Video Interview, Tim Mead on Beauteous Softness

Released on Pentatone last week, Beauteous Softness sees English countertenor Tim Mead joining forces with La Nuova Musica and David Bates for a programme of songs by Henry Purcell and his contemporaries John Blow, Pelham Humfrey and William Webb, which features favourites such as 'If music be the food of love' and 'An Evening Hymn' as well as relative rarities like the deliciously boisterous 'Yorkshire Feast Song' and Blow's wistful 'Poor Celadon'.

In the run-up to the release of the album (and fresh from a production of Francesco Corselli's Achille in Sciro in Madrid), Tim spoke to me via video-link about the project's lockdown origins, the process of delving deeper into the music of a composer whose choral music he's loved from an early age, Purcell's connections with Blow and Humfrey, and how English music of this period also informed Britten's writing for Oberon in A Midsummer Night's Dream - a role which he's singing in a revival of Peter Hall's legendary staging at Glyndebourne this summer...

Photo credit: Andy Staples.