This isn’t a new
release – it’s a reprint or repressing of Somm’s 1999 disc.
Though Jerrold Northrop Moore’s notes plead the case with his
accustomed finesse Elgar’s songs are only occasionally inspired,
more often pleasant, and sometimes salon-nondescript. It didn’t
help that he chose to set texts that were, in the main, so dismal
but sometimes a third or fourth rate poem proves more inspiring
- and less intimidating - to the creative juices than a towering
masterpiece.
I decided to take
up Northrop Moore’s unacknowledged challenge. He mentions one
of Elgar’s favourite singers, John Coates, the dedicatee of
two of these songs. “Arch-chanter John” fortunately recorded
both In the Dawn and my own favourite amongst the songs,
Speak, Music. Whilst I wouldn’t invariably recommend
comparing songs inter-generationally the value of hearing the
“Creator” recordings of Coates is not to be spurned. Neil Mackie,
the pick of the three singers on Somm’s disc, takes the former
song with adroit musicality and subtle skill. His voice is light
but fluid and dynamics are well attended to. The head voice
is sweetly taken. But next to Coates he sounds very much the
parlour gentleman. Coates is ardent, expressive, and tremendously
engaging – and the acoustic Vocalion is not at all bad. In Speak,
Music Coates implores, he loves, he employs rubati, acts
out the lines (hear how memorable he is in “I am fain of it!”)
and brings the song to life with unselfconscious and unembarrassed
intensity. That fine mezzo Catherine Wyn-Rogers sounds altogether
more static and metrical and uninclined to get her feet wet,
emotionally. To be frank she sounds as if the words are unworthy
of much embellishment.
This happens time
and again throughout the recital. Maybe Eric Marshall sounds
a touch lugubrious in his 1925 HMV disc of The Shepherd’s
Song but he is a warm and thoughtful singer. And when Heddle
Nash sang it in 1952 – unissued at the time but now on Dutton
– a generation after the Marshall recording he did so with similar
passion. The art of Elgarian vocal rubato is something that
has now dwindled to insignificance. Nash’s rubato is free and
natural, his singing lively and utterly human. The non-committal
and static responses of today’s singers make a stark contrast.
Another splendid
song – one of the best – is The River. Mackie’s is a
neat and elegant traversal but then turn to Tudor Davies in
the 1920s. Listen to his flaring and undimmed masculinity, the
downward baritonal extension and the invigorating sweep of the
thing. It’s currently available in on Cheyne.
The Pipes of
Pan introduces us to Christopher Maltman who was a most
eloquent baritone then and now, a decade and a half on, ever
more prominent on stage and recital halls. But he too rather
lacks the qualities of personalisation and identification that
made the recordings by Harold Williams and Horace Stevens so
vivid. They weren’t afraid to fling themselves into the sometimes
slipshod tweeness of the words. Perhaps today that is proving
an impenetrable burden for singers.
Throughout Malcolm
Martineau proves a worthy accompanist; he provides much of the
lift and zest of which the singers seem shy. There are full
texts.
Jonathan Woolf
Catherine Wyn-Rogers
(mezzo soprano) ¹ 
