Brian Thornsett tenor
Richard Masters piano
EMR Records CD087
Do you read poetry and if so, do you read Tennyson? He was extremely popular a few generations ago, but now? His most famous poems are Maud (1855) and In Memoriam (1850), an elegy on the death of his friend Arthur Henry Hallam.
The longest work on this very generously filled disc is Arthur Somervell’s Cycle of Songs from Maud (1898) – 13 poems which, although lasting towards 30 minutes, he had edited down radically from its original. I always feel that the cycle takes some time to get going until perhaps the best-known song Go not happy Day.
He also set Come into the Garden Maud. However, this is not the well-known Victorian parlour song written by Michael Balfe. Strangely enough, Somervell’s setting begins like a Straussian waltz but then develops very intensely, and after that, at the halfway point of the cycle, the rest of work takes on a more dramatic hue. This includes a very moving setting of The Fault was Mine and culminates in the longest song My life has crept so long.
Maude White died in the same year as Somervell (1937) and the sense of Victorian England is strong in her 1885 settings of four of the In Memoriam poems. They are respectful but passionate, as in her setting of the famous Tis better to have Loved and Lost. There is often a Mendlessohnian feel especially in the often impetuous piano accompaniments. Interestingly, White remains the most performed female composer at the ‘Proms’, and was also a renowned accompanist.
Liza Lehmann’s (d.1918) approach is different. She selected 10 songs for her In Memoriam cycle (1899) and the overall effect is often more dramatic, even theatrical – for example, the first song, I sing to him, with its commanding, orchestral-like opening on the piano, and similarly the powerful Risest Thou Thus, Dim Dawn. In fact, a number of songs have piano introductions, and some have valedictory postludes. However, the Victorian parlour is also audible sometimes, as in Wild bird, whose warble, liquid sweet.
Brian Thornsett is a lyrical and suitably light tenor, ideal in many ways for this repertoire. I am less convinced by his timbre in the highest and loudest passages, but he is very sensitive in conveying the texts, and Richard Masters is fully attuned to Thornsett’s interpretations. In the Lehmann he carries much of the weight of the cycle in the sometimes-teeming piano writing. So, this is a rare and splendid collection.
Review by Gary Higginson