Bryn Terfel - Silent Noon
Terfel; Martineau
DG 474 2192

Release date November 2004

This is a delicious disc - a journey through the golden age of English song, peformed by two artists steeped in the genre. The core of the disc is Arthur Somervell's song cycle A Shropshire Lad, the first such cycle drawing on A E Housman's poetry. Terfel and Martineau vividly convey the cycle's pervading sense of nostalgia, but also strike to the heart of each song, be it the sweetness/bleakness of In Summer-time on Bredon or the fatalism of Think no more, lad; Laugh, be jolly, delivered with an edgy raucousness that perfectly encapsulates the frustration at pointless death embodied in the verses. Surrounding this work are some of the finest jewels in the English song repertoire. Quilter's Three Shakespeare Songs are stunningly sung; Terfel invests them with a tremendous breadth of emotion, as indeed he does everything on this disc. Quilter's Now sleeps the crimson petal is exquisite; if you are not moved to tears by this track, you are hard-hearted indeed! Two settings of Yeats's The Cloths of Heaven give us the chance to compare Dilys Elwyn-Edwards's tender and beautiful version from 1950 with that of Thomas Dunhill in 1912. In lighter mood, Terfel and Martineau swagger through Michael Head's Money, O! , provide a rumbustious Oliver Cromwell in Britten's arrangement, and thoroughly enjoy themselves in a rollicking, rum-soaked Captain Stratton's Fancy (one of a pair of songs Warlock somewhat improbably entitled Two True Toper's Tunes to Troll with Trulls and Trollops in a Tavern). Vaughan Williams is represented by Silent Noon and Linden Lea, and Ivor Gurney by Sleep, sung with heart-searing anguish. Even Edward Lear gets a look-in, with two limericks ostensibly set by Karol Drofnatski (think Stanford backwards, and you'll get there!). This is seventy minutes of delight, possibly even better than The Vagabond (Terfel and Martineau's superb 1995 CD). Buy it!

Anne McAlister