Benjamin Britten:
Songs & Proverbs of William Blake (CD)
FIVE STARS – Financial Times
TEN OUT OF TEN – Classics Today
CD OF THE WEEK – Sunday Times
CLASSICAL CD OF THE WEEK: The Telegraph
Composer: Benjamin Britten
Performers:
Gerald Finley (bass-baritone)
Julius Drake (piano)
Recorded: December 2008, All Saints, Durham Road, East Finchley, London
Release date: June 2010
Label: Hyperion CDA67778
Total duration: 73 minutes 27 seconds
ASIN:
Track Listing:
Britten: Songs & Proverbs of William Blake
1 Lemady ‘One midsummer’s morn as I was a-walking‘ [1'21] Anonymous – traditional, arr. Benjamin Britten (1913-1976) & Colin Matthews (b1946)
2 She’s like the swallow [2'43] Anonymous – traditional, arr. Benjamin Britten (1913-1976) & Colin Matthews (b1946)
3 I wonder as I wander [3'29] Anonymous – traditional, arr. Benjamin Britten (1913-1976)
4 Tom Bowling ‘Here, a sheer hulk, lies poor Tom Bowling‘ [5'29] Charles Dibdin (1745-1814), arr. Benjamin Britten (1913-1976)
Songs and Proverbs of William Blake, Op 74 Benjamin Britten (1913-1976)
5 No 01: Proverb I ‘The pride of the peacock if the glory of God’ [1'06]
6 No 02: London ‘I wander thro’ each charter’d street’ [2'04]
7 No 03: Proverb II ‘Prisons are built with stones of Law’ [0'33]
8 No 04: The Chimney-Sweeper ‘A little black thing among the snow’ [2'14]
9 No 05: Proverb III ‘The bird a nest, the spider a web’ [0'42]
10 No 06: A Poison Tree ‘I was angry with my friend’ [4'52]
11 No 07: Proverb IV ‘Think in the morning’ [0'57]
12 No 08: The Tyger ‘Tyger! Tyger! burning bright’ [2'00]
13 No 09: Proverb 5 ‘The tygers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction’ [0'51]
14 No 10: The Fly ‘Little Fly’ [1'57]
15 No 11: Proverb VI ‘The hours of folly are measur’d by the clock’ [1'30]
16 No 12: Ah, Sun-flower [2'56]
17 No 13: Proverb VII ‘To see a World in a Grain of Sand’ [0'44]
18 No 14: Every Night and every Morn [3'04]
Tit for Tat Benjamin Britten (1913-1976)
19 No 1: A Song of Enchantment [2'41]
20 No 2: Autumn ‘There’s a wind where the rose was’ [1'09]
21 No 3: Silver ‘Slowly, silently, now the moon’ [2'02]
22 No 4: Vigil ‘Dark is the night’ [1'58]
23 No 5: Tit for Tat ‘Have you been catching fish, Tom Noddy?’ [2'05]
24 Um Mitternacht [3'41] Benjamin Britten (1913-1976) Deutsch English
25 A Poison Tree ‘I was angry with my friend‘ [3'06] Benjamin Britten (1913-1976) English
This way to the tomb Benjamin Britten (1913-1976)
26 No 1: Evening ‘The red fox, the sun, tears the throat of the evening’ [1'45]
27 No 2: Morning [1'06]
28 No 3: Night [1'44]
29 David of the White Rock ‘Life and its follies are fading away‘ [3'33] David Owen (1709-1739), arr. Benjamin Britten (1913-1976) & Colin Matthews (b1946)
30 Greensleeves ‘Alas, my love, you do me wrong’ [2'11] Anonymous – traditional, arr. Benjamin Britten (1913-1976)
31 The Crocodile ‘Now listen you landsmen unto me‘ [5'21] , arr. Benjamin Britten (1913-1976)
32 The Deaf Woman’s Courtship ‘Old woman, old woman, are you fond of smoking?‘ [1'31] Anonymous – traditional, arr. Benjamin Britten (1913-1976)
33 Bird scarer’s song ‘Shoo all ‘er birds you be so black‘ [1'02] Anonymous – traditional, arr. Benjamin Britten (1913-1976) & Colin Matthews (b1946)
What the critics say
Andrew Clements, The Guardian, 3 June 2010
4 stars
The early song cycle on poems by Walter de la Mare, Tit for Tat, together with a motley collection of folk song arrangements and one-offs (including a setting of Goethe’s Um Mitternacht) make an odd context for one of Britten’s greatest song cycles. But Gerald Finley sings them all with such an unwaveringly beautiful tone and attention to every syllable, and pianist Julian Drake is so wonderfully attuned to the baritone’s inflections that it hardly seems to matter. The Songs and Proverbs of William Blake, composed in 1965 for Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau are almost equally fine, too. However, Finley’s voice generally lacks the dark quality with which Fischer-Dieskau could cloak his sound when required, and which Britten exploits in settings such as the creepingly chromatic A Poison Tree and Ah Sun-flower. Nevertheless, Finley comes into his own in the final Every Night and Every Morn, and Drake’s handling of the powerfully wrought accompaniments is superb. Those who have followed them through their series of 20th-century songs for Hyperion (Barber, Ives, Ravel previously) won’t be disappointed with this one either.
John Steane, Gramophone, July 2010
Britten’s dramatically powerful Blake cycle is a tall order for Finley and Drake
Sternly, even fiercely standing its ground, the Blake cycle is one of Britten’s most unaccommodating works. Closest in its own genre is perhaps the Donne cycle but there the confrontational force is eased from time to time: with Blake there is no counterpart to “Since she whom I loved”. Nor, if we think of Hardy and Winter Words, is there a place for smiles, even with an ironical twist, or, musically, a place where lyricism blossoms as in “A time there was”. Possibly, in their contrasting ways, tiger and fly combine in the overall form to constitute a scherzo but there is no relaxation of the taut, concentrated expression. The defining character and linkage throughout, moreover, are provided by the proverbs, darkly luminous and fearsome in their didactic conviction.
Of course they challenge the listener, but how much more actively the singer and pianist. They were written for Fischer-Dieskau, more out of respect (it would seem) than affection, and their focus is uncompromisingly serious. There is also implicit recognition of his dramatic power, akin to Aribert Reimann’s when he wrote his opera Lear with the great baritone at its centre. It is this which I would say Gerald Finley does not (yet maybe) command. The point is reinforced by comparison with Benjamin Luxon and David Willison. Luxon catches the Old Testament prophet’s voice which is Blake’s in these subversive utterances. His tiger has more danger in its spring, his poison tree bears stranger, more potent, fruit. Finley as ever acquits himself as a fine singer, a conscientious artist and a thoroughly reliable musician. But the mantle of Elijah is not upon him.
In all else he is excellent: the De la Mare mini-cycle Tit for Tat, the tall story of the wonderful crocodile, the hauntingly dissatisfied “Greensleeves”, the comedy pieces for deaf woman and bird-scarer. In all (including the Blake) Julius Drake is the superb pianist – and perhaps that should be transferred from last sentence to first.
CD of the week, HC, The Times, 13 June 2010
4 stars
The Canadian baritone has already impressed with his outstanding diction in three albums of North American song (two devoted to Charles Ives, one to Samuel Barber) for Hyperion. Now he turns to the repertoire that Britten wrote two of his favourite baritones: Songs and Proverbs of William Blake (Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau) anf Tit for Tat (John Shirley-Quirk). In addition for folk songs, Finley includes a selection of the posthumous repertoire of early works selected and edited by Britten’s musical assistant, Colin Matthews. Britten gave tacit approval for the release of these juwels as early as 1968, when he chose five settings of Walter de la Mare composed in his late teens as a 70th birthday tribute to the poet’s son, Richard, then chairman of Britten’s publisher, Faber Music. Tit for Tat displays the young composer’s prodigious melodic gift and his savour of words. Finley’s noble baritones is a richer-coloured instrument than Shirley-Quirk’s, and his more modern approach eschews the slightly purse-lipped Englishness of the older singer. In the Blake settings, Finley naturally sounds more at home with the English texts than Fischer-Dieskau did, even if he occasionally underplays the intellectual-philosophical emphasis of the great German baritone. Finley’s watchwords are directness and clarity, both of which come across to splendid effect in the folk-song arrangements and the comic duet The Deaf Woman’s Courtship, in which he performs both parts. Drake is his admirable partner in this outstanding enterprise.
FIVE STARS
Andrew Clark, Financial Times, 19 June 2010
Britten’s oeuvre is so dominated by the music he composed for Peter Pears, his long-time partner and creative muse, that it’s easy to forget he was inspired by voices other than tenor. There are diverse roles in all the operas, of course, but this marvellous CD showcases the songs Britten wrote for the baritones Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, John Shirley-Quirk and Benjamin Luxon – music that Finley, now at the peak of his very considerable powers, makes his own with the pianist Julius Drake. Not that Pears is entirely absent, for the mature Britten’s choice of texts was made or influenced by the tenor. This was very much the case with the Songs and Proverbs of William Blake, written for Fischer-Dieskau and premiered by him at the 1965 Aldeburgh festival.
Blake’s vivid and often visionary poems – 14 of them, alternating short, aphoristic proverbs with rhyming poetry – were chosen partly because of Britten’s liking for the idiom (he had already set “The Sick Rose” in the Serenade for tenor, horn and strings) and partly because they seemed tailor-made for the German baritone’s brand of intense lyricism and dramatic characterisation – a combination for which Finley is also famous.
His recording gives this edgy song-cycle an up-to-date profile. Britten’s blend of luminous eloquence and quietly corrosive chromatics – echoing the innocent/world-tainted ambiguity of Blake’s poetry – will not be to everyone’s taste, but Finley lends it the very beauty and intelligence and ecstatic vocalism it needs, without the mannerisms of Fischer-Dieskau, whose recording with Britten is still available.
There are two pinnacles, “The Poison Tree” and “Ah, Sun-flower”, the chill tension of which Finley and Drake capture to eerie effect. The idiom in Tit for Tat, the other song-cycle on this disc, is sunnier, a reflection not just of the more innocuous poetry of Walter de la Mare but of the music’s genesis: Britten composed these five songs as a teenager and “cleaned them very slightly” – his own words – for Shirley-Quirk in 1969. The rest of the CD is devoted to early songs and late folksong settings, several of which Britten wrote with harp accompaniment, transcribed here for piano.
TEN OUT OF TEN
David Vernier, Classics Today, 17 June 2010
Although not directly mentioned in the notes to this excellent recording–nor is it clear from the disc cover, the program consists of a trove of rarely-heard songs from both early and late in Britten’s career, including the delightfully humorous “The Deaf Woman’s Courtship” and “The Crocodile”. We also hear two very different but equally affecting versions of “A Poison Tree”, one as part of the Songs and Proverbs of William Blake, the other a much earlier setting from 1935 that didn’t receive its first performance until 10 years after Britten’s death. Another song whose first recording was delayed (until 1995, because of copyright issues) is “I wonder as I wander”, and the group of three songs “Evening”, “Morning”, and “Night” (with texts by Ronald Duncan) weren’t published until 1988.
Many of these songs were written or arranged for the recitals given by Britten and tenor Peter Pears, but this recording’s big work, the Songs and Proverbs of William Blake, was conceived for Britten’s friend and musical colleague, baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau; likewise, the group of five songs with texts by Walter de la Mare, Tit for Tat, was created for baritone, this time John Shirley-Quirk. Of course the measure of the Blake cycle will always be the Decca recording by Britten and Fischer-Dieskau, and certainly the German baritone’s masterful and thoroughly captivating use of vocal shading and color, his refined expressive nuances (the sighing little slides in the Proverbs), and his interpretive oneness with Britten remain unmatched. Having said that, Canadian Gerald Finely proves once again that he is among today’s finest singers and song interpreters, and here is another display of his awesome technique, commanding expression, and vocal beauty.
Finley’s baritone often is described as “golden”, and that’s absolutely true here, but the tone is also rich and full and warm, his assured technique enabling a perfect legato and exclamatory emphasis that’s invariably convincing, his interpretive instincts never letting loose a note of false drama. He’s capable of light, delicate singing that’s every bit as emotionally powerful as the more forcefully dynamic moments–compare the unaccompanied “I wonder as I wander” or the mysterious “Silver” or “The Chimney-Sweeper” with any of the more intense passages in the Blake songs, for instance. And you can’t help but be impressed with and completely charmed by Finley’s playful and stylish performance of “The Crocodile” or with the sheer fun he brings to “The Deaf Woman’s Courtship”, happily aided and abetted by his piano partner Julius Drake.
Finley and Drake have collaborated many times (Barber, Ives, Ravel–see Reviews), and it certainly shows in their knowing communication through repertoire that makes quite varied demands on both performers. Hyperion’s recording is absolutely first-rate, and so is this entire production–a well-conceived and ideally performed showcase for both composer and singer.
Tim Pfaff, The Bay Area Reporter, 8 July 2010
Songs of Innocence and Experience
I’ll be bargaining with the devil for my Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau recordings as I make my way into the next life, but I’ll give up the one of Benjamin Britten’s Songs and Proverbs of William Blake if I get to keep the new recording of the cycle by Gerald Finley and Julius Drake (Hyperion). Fischer-Dieskau, with Britten at the piano, made their recording of the cycle shortly after giving the 1965 Aldeburgh Festival premiere. But essential as that recording is, the great German baritone’s English never quite cut to the core of Blake’s uncompromising texts.
Finley’s native English crosses that hurdle easily, but what makes this set a consistent marvel is the seemingly infinite imagination with which he can characterize a song (in any language, as his other great recordings with the unbeatable musical partnership of Julius Drake make clear). The consuming darkness of Blake’s vision coupled with the simple fact that these seven poems and the terse proverbs that precede them unfold in a single, uninterrupted musical stream only increase the daunting task of giving the songs an individual profile. Finley and Drake do just that, with the seeming artlessness that is the summit of the songmakers’ art.
The poisoned apple that lurks – like the one in the Eden story – at the pivot-point of this cycle, in “A Poison Tree,” is the perfect symbol of the trembling innocence and mostly bitter experience at the core of Blake’s “prophecy.” Finley’s chilling story of the wrath that infuses the fruit that kills the foe because it shone – and “he knew that it was mine” – in five minutes tells a twisting tale that foreshadows its death-dealing climax without once flinching.
Later in the disc, the pair’s performance of a setting of the same text by Britten when he was in his early 20s tells another tale, of the composer’s gift and how he grew it.
In “The Fly,” the off-kilter music for piano and voice that so vividly evokes the flight of a fly builds, over the song’s two-minute span, to the poet’s crazed recognition, which Britten repeats: “For I dance/ and drink and sing:/ Till some blind hand/ Shall brush my wing.” Then the prophecy: “If thought is life/ And strength and breath/ And the want/ Of thought is death;/ Then am I/ A happy fly/ if I live,/ Or if I die.”
Finley and Drake make these instants Blakean “eternities in an hour.” They stretch the music taut between the poles of the opening “London”: “[I] mark in every face I meet/ Marks of weakness, marks of woe,” and “Every Night and every Morn,” in which some to misery are born, and some to sweet delight. And it holds.
On either side of this unsparing cycle are sets of Britten’s wondrous folk-song arrangements, the five songs of Tit for Tat, and some unforgettable miscellaneous gems. “I wonder as I wander” and “Greensleeves” hold an aching beauty in Finley’s direct, unfussy performances of them. Elsewhere, things are loftier or in higher spirits. The moment at the end of the second verse of “Tom Bowling,” when on the repeat of “for Tom is gone aloft,” Finley slips effortlessly into head voice, might wring a sudden tear. And if “The Deaf Woman’s Courtship,” which Britten wrote in 1952 for Kathleen Ferrier and Peter Pears to sing as a comic duet, and is the equivalent of a hilarious bar story in a minute and a half, is not an LOL moment for you, I’m sorry. Finley sings both parts, in two unbelievably distinct and distinctly unbaritonal voices, and hilarity prevails. Without it, and the equally outrageous “Bird Scarer’s Song” that ends the disc with a decidedly unsung “Ha! Ha!,” the CD just might be unbearable.
I’ve waited years for this opportunity to put in a plug for a DVD I stumbled on in San Francisco two years ago. If, like me, you think Britten’s late, made-for-TV opera Owen Wingrave is underrated, get the DVD of the Margaret Williams movie version of it (Kultur). Finley’s Owen is phenomenal, and the DVD also includes the invaluable Britten documentary The Hidden Heart.
David Shengold, Time out (New York), 1 July 2010
Finley burns bright on his latest CD.
Canadian baritone Gerald Finley has another winner on his hands with this well-engineered, innovatively programmed CD of Benjamin Britten songs, not at all the kind of usual-suspects repertoire one often gets from tenors confronting Britten’s legacy. Finley, if not a media-hogging superstar, stands among the great classical vocalists of the moment. He turned out one of the finest operatic performances of this decade in John Adams’s Doctor Atomic, transcendently handling Oppenheimer’s John Donne–based monologue. Finley’s annual local recitals have been equally superb.
This recording captures Finley’s mellow timbre, dynamic finesse (plenty of ravishing head voice is deployed) and sensitive treatment of words, coupled with Julius Drake’s subtle pianism. Much of Britten’s output—including several folk-song settings included on this disc—was created for the idiosyncratic tenor of his life partner, Peter Pears. But the two big-ticket items here are cycles for baritone. Songs & Proverbs of William Blake, from 1965, reflects the high seriousness of its original interpreter, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, a singer no less mannered than Pears, who was also able to alternate jagged declamation with legato cooing. The cycle has its moments; Finley’s traversal certainly improves on the original.
Finley’s straightforward approach also suits Tit for Tat, five Walter de la Mare settings from Britten’s teens, and he rises manfully to the almost laddish encore numbers. Best of all are three quiet tracks: 1945’s tragic “Night,” and rapturous treatments of “Greensleeves” and “I Wonder as I Wander.”
Graham Rickson, 19 June 2010, The Arts Desk
Britten’s vocal music will forever be associated with the characteristic tenor voice of Peter Pears, but this issue collects some of his settings for baritone. Hyperion cannily start this recital with four folk-song settings. Composed throughout Britten’s career, they are exquisite, the restraint of his piano writing combined with the Canadian baritone Gerald Finley’s wonderfully expressive voice completely erasing memories of Dudley Moore’s Britten/Pears send-up performed in Beyond the Fringe (but see a clip below to remind yourself). The main attraction on this disc is the cycle Songs and Proverbs of William Blake, composed for and dedicated to the great German baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau in 1965. Britten’s language is here more exploratory, making limited use of twelve-note techniques, though always within a firmly tonal framework. As ever with this composer, the mood is frequently pitch-black, with A Poison Tree particularly chilling. It’s fascinating to compare it to Britten’s 1935 setting of the same text, more declamatory but equally effective and easily recognisable as coming from the same pen. Following the Blake settings with the 1968 cycle Tit for Tat feels like emerging from a dark room into warm sunshine. Britten’s five short songs, settings of Walter de la Mare, were originally composed as a teenager, and were later ‘cleaned very slightly’. The mood is so much warmer, less claustrophobic. Finley sings them complete sincerity and affection. The disc ends with more folk-song arrangements, some published posthumously. Finley has a brave stab at a country yokel accent in the Bird Scarer’s Song, and Julius Drake’s piano accompaniments are exemplary. Nice cover too.
Dudley Moore (and Jonathan Miller) sending up Britten
CLASSICAL CD OF THE WEEK
Ivan Hewett, The Telegraph, 10 July 2010
Britten’s settings of Blake’s poems were written for the German baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and his recording from 1965 carries massive authority. But this new recording tops it.
Fischer-Dieskau can seem mannered, whereas Gerald Finley’s strength is his easy, natural quality. Everything he sings has a feeling of emotional truth, without any artfulness.
That’s a great asset in these songs, which are very artful indeed, and can sound overwrought (in both senses) in performance. Finley makes Blake’s aphorisms ring out with the force of an Old Testament prophet and the gradual revelation of evil in “A Poison Tree” is overwhelming. At the opposite pole is “Little Fly”, but the same quality of easy strength is there which makes the evocation of the fly’s little world seem touching, rather than precious.
Elsewhere Finley and pianist Julius Drake face different challenges. No performers could overcome the preciousness of Britten’s teenage settings of Walter de la Mare and the three Ronald Duncan poems Britten set in the Forties have a fake medieval quality. But in these performances they actually seem worth listening to.
Different again are Britten’s folk-song settings, of which there are nine on this CD. Here Britten shows an uncanny ability to reveal the soul of a song with the minimum of notes. Eloquence rooted in sturdy simplicity is what they need, and Finley and Drake hit the right note every time. The musing delicacy of I Wonder as I Wander, is caught to perfection, Drake’s high piano line floating like a lonely shepherd’s pipe over Finley’s voice. Finally, in The Deaf Woman’s Courtship Finley reveals his inner spinster to hilarious effect.