One of the most grown-up review sites around

2020
54,416 reviews
and more.. and still writing ...

Search MusicWeb Here

     
  
 

 

International mailing


 
Founder: Len Mullenger                                    Editor in Chief:John Quinn             


Some items
to consider

new MWI
Current reviews

old MWI
pre-2023 reviews

paid for
advertisements

Acte Prealable Polish recordings

Forgotten Recordings
Forgotten Recordings
All Forgotten Records Reviews

TROUBADISC
Troubadisc Weinberg- TROCD01450

All Troubadisc reviews


FOGHORN Classics

Alexandra-Quartet
Brahms String Quartets

All Foghorn Reviews


All HDTT reviews


Songs to Harp from
the Old and New World


all Nimbus reviews



all tudor reviews


Follow us on Twitter


Editorial Board
MusicWeb International
Founding Editor
   
Rob Barnett
Editor in Chief
John Quinn
Contributing Editor
Ralph Moore
Webmaster
   David Barker
Postmaster
Jonathan Woolf
MusicWeb Founder
   Len Mullenger

REVIEW


Advertising on
Musicweb


Donate and keep us afloat

 

New Releases

Naxos Classical
All Naxos reviews

Chandos recordings
All Chandos reviews

Hyperion recordings
All Hyperion reviews

Foghorn recordings
All Foghorn reviews

Troubadisc recordings
All Troubadisc reviews


all cpo reviews

Divine Art recordings
Click to see New Releases
Get 10% off using code musicweb10
All Divine Art reviews


All APR reviews

Lyrita recordings
All Lyrita Reviews

 

Wyastone New Releases
Obtain 10% discount

 

 

alternatively
CD: MDT AmazonUK AmazonUS

Songs Now : British Songs of the 21st Century
David POWER (b.1962)
Eight Evening Songs (2004-07) [12:03]
Tom ARMSTRONG
Opened Spaces (2007) [4:00]
David LANCASTER
Memory of Place (2010) [9:31]
Richard WHALLEY
Six Songs of Old Japanese Wisdom (2007) [10:31]
Peter REYNOLDS (b.1958)
Adieu to All Alluring Toys (2011) [4:32]
Steve CROWTHER
Songs for Don (2007) [15:41]
William Rhys MEEK (b.1963)
Winter is a Slow Death Waiting (2010) [3:46]
Michael PARKIN
Three Songs (2001-09) [7:43]
Paul Carey Jones (baritone)
Ian Ryan (piano)
rec. National Centre for Early Music, York, 2011. DDD
MERIDIAN CDE 84614 [67:50]

Experience Classicsonline


If this album of contemporary songs by British composers does indeed reflect 21st century Britain, as the title promises, then Britain must be a rather sombre, serious place, with little warmth or contentment. 'Winter is a slow death waiting', as one of the songs has it.
 
One of the featured composers, David Power, provides introductory notes, in which he offers the following contextualisation: "In recent decades, the influence of the European avant-garde has receded, the influence of rock music has become ever stronger and British composers seem to have become more at ease with stylistic diversity as well as with their own national musical heritage." There are some very big assumptions in that statement, but Power - whose biographical note says that his "initial interest was rock music but the electronic instrumentals on David Bowie's album Low prompted a change in direction" - is more controversial when he reports an informal audience vote at a recent festival in England indicating the public's preference for the kind of new song featured here over the established masterpieces of Britten, Quilter, Finzi, Bridge and Butterworth. 

If that is the case, sales of this CD should do very well, but given the predominantly conservative nature of 'classical' audiences, it does seem rather unlikely. The texts set here are all contemporary in character, chiefly elliptic or cryptic, with minimum or obscure prosody. Many range from the slightly pretentious to the very pretentious, and beyond that to the pointless. An example of the former is The Waiting by Jane MacNamee: "The waiting/ the waiting/ spilled into me/ The world is a stranger without you." (The end). The second verse of Instinct, a translated haiku by Kobayashi Issa, gives an example of pointless: "lightning flash -/ not giving a damn/ the toad's face". The best poetry is to be found in the three more traditional-themed texts - ironically anonymous - of Peter Reynolds' Adieu to All Alluring Toys, and in the eight by Don Walls set by Steve Crowther in Songs for Don, which are modern/urban but easily comprehensible. One of them, incidentally - 'Junkie' - is a rather graphic portrayal of a drug addict's lot, and does include the F-word. 

However bad or good, in all cases the poems are improved by their settings, which, though often atonal and modernistically jerky, are full of atmosphere, adventure and bite from beginning to end. All these composers, on this admittedly scant evidence, seem to have something to say to 21st century audiences - provided they can find them! 

Cardiff-born baritone Paul Carey Jones has a fine, powerful voice. He deals with the many technical and expressive difficulties posed by these composers very well, on the whole - as for example in the opening of David Lancaster's Memory of Place. His enunciation is impressively lucid, aided in no small part by some very thoughtfully written scores. His vowels are inevitably coloured Welsh, but not to any distracting degree. His Rs are nearly always heavily rolled, which comes across as something of an affectation after a while. He has also done his homework: in Reynolds' Adieu, he does not rhyme 'saith' (the archaic third person singular present of say) with 'faith', which is for the eyes only, and elsewhere he correctly pronounces the Austrian city Graz. Ian Ryan, like Jones making his debut recording for Meridian, follows the latter's lead attentively and cogently in what is at times rather unforgiving music. 

Sound quality is very good, as it ought to be from a label who, in their own words, "continue to astound listeners and artists with our stylish and captivating recordings using our revered 'natural sound' technique."
 
Those suffering from Seasonal Affective Disorder might do well to avoid this disc, but in other respects this is a decent product. Waverers can download the booklet for free from Meridian's website here.  

Byzantion

Collected reviews and contact at artmusicreviews.co.uk  

see also review by Rob Barnett


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


EXPLORE MUSICWEB INTERNATIONAL

Making a Donation to MusicWeb

Writing CD reviews for MWI

About MWI
Who we are, where we have come from and how we do it.

Site Map

How to find a review

How to find articles on MusicWeb
Listed in date order

Review Indexes
   By Label
      Select a label and all reviews are listed in Catalogue order
   By Masterwork
            Links from composer names (eg Sibelius) are to resource pages with links to the review indexes for the individual works as well as other resources.

Themed Review pages

Jazz reviews

 

Discographies
   Composer
      Composer surveys
   National
      Unique to MusicWeb -
a comprehensive listing of all LP and CD recordings of given works
.
Prepared by Michael Herman

The Collector’s Guide to Gramophone Company Record Labels 1898 - 1925
Howard Friedman

Book Reviews

Complete Books
We have a number of out of print complete books on-line

Interviews
With Composers, Conductors, Singers, Instumentalists and others
Includes those on the Seen and Heard site

Nostalgia

Nostalgia CD reviews

Records Of The Year
Each reviewer is given the opportunity to select the best of the releases

Monthly Best Buys
Recordings of the Month and Bargains of the Month

Comment
Arthur Butterworth Writes

An occasional column

Phil Scowcroft's Garlands
British Light Music articles

Classical blogs
A listing of Classical Music Blogs external to MusicWeb International

Reviewers Logs
What they have been listening to for pleasure

Announcements

 

Community
Bulletin Board

Give your opinions or seek answers

Reviewers
Pat and present

Helpers invited!

Resources
How Did I Miss That?

Currently suspended but there are a lot there with sound clips


Composer Resources

British Composers

British Light Music Composers

Other composers

Film Music (Archive)
Film Music on the Web (Closed in December 2006)

Programme Notes
For concert organizers

External sites
British Music Society
The BBC Proms
Orchestra Sites
Recording Companies & Retailers
Online Music
Agents & Marketing
Publishers
Other links
Newsgroups
Web News sites etc

PotPourri
A pot-pourri of articles

MW Listening Room
MW Office

Advice to Windows Vista users  
Questionnaire    
Site History  
What they say about us
What we say about us!
Where to get help on the Internet
CD orders By Special Request
Graphics archive
Currency Converter
Dictionary
Magazines
Newsfeed  
Web Ring
Translation Service

Rules for potential reviewers :-)
Do Not Go Here!
April Fools






Untitled Document


Reviews from previous months
Join the mailing list and receive a hyperlinked weekly update on the discs reviewed. details
We welcome feedback on our reviews. Please use the Bulletin Board
Please paste in the first line of your comments the URL of the review to which you refer.