This is yet another
in the very praiseworthy reissues by
Naxos of the Collins Classics English
Song series. What a shame it would have
been if these valuable recitals had
fallen victim to the demise of the Collins
label. Naxos are doing a real service
by making them available once again.
Liza Lehmann is perhaps
best known as the composer of There
are fairies at the bottom of
our garden (not included here).
However she deserves to be remembered
for far more than that, not least because
she carved out a successful career for
herself both as a composer and as a
singer at a time when it was certainly
difficult for a woman to gain acceptance
as a composer. The British-born daughter
of a well-known German portrait painter,
she was born into a family that mixed
easily in artistic circles. Liszt, for
example, was an acquaintance of her
parents. Later, as Keith Anderson relates
in his liner notes, Liza was able to
study singing with Jenny Lind and she
spent a short time visiting Clara Schumann
and studying with her the lieder of
Robert Schumann.
She seems to have begun
to compose at a fairly early age. For
a while the pursuit of a singing career
took priority (1885 -1894) but after
her marriage in 1894 she forsook the
concert platform and concentrated her
musical energies once again into composition,
while raising a family. The younger
of her two sons was Lesley Bedford,
one of whose own sons is the conductor
and pianist, Steuart Bedford, the pianist
on this CD. If I may say so, he serves
his grandmother’s music admirably both
as pianist and, I strongly suspect,
as a compiler of this programme.
What is Liza Lehmann’s
music like? Well, it appears to me to
be well-crafted and also understandingly
written for the voice - as befits a
singer-composer. I haven’t seen any
music but I wouldn’t think that too
many of the songs are exceptionally
demanding to sing. That’s in no way
to belittle the standards achieved here
for all five performers have clearly
invested a considerable amount of skill
and effort to ensure that the music
is performed to the highest possible
standard, the better to show it off.
Some of the music, however, clearly
is technically demanding. I’m
thinking in particular of Magdalen
at Michael’s Gate, which
was written for Nellie Melba, no less,
and who frequently performed it. As
a general observation, on the evidence
of this programme, the better the poetry
that Lehmann chose to set, the better
the music she wrote. Thus I’m less impressed,
for example, by the excerpts from the
cycle The Daisy Chain than by,
for example, When I am dead, my dearest,
a setting of words by Christina Rossetti.
However, one thing
that particularly distinguishes Liza
Lehmann is her musical sense of humour.
The programme includes several songs
which are settings of overtly humorous
texts, such as the Hilaire Belloc poems
that comprise Four Cautionary
Tales and a Moral or the selections
from Lewis Carroll that form the texts
for Two Nonsense Songs from
‘Alice in Wonderland’. Again, the
excerpts from The Daisy Chain
represent good quality light music.
It may be argued that none of these
songs are "great music" but
Lehmann seems to me to display a pleasing
and genuine lightness of touch. Her
songs are well written and set out to
entertain.
Her music is in very
safe hands on this disc. All four singers
pay her songs the compliment of treating
them as proper art songs and they sing
them characterfully and well. Janice
Watson, for example, is eloquent in
The Lily of a Day and, indeed,
in When I am dead, my dearest,
which follows it on the disc. Catherine
Wyn-Rogers and Neal Davies combine to
make a very good job of the five Belloc
settings, Four Cautionary
Tales and a Moral, which conveniently
comprise one solo for each of them and
three duets. In these items they don’t
overdo the humorous side but, crucially,
they don’t underplay it, either. On
just one point I would have welcomed
a bit more information in the documentation.
We hear six songs from the cycle, The
Daisy Chain but we aren’t told
how many songs are left out. Also, all
four singers take part in The Daisy
Chain. Is this how it was originally
conceived or did Lehmann write it for
a single voice?
Helpfully Naxos print
all the texts (in English) but, quite
honestly the diction of all four singers
is very good and I found little difficulty
in following without the texts. Full
marks to Naxos for giving us the texts,
however, when many other more expensive
labels omit this courtesy to the listener.
This is a most enjoyable
disc. For me, this is high quality light
music performed to a very high standard;
and I mean that as a compliment, for
genuinely good light music, which this
is, is as hard to write as it is to
interpret successfully. While not all
the songs strike me as being equally
successful, at her best Liza Lehmann
wrote very enjoyable and entertaining
songs which should give great pleasure
to listeners and performers alike. I
suspect the performers on this CD enjoyed
themselves – they sound as if they did
– and I think listeners will enjoy the
disc just as much. Well worth investigating,
especially at the Naxos price.
John Quinn
Janice Watson (soprano); Catherine Wyn-Rogers
(mezzo-soprano); Toby Spence (tenor); Neal Davies
(baritone); Steuart Bedford (piano) 
