CD Review
Various composers: Silent Noon, Bryn Terfel, bass-baritone
- Composer
- Various (Somervell, Quilter, Vaughan Williams, Gurney and others)
- Artist
- Bryn Terfel, bass-baritone; Malcolm Martineau, piano
- Label
- Deutsche Grammophon
- Catalogue
- 00289 474 2192
- Reviewed by
- Anne McAlister
This is a delicious disc, a journey through the golden age of English song, performed by two artists steeped in the genre. The core of the disc is Arthur Somervell’s song cycle A Shropshire Lad, the first such cycle drawing on A. E. Housman’s poetry. Terfel and Martineau vividly convey the cycle’s pervading sense of nostalgia, but also strike to the heart of each song, be it the sweetness/bleakness of In Summer-time on Bredon or the fatalism of Think no more, lad; Laugh, be jolly, delivered with an edgy raucousness that perfectly encapsulates the frustration at pointless death embodied in the verses.
Surrounding this work are some of the finest jewels in the English song repertoire. Quilter’s Three Shakespeare Songs are stunningly sung; Terfel invests them with a tremendous breadth of emotion, as indeed he does everything on this disc. Quilter’s Now sleeps the crimson petal is exquisite; if you are not moved to tears by this track, you are hard-hearted indeed! Two settings of Yeats’s The Cloths of Heaven give us the chance to compare Dilys Elwyn-Edwards’s tender and beautiful version from 1950 with that of Thomas Dunhill in 1912.
In lighter mood, Terfel and Martineau swagger through Michael Head’s Money, O!, provide a rumbustious Oliver Cromwell in Britten’s arrangement, and thoroughly enjoy themselves in a rollicking, rum-soaked Captain Stratton’s Fancy (one of a pair of songs Warlock somewhat improbably entitled Two True Toper’s Tunes to Troll with Trulls and Trollops in a Tavern). Vaughan Williams is represented by Silent Noon and Linden Lea, and Ivor Gurney by Sleep, sung with heart-searing anguish. Even Edward Lear gets a look-in, with two limericks ostensibly set by Karol Drofnatski (think Stanford backwards, and you’ll get there!).
This is seventy minutes of delight, possibly even better than The Vagabond (Terfel and Martineau’s superb 1995 CD). Buy it!
A note on this page
Originally published by Anne McAlister, recovered from mmmusic's own archive and reproduced here as the critic wrote it.
Questions about this recording
What is the centrepiece of this recital?
Arthur Somervell's song cycle A Shropshire Lad, the first cycle ever drawn from A. E. Housman's poetry.
What else is on the disc besides Somervell?
Songs by Quilter (including Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal), two rival settings of Yeats's The Cloths of Heaven, Vaughan Williams's Silent Noon and Linden Lea, Ivor Gurney's Sleep, and a set of folksong arrangements including Britten's take on Oliver Cromwell.
Is this a follow-up to an earlier Terfel/Martineau disc?
The review compares it favourably to the duo's earlier 1995 disc The Vagabond, calling this one possibly even better.
Is this recording still available to buy?
Yes, Deutsche Grammophon's catalogue number 474 2192 remains findable through the label and classical retailers. We don't run an in-house shop, so we link out to Amazon and Discogs below.
