Much of the best of Warlock is here. The Capriol Suite shows the scholar-musician in whom the discovery of a book of sixteenth-century dances extended from academic pleasure into creative delight. The songs for voice and string quartet are animated by a keen response to the Elizabethan poetry he so loved, and the accompaniment brings out more explicitly than in his writing for piano the essentially contrapuntal mode in which he thought. The Serenade for Delius’s 60th birthday is an affectionate, practical tribute to a major musical influence in his life. The Curlew goes perhaps as far as music can in finding a voice and a form for the desolation which was also a part of his inner self.
Least familiar is likely to be the set of string-accompanied songs. Michael Pilkington’s notes point out that they are of three kinds, as far as their provenance is concerned: the first two, which were written at the same time as the piano versions; the next two (closely paired, being rewritings of As ever I saw) scored immediately for strings only; and the remaining five adapted from a piano original. These alone, finely performed as they are, secure a welcome for the record: all are subtly delightful settings, and those who (like myself) have long known As ever I saw but have not come upon these later versions will be especially charmed by their freshness and ingenuity.
The Nash Ensemble play with a strong feeling for what one might call Warlock’s speaking voice. This is particularly so in The Curlew, where the instruments have a more declamatory eloquence than usual. John Mark Ainsley sings well, though with a certain impersonality. Adrian Thompson’s relatively uneven and uningratiating voice in the recent recording of The Curlew in Collins’s English Song Series is not so disadvantageous here as might be expected. It is Ian Partridge’s recording of 1973 that shows how a more beautiful singing-style than either of these possesses can be combined with a more complete and personal response. In the orchestral works, comparisons generally favour the Nash Ensemble whose playing of the Capriol Suite has a more robust dance-energy than (for instance) the 1977 version under Marriner, and the Serenade becomes sharper in mood and mode than in the more relaxed performance under Del Mar. The strings and cor anglais are recorded with plenty of body and presence; and, as usual, Hyperion’s presentation is first-rate.'