This disc is a collection of Shakespeare settings. These songs,
dances and instrumental interludes have almost all been composed
for performances and productions of Shakespeare’s plays, and are
mostly drawn from theatrical productions at Stratford-Upon-Avon.
Spanning four centuries, the disc naturally includes
a huge variety of works, and composers range from Robert Johnson
and John Wilson in the seventeenth century, up to and including
the conductor of this disc. This also means a combination of
very different styles – from Elizabethan songs, through Victorian
ballads, and what one might call “English solo song” - referring
to a particular early twentieth century ‘genre’ - to folk music,
light music and almost, at times, a style in the more modern
pieces akin to musicals. This blend actually works very well,
and brings great interest and diversity to the disc.
It opens with a lively version of Dibdin’s The
Warwickshire Lad, and highlights include a lush Orpheus
with his Lute by Sir Arthur Sullivan, a very pretty It
was a Lover and his Lass by William Matthias, a gorgeously
lyrical Under the Greenwood Tree by Howard Blake, and
an incredibly dramatic section from Macbeth, where the
eighteenth-century Richard Leveridge depicts the witches mixing
up their magic brew - the performers here clearly enjoy themselves
with hideous hag voices – excellent!
Also worthy of note is Raymond Leppard’s atmospheric
Horn calls and Interlude from A Midsummer Night’s
Dream, extremely well played here by horn player Michael
Revell, a lovely interlude by Ralph Vaughan Williams, based
on the folk song Lady in the Dark, which was used for
the 1913 Stratford Festival (of which Vaughan Williams was the
musical advisor), and a rather Britten-esque Daffodils
interlude for A Winter’s Tale by Lennox Berkeley, which
is followed by a lilting Waltz by John Gardner that seems
to continue a Britten likeness by hinting at the Four Sea
Interludes.
The disc concludes with a charming setting of When
that I was a little tiny boy by Anthony Bernard, a friend
of Peter Warlock’s, and fellow Elizabethan music enthusiast.
This disc is full of some extremely attractive music, although
if I have one complaint, it must be that the selection leans
too heavily towards the contemporary – more earlier pieces would
have been good, and might have presented a slightly more equal
balance.
The performers are all good – the English Serenata
play with vivacity and enthusiasm, and mezzo soprano Yvonne
Howard and tenor Jamie MacDougall are very good – their flexible,
strong voices are able to deal with the great range of works
presented here.
Em Marshall
