20th Century English Songs

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VARIOUS COMPOSERS
20th Century English Songs
Bejun Mehta (countertenor) / Julius Drake (piano)

[ Harmonia Mundi / CD ]

Release Date: Monday 3 October 2011

This item is currently out of stock. It may take 6 or more weeks to obtain from when you place your order as this is a specialist product.

"Bejun Mehta certainly can't be faulted on his eclecticism in his whistle-stop tour of English song...Mehta's singing is so heart-stoppingly beautiful and musically perceptive that you wish he had recorded whole cycles rather than just representative songs." (The Guardian)

"Mehta's gift for mood and atmosphere is heard in the light beauty of Quilter's "It was a lover and his lass", the sweet melancholy of Gurney's "Down by the Salley Gardens" or the veiled mystery of Lennox Berkeley's "The Horseman". Pianist Julius Drake provides customary alert, expressive accompaniment." (The Observer)

"I can't believe I am giving a countertenor recording five stars; either there is something very wrong with me or very right with Bejun Mehta, and subsequent hearings have confirmed that it is indeed him. I can honestly say that these gems, each and every one, are well-served by a man who has brought the countertenor idiom roaring into the 21st century, and his miraculous sensibility in the presentation of these pieces, along with an uncanny ability to serve the dramatic instincts of each-often operatic in scope-propels his interpretations into the absolute first rank of recital singing. Pianist Julius Drake is formidable. The sound, from the Teldex Studio in Berlin, is clear, vivid, realistic, and a tad bright. Bravo!" (AudAud.com)

Tracks:

Berkeley, L:
The Horseman

Finzi:
Since we loved
The sigh
At Middle-Field Gate in February (from I Said to Love)

Gurney:
Down by the Salley Gardens

Hely-Hutchinson:
et in the manner of Händel

Howells:
King David
The Widow Bird
The Little Boy Lost

Purcell:
Music for a while, Z583 (arr. Tippett)
Lord, what is man?, Z192 (arr. Britten)
Let the night perish (Job's Curse), Z191 (arr. Britten)

Quilter:
It was a lover and his lass
Three Shakespeare Songs, Op. 6
Hey, ho, the wind and the rain (No. 5 from Five Shakespeare Songs, Op. 23)
Take, O take those lips away

Stanford:
La Belle Dame sans merci (John Keats) (1877)

Vaughan Williams:
Linden Lea
Bright is the Ring of Words (No. 8 from Songs of Travel)

Warlock:
Jillian of Berry