Track Listing

1. My own country - Peter Warlock
2. The night - Peter Warlock
3. Fair house of joy - Roger Quilter
4. My life's delight - Roger Quilter
5. Armida's garden - Hubert Parry
6. My heart is like a singing bird - Hubert Parry
7. La belle dame sans merci - Charles Stanford
8. Sleep - Ivor Gurney
9. King David - Herbert Howells
10. Silent noon - Vaughan Williams
11. Oh fair to see - Gerald Finzi
12. Since we loved - Gerald Finzi
13. As I lay in the early sun - Gerald Finzi
14. Lillygay - Peter Warlock
15. The lark in the clear air - Vaughan Williams
16. Through bushes and through briars - Vaughan Williams
17. The hardy Norse-woman - Karel Drofnatski (Stanford)
18. The compleat virtuoso - Karel Drofnatski (Stanford)
19. The aquiline snub - Karel Drofnatski (Stanford)
20. Limmerich ohne worte - Karel Drofnatski (Stanford)
21. On this island - Benjamin Britten

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #115694 in Music
• Released on: 2001-07-03
• Number of discs: 1

From Amazon.co.uk
The song repertory of the English musical renaissance--from Stanford and Parry through to Howells, Warlock and early Britten--has largely been the preserve of male singers. So it makes a change to hear a light soprano such as Lynne Dawson wash familiar words with fresh, transparent-textured lyricism. Although there's something slightly tremulous and quavering in her vibrato, it's a charming voice and at its best in the folk-idiom of Peter Warlock's "Lillygay" songs, the innocent pleasures of Roger Quilter's "My Life's Delight" or Stanford's parodistic settings of Edward Lear (which he produced under the pseudonym Karel Drofnatzski). Whether she has quite the depth of feeling for the pastoral melancholy in so many other of these songs, or quite the sense of irony to bring off Britten's fabulously muscle-flexing cycle On This Island, is uncertain. But where the voice fails to deliver here and there, the pianist compensates with playing of real strength and insight. Malcolm Martineau is the complete accompanist: a one-man quality assurance, and as expert in his native British music as we all, these days, know him to be in French. --Michael White