Antonio Pappano & Ian Bostridge - Shakespeare Songs (2016) [Official Digital Download 24/96]

Grammy Award-winners Ian Bostridge and Sir Antonio Pappano have been working together on the stage and in the recording studio for over 20 years. Now they embark on a project marking the 400th anniversary of the death of William Shakespeare with a new album out in September. Shakespeare Songs celebrates the four centuries of music and performance that his plays and sonnets have inspired.

The pair will make an appearance on the BBC’s Shakespeare Live! From the RSC broadcast on Saturday 23 April (BBC Two, Saturday 8.30pm), with a haunting rendition of Roger Quilter’s ‘Come away, Death’. The all-star show honouring the greatest poet and dramatist in the English language will be screened live to cinemas in the UK and Europe. The performance was filmed at a candlelit Holy Trinity Church in Stratford-upon-Avon, where Shakespeare is buried.

Shakespeare’s peerless feeling for the music of the English language has inspired countless composers, from those who set the Bard’s verse during his lifetime to musicians as diverse as Britten, Finzi, Korngold and Stravinsky. Ian Bostridge and Sir Antonio Pappano, together with four outstanding chamber musicians, delve into the rich Shakespeare legacy for this brand new recording, marking the playwright’s quarter-centenary with a delectable programme of works written for Jacobean productions, Restoration revivals and the modern concert hall. As guests Ian has invited his friends the lutenist Elizabeth Kenny, and for Stravinsky’s Three Songs, flautist Adam Walker, violist Lawrence Power and clarinetist Michael Collins.

“Shakespeare has been a part of my life as a performer from the very start,” says Ian Bostridge, “Britten's Midsummer Night's Dream and Ades's The Tempest have been milestones for me as a singer.

"It has been a great joy to rediscover the music in Shakespeare's incomparable texts and the music that has been written over the past four centuries to clothe them, from the simplest songs of his own contemporaries, through the melodic delights of the likes of Haydn, Britten and Finzi to the matchless complexity of the late Stravinsky. Working again with Tony Pappano has been a joy; and making my first recording with a long term musical partner, lutenist Liz Kenny, a particular pleasure.”

“This is worth having for the first track alone: an impeccable account of Finzi’s Come Away, Death, with Ian Bostridge blending melancholy and nonchalance, Antonio Pappano accompanying with tender reticence…[Bostridge] squeezes every nuance of meaning from these Shakespeare settings.” (The Guardian)

Tracklist:
1 Finzi: Let us Garlands Bring, Op. 18: I. Come Away, Come Away Death 03:39
2 Finzi: Let us Garlands Bring, Op. 18: II. Who is Silvia? 01:27
3 Finzi: Let us Garlands Bring, Op. 18: III. Fear No more the Heat o' the Sun 05:34
4 Finzi: Let us Garlands Bring, Op. 18: IV. O Mistress Mine 01:53
5 Finzi: Let us Garlands Bring, Op. 18: V. It Was a Lover and his Lass 02:38
6 Byrd: Caleno Custore Me 03:20
7 Morley: It Was a Lover and His Lass 03:27
8 Wilson: Take O Take Those Lips Away 02:12
9 Morley: O Mistress Mine 01:11
10 Johnson: Where the Bee Sucks 01:12
11 Johnson: Full Fathom Five 03:26
12 Schubert: An Silvia, D. 891 02:35
13 Haydn: She Never Told Her Love, Hob. XXVIa No. 34 03:42
14 Quilter: 3 Shakespeare Songs, Op. 6: I. Come Away, Death 02:51
15 Gurney: 5 Elizabethan Songs (The Elizas): III. Under the Greenwood Tree 01:35
16 Warlock: 5 Shakespeare Songs: III. Pretty Ring Time 01:17
17 Warlock: Sweet and Twenty 01:21
18 Korngold: 4 Shakespeare Songs, Op. 31: I. Desdemona's Song 03:08
19 Korngold: Songs of the Clown, Op. 29: I. Come Away Death 02:25
20 Korngold: Songs of the Clown, Op. 29: Adieu, Good Man Devil 02:20
21 Poulenc: Fancie, FP 174 01:27
22 Britten: Fancie 00:58
23 Tippet: Songs for Ariel: I. Come Unto These Yellow Sands 03:27
24 Tippet: Songs for Ariel: II. Full Fathom Five 02:06
25 Tippet: Songs for Ariel: III. Where the Bee Sucks 01:04
26 Stravinsky: 3 Songs from William Shakespeare: I. Musick to Hear 02:52
27 Stravinsky: 3 Songs from William Shakespeare: II. Full Fadom Five 02:04
28 Stravinsky: 3 Songs from William Shakespeare: III. Spring (When Daisies Pied) 02:20
29 Anon: When that I Was but a Little Tiny Boy 02:30

Personnel:
Ian Bostridge, tenor
Antonio Pappano, piano
Elizabeth Kenny, lute
Michael Collins, clarinet
Lawrence Power, viola
Adam Walker, flute