Benjamin Britten - Complete Folk Song Arrangements (Various Artists)

Information

Composer: Benjamin Britten

CD1

• Volume 1. The British Isles (with piano)
• Volume 2. France (with piano)
• Volume 3. The British Isles (with piano)
• Volume 5. The British Isles (with piano)

CD2

• Volume 6. England (with guitar)
• Eight Folk Song Arrangements (with harp)
• Volume 4. Moore's Irish Melodies (with piano)

Lorna Anderson, soprano

Regina Nathan, soprano

Jamie MacDougall, tenor

Malcolm Martineau, piano

Bryn Lewis, harp

Craig Ogden, guitar

Date: 1994

Label: Hyperion

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Review

It was an excellent idea of the ever-adventurous Hyperion to give us a complete edition of Britten's Folk Song Arrangements on these two CDs—Vols. 1, 3 and 5, with piano, from the British Isles; Vol. 2, with piano, from France; Vol. 6 from England with guitar; Vol. 4 entitled ''Moore's Irish Melodies'', plus the late set with harp. The project has been executed, a few reservations apart, with the company's customary discernment over casting. Listening to all the volumes together makes one marvel anew at the sheer invention of the settings, in almost every case appropriate to the song in hand. If one has doubts it is usually over a touch too much sophistication. Sally in our Alley, in any case not strictly a folk-song, is much happier in its original eighteenth-century guise (Henry Carey's) than elaborated with twentieth-century interludes between each verse, but that sort of anachronism is very much the exception, and in any case many of the wonderful originals would be lost to us had not Britten lavished his genius on them. The songs, carefree and sentimental, are part of our tradition and deserve anyone's attention.

Young Jamie MacDougall has the lion's share of the work here and acquits himself with admirable confidence, inevitably aware of Pears's and indeed Tear's shadow, yet willing to set his own pace (often literally) and find his own way into the songs. By and large his approach is straightforward and unaffected as befits this repertory, and his dear, youthful, easily produced tenor is a near-ideal instrument for folk repertory. The merry, bluff, Lincolnshire Poacher, the freebooting Miller of Dee, the seductive weaver (of Foggy, foggy Dew fame), the irresistible Plough Boy all come before us as individual creations. Lorna Anderson is a fit colleague for the tenor and matches him in fresh and apt accents: she is hypnotic in Il est quelq'un sur terre. The young Irish soprano, Regina Nathan, is brought in, appropriately enough, for Vol. 4, the Irish Melodies. Although her tone is rather shallow, she makes a trenchant effect in The Minstrel Boy and dreams nicely through Oft in the stilly night, where Britten's invention is arresting. These seldom- heard pieces are very welcome on disc.

In such a large project there will be a few disappointments. Some pieces, most notably The Ash Grove, Sweet Polly Oliver, Come ye not from New castle are taken appreciably faster, to their detriment, than by Pears and Britten, giving a sense of hurry so that the singers haven't time to savour their words. In a direct comparison with Pears I found MacDougall matter-of-fact in The Shooting of his Dear; where Pears (RCA, 9/93) caresses the words and music, the newcomer merely sings it. Nor is the guitarist Craig Ogden, accomplished though he is, in the Bream class. On the other hand Martineau, given plenty of prominence (too much?), plays Britten's own parts with plenty of character. Harpist Bryn Lewis is suitably virtuoso in music written for Osian Ellis. The voices are recorded with forward presence. Lewis Foreman writes interesting notes. All texts are included, some differing in detail from what is sung. Singers' biographies are given but none for the players, a dated form of apartheid.

— Alan Blyth

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Benjamin Britten (22 November 1913 – 4 December 1976) was a leading British composer, pianist and conductor. Trained at the Royal College of Music, he gained early acclaim with Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge and achieved international prominence with the opera Peter Grimes (1945). His major stage works include Billy Budd, The Turn of the Screw, and Death in Venice, alongside innovative church parables such as Curlew River. Co-founder of the Aldeburgh Festival, he also composed celebrated song cycles, choral works including the War Requiem, and notable orchestral and chamber music.

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