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See Terms & Conditions for p&p rates. | |  | Most Grand to Die
James Rutherford, with Eugene Asti at the piano, here records his first disc for BIS, presenting a programme of works from composers all influenced greatly by the First World War. George Butterworth’s A Shropshire Lad takes texts from A.E. Housman’s poems of young men facing death. Vaughan Williams turned to poems by Robert Louis Stevenson, for his Songs of Travel, a set of nine songs in which the wanderer-narrator philosophically accepts the mixture of joys and sorrows offered to him along the road. Gurney – the youngest of the three composers – was also a poet, and in Severn Meadows expressed his longing for home in both text and music. Severn Meadows was composed during Gurney’s time in the trenches. “The quality of the Gurney songs may be a bit uneven, but Rutherford handles them all with great tact, his tone fined down, his diction immaculate, and without a hint of extraneous pathos. In the authentically great Butterworth sets Rutherford's approach is exemplary.” The Guardian, 15th August 2012 **** “Rutherford's full tone, dark, possibly bass-baritone rather than BIS's designation of baritone, is released with the vigour to resemble somebody, here the vagabond, striding purposefully along the lane...Asti's playing gels with Rutherford's singing in these Gurney songs, as it does in the other pieces...Rutherford's enunciation is all one could wish for.” International Record Review, September 2012 “A hefty bass-baritone in every sense, he's inevitably compared with Bryn Terfel, but his voice seems darker and somewhat smoother, less given to pianissimi but still expressive...Songs of Travel has a notably virile energy, reinforced by veteran accompanist Eugene Asti's unusually driven reading...A very worthwhile recital.” BBC Music Magazine, December 2012 ***** “Rutherford brings his Wagnerian bass-baritone to bear on the song repertoire with uncommon skill and sensitivity...The only serious drawback comes at the top of the voice, where Wagnerian bluster and a slow vibrato sometimes detract from the beauty of his singing...but Rutherford has given notice of a very appreciable talent for song. With accompaniments of exemplary precision, this disc is highly recommended.” Gramophone Magazine, November 2012 | | | (also available to download from $10.50) | In stock - usually despatched within 1 working day. |
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| |  | The English Song Series Volume 19 - Ivor Gurney Songs
Described by his teacher, Stanford, as “the one who most fulfilled the accepted ideas of genius”, the poet and composer Ivor Gurney composed more than 300 songs despite suffering from bipolar disorder and tuberculosis. The Five Elizabethan Songs show the young composer’s astonishing limpid fluency, while Tears and Sleep rank among his most exquisite creations. Comedy, heavenly rapture, tender urgency and lovelorn longing all touch the music of this ‘lover and maker of beauty’, whose songs find ideal interpreters in Susan Bickley and Iain Burnside. “Susan Bickley’s sensitivity and vocal allure confirming her among the finest mezzos of her generation” Classical Source “…Susan Bickley shares with Gurney a direct and instinctive response to the inflections, metres and emotional colours of the English language.” BBC Music Magazine, Christmas 2009 **** “…the settings of John Masefield are especially memorable, notably "By a Bierside" with a wonderful final climax, superbly conveyed here by Susan Bickley. Wherever you turn, these songs offer illumination and refreshment, splendidly captured not only by Susan Bickley but by her ever-sensitive accompanist, Iain Burnside.” Gramophone Magazine, November 2009 “Bickley’s attractive mezzo is the perfect interpreter for Gurney, gutsy one moment, restrained the next, whilst textual clarity is always given paramount importance. Iain Burnside accompanies her superbly on the piano, with real passion for the music.” Opera Britannia, 26th August 2009 *** “...as Susan Bickley's beautifully understated performances with pianist Iain Burnside show, Gurney was not only an important figure in early 20th-century English song, but also a distinctive one detached from its folksy mainstream. Gurney's style is much more European, much more conscious of the German Lieder tradition, and Schumann especially; this is a well-conceived and important disc for all English music enthusiasts.” The Guardian, 7th August 2009 **** | | | (also available to download from $6.00) | In stock - usually despatched within 1 working day. |
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| |  | English Orchestral Songs
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| |  | My True Love Hath My Heart: English Songs
Sarah Connolly received excellent reviews for her recital performance of ‘English Songs’ on 11 April 2011 at the Alice Tully Hall in New York. The New York Times wrote: ‘Ms Connolly’s voice was strong and steady through its range, velvety, but with a soft, subtle graininess that gave weight and presence to even her most ethereal floated notes.’ Here the mezzo-soprano, accompanied by Malcolm Martineau on piano, performs four arrangements by Benjamin Britten: three folk songs and one song from an early choral work. These complement the recent Britten CD on Chandos, on which Connolly performs the cantata Phaedra as well as A Charm of Lullabies (CHAN 10671). Next come eleven songs from the 1920s, which is considered the golden decade for English art songs. Among the highlights are By a Bierside, Ivor Gurney’s stark reflection on death, written in the World War I trenches, and Herbert Howells’s King David which has long been considered a masterpiece. Howells himself said: ‘I am prouder to have written King David than almost anything else of mine.’ The most recent contribution to this disc of English Songs is the surreally retro A History of the Thé Dansant by Sir Richard Rodney Bennett, which was published in 1995. “Her singing is consistently beautiful in this programme of English songs” Sunday Times, 16th October 2011 “They create a sense of isolation within the sadness of King David; they capture Ireland's responses to the poetry of Hardy, Sidney and Symons with total commitment; and they respond with sentience to Gurney's uniquely eloquent feeling for the inflections of the English language in two of his classic songs” BBC Music Magazine, December 2011 **** “One of today’s most intelligent musical mezzo-sopranos, Sarah Connolly is in gloriously fluent and expressive voice for an imaginatively programmed selection of mid 20th-century English song...Malcolm Martineau’s accompaniment is exemplary in its sensitivity.” The Telegraph, 27th October 2011 ***** “It is good to find an English singer in her prime championing the lesser-known art songs of her native tradition, and making them sound not so much twee as magical: listen to Connolly’s artless handling of Britten’s “Corpus Christi Carol”, the quiet rapture she finds in Howells’s “Kind David”, the fun she has with the Foxtrot from Richard Rodney Bennett’s “History of Thé Dansant”.” Financial Times, 30th October 2011 **** “her sense of drama is never overstated. She excels, therefore, in capturing the masculine melancholy of Britten's lullabies and Bennett's brittle, unpredictable scenes from a long marriage. Martineau responds throughout with characteristically flawless, subtle and intuitive accompaniment.” Classic FM Magazine, December 2011 **** “Connolly sings immaculately, with impeccably sensitive accompaniment from Malcolm Martineau, in sound both clear and perfectly balanced.” Gramophone Magazine, January 2012 | | | (also available to download from $10.50) | Usually despatched in 2 - 3 working days. (Available now to download.) |
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| |  | Severn Meadows
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| |  | When I was one-and-twentyButterworth and Gurney Songs
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