A great joy everytime I play this CD!
His emotion alone makes this collection of songs worthwhile.
Bostridge brings more than just a beautiful tone and a subtle musical phrasing to these songs. In contrast with the pure vowel sounds of most continental languages, as Ian says in his sleeve-notes, the complex vowels of “Southern British English” are formidably difficult to render attractively in song. (It’s not just a question of singing them prettily. Think how accurately the pronunciation of a word like “house” or “bath” can betray someone’s geographical and social background – our vowels are a caste-mark as well as a means of communication). But somehow Bostridge himself, in his fruitful partnership with Julius Drake, manages to transcend the divisions and deliver these songs in a way that places no barrier between the listener and the music.
It is impossible in a written review to describe the sense of exhilaration that comes with these lilting pastoral airs and occasional boisterous ditties. They are at one and the same time ancient and modern, embracing at once the mutual cross-fertilisation between classical and “pop” sensibilities that has always underpinned the best of English music. Even the most trivial of these songs (e.g. “Jillian of Berry”) are memorable, and some of them (notably Sir Charles Stanford’s chilling musical setting of the Keats’ poem, “La Belle Dame Sans Merci”) would not have been beneath the great Schubert himself.
This is a wonderful album.
