectly captured by John Taylor in the Snape Maltings; booklet-notes and packaging are of the same high standard. Would that there were more classical guitarists around with Boyd’s taste and imagination.