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Friday, March 5, 2021

Lennox Berkeley - Songs (James Gilchrist)


Information

Composer: Lennox Berkeley
  • (01) D’un vanneur de blé aux vents
  • (02) Tombeaux
  • (07) How love came in
  • (08) Bells of Cordoba
  • (09) Five Poems of W.H. Auden, Op. 53
  • (14) Five Herrick Poems, Op. 89
  • (19) Autumn’s Legacy, Op. 58
  • (26) Automne, Op. 60 No. 3
  • (27) Ode du premier jour de Mai
  • (28) Sonnet, Op. 102
  • (29) Five Chinese Songs, Op. 78

James Gilchrist, tenor
Anna Tilbrook, piano
Alison Nicholls, harp

Date: 2021
Label: Chandos

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Review

At last, a disc devoted to the forgotten songs of Lennox Berkeley

A reviewer learns to beware of the words “first”, “last” and “only”, but I’m happy to quote Tony Scotland, author of the excellent introductory note, who writes of “this first exclusive CD of songs by Berkeley”. He also points out that Berkeley wrote more for the voice than for any other instrument and that most of those 135 vocal works are songs. Yet, in the late Trevor Hold’s book on English song (Boydell: 2002), his name is not included even in the comprehensive index. That may be surprising; the general unfamiliarity is not.

They are songs for a fastidious ear and a mind that shuns overstatement, the banal and the sentimental. It is also a taste that takes as though by second nature to much that is French. There is a kinship with Britten, and in some of the later songs one may guess at a little of Tippett. The style is lyrical rather than declamatory, diatonic rather than atonal, but on the whole you don’t go there for a tune.

And you don’t go to James Gilchrist for what old-timers might call “red-blooded singing”. The first impression (and I’ve known this before) can be of a tone that is almost anaemic and enunciation that is precious. Such a view is almost immediately corrected, yet it persists from one occasion to another. But, as we have known for many years now, Gilchrist is his own man: a fine artist and particularly well suited to these songs. Anna Tilbrook is the totally admirable accompanist, with Alison Nicholls the harpist in the attractive Herrick settings.

-- John Steane, Gramophone


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Lennox Berkeley (12 May 1903 – 26 December 1989) was an English composer. Born in Oxford, England, he went to Paris to study music with Nadia Boulanger in 1927. Berkeley also studied with Maurice Ravel, often cited as a key influence in his technical development as a composer. Berkeley's earlier music is broadly tonal, influenced by the neoclassical music of Stravinsky. However, from the mid-1950s, he started including tone rows and aspects of serial technique in his compositions. From 1946 to 1968, Berkeley taught at the Royal Academy of Music. His pupils included Richard Rodney Bennett and John Tavener.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lennox_Berkeley

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James Gilchrist is a British tenor specialising in recital and oratorio singing. He trained as a doctor, but turned to a full-time music career in 1996. Gilchrist was a treble in the Choir of New College, Oxford and a choral scholar in the Choir of King's College, Cambridge. A prolific recitalist, Gilchrist has appeared in many venues in the UK and abroad. His operatic repertoire includes roles in operas by Handel, Purcell and Vaughan Williams. In concert he has performed works by Britten, Elgars and Tippett, among others. His extensive discography includes ones for labels such as Chandos, Linn and Naxos Records.

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