Composer: George Butterworth, Gerald Finzi, John Ireland, Ralph Vaughan Williams
Performer: Bryn Terfel, Malcolm Martineau
Format: FLAC (tracks)
Label: Deutsche Grammophon
Catalogue: 4459462
Release: 1995
Size: 224 MB
Recovery: +3%
Scan: cover
Vaughan Williams: Songs of Travel
01. 1. The Vagabond
02. 2. Let Beauty Awake
03. 3. The Roadside Fire
04. 4. Youth And Love
05. 5. In Dreams
06. 6. The Infinite Shining Heavens
07. 7. Whither Must I Wander?
08. 8. Bright Is The Ring Of Words
09. 9. I Have Trod The Upward And The Downward Slope
Finzi: Let Us Garlands Bring, Op. 18
10. Come Away, Come Away, Death
11. Who Is Silvia?
12. Fear No More The Heat O’ The Sun
13. O Mistress Mine
14. It Was A Lover And His Lass
Butterworth: Bredon Hill and other songs
15. Bredon Hill
16. Oh Fair Enough Are Sky And Plain
17. When The Lad For Longing Sighs
18. On The Idle Hill Of Summer
19. With Rue My Heart Is Laden
Ireland: Sea Fever
20. I Must Go Down To The Seas Again
Ireland: The Vagabond
21. Dunno A Heap About The What An’ Why
Ireland: The Bells of San Marie
22. It’s Pleasant In Holy Mary By San Marie lagoon
Butterworth: A Shropshire Lad – Rhapsody
23. Loveliest Of Trees
24. When I Was One-And-Twenty
25. Look Not In My Eyes
26. Think No More, Lad
27. The Lads In Their Hundreds
28. Is My Team Ploughing?
There’s a touch of genius about Bryn Terfel.
To those who’ve known most of these songs since childhood and heard them well performed innumerable times, it will come not quite as a revelation but more as the fulfilment of a deeply felt wish, instinctive rather than consciously formed. As in all the best Lieder singing, everything is specific: ‘Fly away, breath’ we recite, thinking nothing of it, but with this singer it’s visual – we see it in flight, just as in Sea Fever we know in the very tiniest of gaps that in that second he has heard ‘the seagulls crying’. As in all the best singing of songs, whatever the nationality, there’s strong, vivid communication: he’ll sometimes sing so softly that if he’d secured anything less than total involvement he’d lose us. There’s breadth of phrase, variety of tone, alertness of rhythm.
All the musical virtues are there; and yet that seems to go only a little way towards accounting for what’s special.One after another, these songs are brought to full life. There’s a boldness about Terfel’s art that could be perilous, but which, as exercised here, is marvellously well guided by musicianship, intelligence and the genuine flash of inspiration. Malcolm Martineau’s playing is also a delight: his touch is as sure and illuminating as the singer’s.