Britten: Fish in the Unruffled Lakes (No. 4 from Fish in the Unruffled Lakes)

“Listening to this music leaves one in no doubt that Britten ranks among the very greatest song composers, blessed with an unerring instinct for matching word to note and the creation of poetic atmosphere, as well as producing some gloriously singable melodic lines.” The Telegraph, 3rd November 2011

“All the singers are supported by Malcolm Martineau's wonderfully characterised accompaniments...Allan Clayton and Elizabeth Atherton give superb accounts of the declamatory Michelangelo Sonnets and the settings of Auden's On This Island respectively, but Nicky Spence seems slightly self-conscious in the Scots dialect of the Soutar songs, and Benedict Nelson doesn't always summon sufficient weight of tone for the Blake cycle.” The Guardian, 24th November 2011 ***

“it is fortuitous that such a range of talented young tenors is on hand...Whoever he is accompanying, pianist Malcolm Martineau is an expert guide. Though other individual recordings may be preferable, this second volume of Britten songs is again greater than the sum of its parts.” Gramophone Magazine, January 2012

“It's good to hear four quite different tenors responding to the song-cycles written for Peter Pears, and recreating each one in a totally distinctive way. Allan Clayton's feisty tenor takes on the Seven Sonnets of Michelangelo, his voice both heroic and intimate. Nicky Spence's 'Who are these Children?' is the outstanding performance of this volume: he really sells these wonderful settings of the pacificist poet William Soutar, characterising their compassion.” BBC Music Magazine, January 2012 ****

“Bostridge is in the royal line of Britten's tenor interpreters. Indeed his imaginative response to words and music may come closer than any to Pears himself. He's heard here in a veritable cornucopia of mostly unfamiliar and unknown songs (the Donne cycle apart), mainly from the earliest period of Britten's song-writing career when his inspiration was perhaps at its most free and spontaneous. The three settings from Ronald Duncan's This way to the Tomb nicely match that poet's florid, vocabulary-rich style as Britten was to do again two years later in Lucretia, with 'Night', based on a B-minor ground bass, a particularly arresting piece. The Auden settings, roughly contemporaneous with On this Island, all reflect Britten's empathy with the poet at that time. The third, To lie flat on the back, evinces Britten's gift for writing in racy mode, as does When you're feeling like expressing your affection, very much in the style of Cabaret Songs. Much deeper emotions are stirred by the two superb Beddoes settings (Wild with passion and If thouwilt ease thine heart), written when the composer and Pears were on a ship returning home in 1942. The red cockatoo itself is an early setting of Waley to whom Britten returned in Songs fromthe Chinese. All these revelatory songs are performed with full understanding and innate beauty by Bostridge and Johnson, who obviously have a close artistic rapport. The Donne Sonnets are as demanding on singer and pianist as anything Britten wrote, hence their previously small representation in the catalogue. Both artists pierce to the core of these electrifying songs, written after, and affected by, Britten's visit to Belsen with Menuhin in 1945. The recording catches the immediacy of these riveting performances. A richly satisfying issue.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

“O the pleasure of discovering these songs in performances as good as these” Gramophone Magazine