It never ceases to
enthral me to hear historic recordings
of singers (in particular) – such a
world apart from the style and sound
we are used to today. Many people find
the older style inaccessible or embarrassingly
over the top, yet as well as offering
an historical insight, it also has a
charm of its own.
This disc is a compilation
of English song – ranging from composers
such as Purcell and Arne at one end
of the spectrum to Boughton and Quilter
at the other. The performers are all
familiar names, and were the stars of
their day. The contralto Astra Desmond
opens the disc with four Purcell songs.
Although her impressive portamento gets
too much after a while, and her voice
comes across as very pressured, she
is nonetheless delightfully expressive,
and her clarity of diction is a joy
to hear. John Heddle Nash follows this
with four Shakespeare songs by Arne,
accompanied by Ernest Lush. His is a
rather harsh voice, and his singing
(as the accompaniment!) just slightly
matter-of-fact and plodding in the first
song, Blow Blow thou Winter Wind.
I also found the way he sings "enemy"
in Under the Greenwood Tree rather
unmusical. Yet his enunciation is, like
Desmond, faultless, and the last of
his songs, Where the bee Sucks,
is a true gem – a gorgeous setting that
is great fun and works very well indeed
– worth hearing for the song if not
necessarily the performance! Nash also
performs four Quilter songs later on
– again Shakespeare settings. One feels
that he captures the spirit of these
much better than he does the Arne. There
is none of the stilted, slightly emotion-less
quality that pervades the Arne songs
– rather, he endows these songs with
true feeling and passion – listen, for
example, to his gorgeously heart-felt
"weep" in Come Away Death.
He is a touch heavy in It was a love
and his Lass and the words "lovers
love the springtime" in particular
could do with a little more joy and
lightness, but this does not in any
way mar the song, and, as in O Mistress
Mine, his pronunciation is strikingly
beautiful.
The tenor Richard Lewis
sings My Lovely Celia by George
Munro (not by Lane Wilson, as the sleeve-notes
claim – Wilson did not, as far as I
am aware, set the lovely Celia
words to music) and the Faery Song
from Boughton’s then extremely (and
justly!) popular "music drama"
The Immortal Hour. Both of these
are pleasantly and sensitively sung,
although I found the hiss of the 1948
recording rather irritatingly intrusive
(curiously enough, more so than in Desmond’s
Purcell recording of four years earlier).
Another famous baritone,
John Cameron, follows the Boughton with
Butterworth’s Shropshire lad.
His voice is beautifully rich and dark
and he brings out the nuances of the
songs well although a little more yearning
and wistfulness in "Oh, tis true,
tis true" in When I was One
and Twenty wouldn’t have gone amiss.
His is generally a sensitive approach
to the songs – as demonstrated well
in the moments of delicacy that he captures
in The Lads in their Hundreds.
Similarly, in Is my Team Ploughing,
he easily rivals many contemporary singers
in his excellent contrast between the
live man and the dead, in what is a
deeply moving and effective performance.
Bredon is beautifully performed,
although it could be a little more chilling,
with more anguish in the lines "went
to church alone", "would not
wait for me" and "O noisy
bells be dumb!" Both On the
Idle Hill of Summer and Think
no More Lad show off his big, bold
baritone, and he seems to revel in these.
As a general rule, this is impressive
singing, with a lovely tone, well paced,
and performed with great feeling. In
When I was One and Twenty, Cameron
exemplifies one characteristic of the
style of his day – a great freedom in
rhythm – something that is seen too
much as a flaw today and that is sacrificed
at the altar of exactitude, with expressiveness
and sensitivity towards the music, and
the composer’s poetic intent, going
up in flames with it. Admittedly we
would not wish the performers to have
too much rhythmic laxity, but a little
liberality allows artists to transmit
the meaning of the song more fully.
Gerald Moore provides masterly accompaniment
to these songs – clear, compelling and
sympathetic.
Gwen Catley (a singer
already well represented in the Dutton
catalogue) has only one song – Lehman’s
When ’ere a Snowflake Leaves the
Sky – which she communicates well
with her rather dated and occasionally,
shrill, but generally sweet and richly
operatic voice. Woodeforde-Finden’s
Pale Hands I Love follows, performed
by Alfred Piccaver – unfortunately both
a song and a style that realise a great
amount of the criticism that is directed
at English song and at historic recordings
by sceptics. Like the Lehman, this is
an over-sentimental song, and this is
a rendition that makes far too much
use of vibrato and of slowly sweeping,
swooping, scooping phrases, with Piccaver
often lagging far behind the hapless
(and anonymous) accompanist!
Walter Midgley presents
two further Quilter songs, with Gerald
Moore again at the piano, displaying
to possibly too great an extent the
characteristic of freedom of rhythm!
Unfortunately, his tuning is sometimes
slightly out in To Daises – rather
painful given the impressive volume
that he seemingly so effortlessly musters.
In both songs Midgley gives the impression
of concentrating far too much on the
sound he belts out rather than the meaning
of the words – they are not terribly
sensitively sung.
Owen Brannigan concludes
the disc with a final Quilter song,
The Lark in the Clear Air. He
has an incredibly warm and enveloping
voice – deep, rich and romantic, and
provides a lovely ending to the disc.
This is a fascinating
disc, and includes some wonderful performances
– not least Nash’s Quilter songs and
Cameron’s Butterworth. The sound is,
as a general rule, remarkably good,
and, with one of two exceptions, does
not at all detract. The standard of
singing varies wildly - some singers
do not perform the songs very musically,
some are guilty of a lack of understanding
for the words – and the excessive vibrato
and remarkable disregard for written
rhythms and tempo can take some getting
used to! However, I would definitely
recommend this disc for both historical
reasons, and for those songs here that
really are gems – to any lover of English
music, or to anyone interested in historical
recordings, or the singers featured.
It is, in any case, good to see Dutton
keeping up their excellent work and
providing us with recordings to which
we would otherwise regrettably have
no access.
Em Marshall
Footnote
Note
from Christopher Howell
The
title information at the head of Em
Marshall's review of this disc gives
no mention of the pianist in the four
Purcell songs sung by Astra Desmond.
This singer certainly recorded a number
of Purcell songs in the 1940s for Decca
with Harold Craxton at the piano - a
rather rare opportunity to hear in action
the great accompanist of the immediate
pre-Moore period. Is it possible to
confirm that these are the recordings
in question? (If Dutton did not supply
this information on the disc, could
they comment?)
Dutton
were unable to comment [LM]
Note
from Jonathan Woolf
According
to Michael Smith's Decca Discography
(privately published, 1999)Craxton was
indeed the accompanist on the four Purcell
songs - Retir'd from..., Silvia, I See
She Flies Me, and The Brow of Richmond
Hill. The additional Desmond-Craxton
recordings were M549, M550, M569 and
K1098. Incidentally Desmond made a number
of unissued Decca sides at around this
time - Bridge and Bax (arranged) with
Gerald Moore and Wolf songs with Phyllis
Spurr. Re Craxton CH might be aware
that he made recordings with Felix Salmond
(Columbia,1920)and with Clara Butt (Columbia,
1918)
DUTTON VOCALION CDLX 7104 [74:31]
