Charles Bruffy, Phoenix Bach Choir - Shakespeare in Song: Harris, Martin, Sametz, Mäntyjärvi, Lindberg, Argento, Williams (2004)
EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue & Log) ~ 217 Mb | Total time: 55:52 | Scans included
Classical | Label: Chandos | # CHAN 5031 | Recorded: 2003
EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue & Log) ~ 217 Mb | Total time: 55:52 | Scans included
Classical | Label: Chandos | # CHAN 5031 | Recorded: 2003
There’s more to Shakespeare’s songs than a hey-nonny-nonny, and the depth of the bard’s texts has inspired composers from well beyond the cultural borders of the English language. Nearly half of the Phoenix Bach Choir’s “Shakespeare in Song” disc offers intriguing music by composers who are neither English nor American. Chief among these is Switzerland’s Frank Martin, whose Songs of Ariel constitute a modern choral classic. These are haunting, harmonically unsettled settings, and for an example of the skill and beauty the Phoenix Bach Choir brings to this program, just listen to the wonderful intonation on the last chord of “Before You Can Say ‘Come’ and ‘Go’.”
Equally striking are the Four Shakespeare Songs from 1984 by the self-proclaimed “semi-professional” Finnish composer Jaakko Mäntyjärvi (born 1963). This ranges from the subdued, slithery, chromatic writing of the first two items to—in the witches’ material from Macbeth—what Leonard Bernstein might have sounded like had he been a Scandinavian choral composer: swooping vocal lines over strong, irresistible rhythms. With all due respect to Howard Shore, Mäntyjärvi’s music is exactly what I would associate with the atmosphere of The Lord of the Rings.
The American Matthew Harris (born 1956) is another composer worth investigating more deeply, judging from the seven (out of many) of his Shakespeare songs offered here. Without ever sounding like a stylistic pastiche, the music sometimes evokes lilting Renaissance madrigals (“Tell Me Where Is Fancy Bred”), sometimes English folk music (“When That I Was and a Little Tiny Boy”), sometimes American country-western swing (“When Daffodils Begin to Peer”). Charles Bruffy and his choir make the most of these stylistic shifts; tenor Robert Comeaux even steps out with a pop-inflected solo in “O Mistress Mine,” with its touch of Andrew Lloyd Webber.
The shorter works here, chief among them Ralph Vaughan Williams’s Three Shakespeare Songs, provide similar pleasure in a diversity of moods and styles (the obscure Alan Murray, 1890–1952, sets “O Mistress Mine” as a hymn tune). All of them convey Shakespeare’s texts with great intelligence and sensitivity, and the same must be said of the Phoenix Bach Choir, with its snug part-singing, buoyant rhythms, and a tone that shifts easily from gleaming light to deepest gloom. The SACD surround-sound recording places the choir in a spacious acoustic while allowing textual clarity, with a realism that gives the impression that actual human beings are with you, performing this deeply human music.–James Reel
Performer:
Phoenix Bach Choir
Charles Bruffy, conductor
Tracklist:
Matthew Harris (b. 1956)
From ‘Shakespeare Songs’
01. Hark! hark! The lark (Book I No.1)
02. Tell me where is fancy bred (Book II No.2)
03. I shall no more to sea (Book V No.1)
04. When that I was and a little tiny boy (Book V No.4)
05. It was a lover and his lass (Book III No.1)
06. O mistress mine! (Book III No.4)
07. When daffodils begin to peer (Book IV No.3)
Frank Martin (1890–1974)
Songs of Ariel from Shakespeare’s ‘The Tempest’
08. I. Come unto these yellow sands (Ariel's Song)
09. II. Full fathom five
10. III. Before you can say, 'Come', and 'Go'
11. IV. You are three men of sin
12. V. Where the bee sucks, there suck I
Steven Sametz (b. 1954)
13. When he shall die
Jaakko Mäntyjärvi (b. 1963)
14. 1. Come away, come away, death
15. 2. Lullaby
16. 3. Double, double toil and trouble
17. 4. Full fathom five
Nils Lindberg (b. 1933)
18. Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Dominick Argento (1927-2019)
19. Sonnet No. LXIV
Alan Murray (1890–1952)
20. O mistress mine!
Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872–1958)
Three Shakespeare Songs
21. 1. Full fathom five
22. 2. The cloud-capp'd towers
23. 3. Over hill, over dale
Exact Audio Copy V1.3 from 2. September 2016
EAC extraction logfile from 2. May 2019, 23:29
Phoenix Bach Choir, Charles Bruffy / Shakespeare in Song
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Thanks to the original releaser