Rutland Boughton

“Roderick Williams is his usual mellifluous self, but these baritone songs, often orchestrated by other hands, are a very mixed bag…” BBC Music Magazine, March 2008 ***

“Roderick Williams is, as ever, admirable in the quality of his tone, the clarity of his diction and the cleanness of his style. The well arranged orchestral accompaniments are sympathetically conducted and carefully played.” Gramophone Magazine, March 2008

“The Immortal Hour is part of theatrical folklore: in London in the early 1920s it ran, unprecedentedly, for 216 consecutive performances and, shortly afterwards, for a further 160 at the first of several revivals. Within a decade it had been played a thousand times. Many in those audiences returned repeatedly, fascinated by the otherworldly mystery of the plot (it concerns the love of a mortal king, Eochaidh, for the faery princess Etain and the destruction of their happiness by her nostalgic longing for the Land of the Ever Young) and by the gentle, lyrical simplicity of its music. In the bleak aftermath of 1918, with civil war in Ireland, political instability at home and the names of Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin emerging from obscurity into the headlines, what blessed escapism this blend of Celtic myth and folk-tinged pentatonic sweetness must have been. Boughton's score still has the power to evoke that world, immediately and effortlessly.
It's quiet, sweet music, muted in colour and softly plaintive, and whenever the plot demands more than this the opera sags. Midir, the visitant from the Land of the Ever Young who lures Etain away from the mortal world, really needs music of dangerously heady, Dionysiac incandescence, but Boughton's vocabulary can run to nothing more transported than the prettily lilting Faery Song and some pages of folksy lyricism with a few showy high notes. No less seriously the music has little dramatic grip. Despite all this, The ImmortalHour does have a quality, difficult to define, that's genuinely alluring. It's there in the touching purity of Etain's music (and how movingly Anne Dawson sings the role).
It's there in the moments of true darkness that the music achieves: Dalua, the tormented Lord of Shadow conjures up something of the sombre shudder of the supernatural world.
The performance could hardly speak more eloquently for the opera. Alan G Melville allows the music to emerge from and retreat into shadowy silences; all the principal singers are accomplished and the superb chorus has been placed so as to evoke a sense of space.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

“it is wonderful to have this delectable material so surprisingly resurrected, and so deliciously served up once more by the very same body that brought it to life” International Record Review, February 2012

“Boughton's symphonic poems paint landscapes, or evoke situations between two people. Bainton's three are all portraits...[Yates] gives a clear sense of the shape of each work...It's difficult to imagine a more spirited set of revivals.” International Record Review, January 2011

“There's much to relish in the offerings by Bainton, all three of which have literary origins...Red-blooded performances, captured with striking amplitude and impact by the Dutton recording team.” Gramophone Magazine, May 2011

“more colourful and winning examples of British symphonic music which have been allowed to languish unheard for too long. Admittedly, there are no great masterpieces here, but the sheer professionalism of the work of these two remarkable composers is matched by a continually high level of inspiration” london24.com, 17th June 2011

“One of the high points here is the singing of Jacques Imbrailo. His firm voice is well supported and cleanly produced, and his holding a good line is to be praised...Shipp catches Iseult well, her basically soft-grained tone takes on a harder edge when it needs to...[Corp] brings full-blooded playing from the orchestra as is fitting but also draws quieter response in intimate scenes.” International Record Review, March 2011

“If you can ignore the words, the writing for both voices and orchestra has a surging confidence that's very appealing, and the musical substance grows on one with repeated hearings. In a strong cast, Heather Shipp as the eponymous Queen and Joan Rodgers as the other Iseult stand out...this is admirably full-blooded performance.” BBC Music Magazine, March 2011 *****

“The Queen of Cornwall dates from 1924, by which time Boughton had moved on to a full and productive assimilation of Wagner's instrumental conception of opera and flexible vocal declamation...For me this opera was quite a revelation and it makes one wonder what other treasures of Boughton await rediscovery.” Gramophone Magazine, September 2011

“This performance is very well cast. Fresh from his success as Billy Budd at Glyndebourne, Jacques Imbrailo sings with an outstanding lyrical beauty that makes Sir Tristram’s ballad-like solos a musical high point, rather than an English apology for Wagnerian grandiloquence. Heather Shipp is excellent as his admirer Iseult...The Queen of Cornwall is a collector’s item for English Wagnerians.” Opera

“None of Rutland Boughton's more than 100 songs is listed in the current catalogue, so this (at very least) breaks new ground and fills a gap. With one exception (Eleanor Farjeon's nativity poem Sweet Ass), the programme draws on sets rather than single songs, so that one has some assurance that the composer is being represented in sustained work, likely to carry the personal flavour and provide a fair sample of his style. As the note-writer for this recital, Michael Hurd, says, the songs have had little attention.
Fiona Macleod (aka William Sharp) is the author of the texts for Five Celtic Love Songs, likeable though ultimately unsatisfying as the music runs its rather loose, improvisatory course. This is so with most of the earlier songs. A strong initial impulse often seems to give way to an unsure sense of development and a tendency to overload. Much firmer in control and more assured in technique are the later Symbol Songs (1920) and Sweet Ass (1928), already mentioned.
These are attractive and could prove useful additions to the singer's repertoire.
The mezzo Louise Nott brings a voice of fine quality, not always quite even in its production but expressively used. The accompaniments are expansive and eventually become more genuinely pianistic: Alexander Taylor makes the best of them.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010