As the peoples of the Arctic make fine distinctions between types of snow, so can the people of northern countries distinguish the finest shades of grey both in their environment and in emotional expression.
- Classical Music 101: What Does A Conductor Do? - June 17, 2019
- Classical Music 101 | What Does Period Instrument Mean? - May 6, 2019
- CLASSICAL MUSIC 101 | What Does It Mean To Be In Tune? - April 23, 2019
That’s the most potent description I can think up for the subtle power of the English art song — inspired by the depressing cover for tenor Mark Padmore’s fantastic new album of songs by Ralph Vaughan Williams, Peter Warlock and Jonathan Dove for the Harmonia Mundi label.
The songs collected by Padmore, including life-bookending cycles On Wenlock Edge and Ten Blake Songs by Vaughan Williams, are magnificent studies in charcoal, where delicate curves and shadings hint at deeply swirling emotional currents flowing straight through the meaning of life rather than splashing mindlessly around young lovers and their passing cares.
Padmore is at the very height of his powers as an artist. His lyric tenor voice is clear and direct, while his attention to expressive detail is microscopic. Somehow he consistently manages to turn immaculate vowels and consonants, impeccably punctuated with the briefest silences, into compelling larger narrative arcs.
The emotional and artistic centrepiece here is the set of Ten Blake Songs, written for tenor and oboe, seductively played by Nicholas Daniel. Both singer and woodwind are starkly exposed — giving us all the more opportunity to marvel at their skill and craft as they journey from innocent childhood to age and experience.
We get Vaughan Williams’ original setting for piano and string quartet in On Wenlock Edge, written 50 years earlier, charmingly, powerfully rendered.
Also compelling is The Curlew, based on the poetry of W.B. Yeats hauntingly set for English horn, flute and string quartet completed by Peter Warlock in the early 1920s.
A Contemporary British composer slips in imperceptibly with The End, a 2012 setting for chamber orchestra (the Britten Sinfonia here) by Jonathan Dove for a 1990 poem by Mark Strand.
While the gently rocking, minimalist-style accompaniment is nothing special, Padmore’s expressivity brings the melancholy text to affecting life: “Not every man knows what is waiting for him, or what he shall sing When the ship he is on slips into darkness, there at the end.”
It’s a bracing, grey emotional antidote for the point in the year when we are all about to be overwhelmed by colour-saturated forced jollity.
You can find details and audio samples here.
John Terauds
- Classical Music 101: What Does A Conductor Do? - June 17, 2019
- Classical Music 101 | What Does Period Instrument Mean? - May 6, 2019
- CLASSICAL MUSIC 101 | What Does It Mean To Be In Tune? - April 23, 2019
