Britten: Songs, Volume I Vocal & Song Piano Onyx

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BENJAMIN BRITTEN

(1913-1976)

from 'Fish in the unruffled lakes'

5:03

To lie flat on the back

2:27

Night covers up the rigid land

2:35

Solo: James Geer tenor

A Dirge

1:14

Solo: James Geer tenor

Virtue in Deeds not Words

1:11

Solo: Caryl Hughes mezzo-soprano

Prithee

1:52

Solo: Andrew Tortise tenor

Lucy

1:25

Solo: Ben Johnson tenor

Canticle I

7:46

Solo: Andrew Tortise tenor

Um Mitternacht

4:07

Solo: James Geer tenor

Sechs Holderlin-Fragmente

12:26

Menschenbeifall

1:22

10.

Die Heimat

2:19

11.

Sokrates und Alcibiades

2:09

12.

Die Jugend

1:59

13.

Häalfte des Lebens

2:06

14.

Die Linie des Lebens

2:29

Solo: James Geer tenor

The Holy Sonnets of John Donne

24:28

15.

Oh my blacke soule!

3:43

16.

Batter my heart

1:17

17.

O might those sighes and teares

3:38

18.

Oh, to vex me

1:07

19.

What if this present

3:08

20.

Since she whom I loved

3:08

21.

At the round earth's imagined corners

2:46

22.

Thou hast made me

1:23

23.

Death, be not proud

4:04

Solo: Ben Johnson tenor

Cabaret songs

15:31

24.

Calypso

2:13

25.

Tell me the truth about love

5:23

26.

Johnny

5:01

27.

Funeral blues

2:51

Solo: Caryl Hughes mezzo-soprano

Tit for Tat

5:03

28.

A song of enchantment

2:39

29.

Autumn

1:33

30.

Silver

1:54

31.

Vigil

2:24

32.

Tit for tat

1:58

Solo: Philip Smith baritone

Beware!

3:48

33.

Beware!

1:07

Solo: Ben Johnson tenor

34.

O that I had ne'er been married

1:26

35.

Epitaph: The Clerk

1:13

Solo: Ben Johnson tenor

36.

Lilian

3:00

Solo: Ben Johnson tenor

37.

The Joy of Grief

1:08

Solo: Katherine Broderick soprano

The Poet's Echo

12:22

38.

Echo

2:54

39.

My heart

1:49

40.

Angel

2:36

41.

The nightingale and the rose

4:11

42.

Epigram

0:49

43.

Lines written during a sleepless night

4:10

Solo: Katherine Broderick soprano

Winter Words

25:44

44.

At Day-close in November

1:52

45.

Mignight on the Great Western

4:49

46.

Wagtail and Baby

2:03

47.

The Little Old Table

1:18

48.

The Choirmaster's Burial

4:09

49.

Proud Songsters

1:07

50.

At the Railway Station

3:09

51.

Before Life and After

3:00

Solo: Robin Tritschler tenor

14-17 January and 30-31 October 2010

****

Roberto Brusotti - Musica magazine - March 2012

"... This splendid two-disc covers four of Britten’s greatest cycles plus the Cabaret Songs and some early unpublished items. They are brilliantly performed by eight young singers. Katherine Broderick’s ’The Poet’s Echo’ is especially fine, her timbre appropriate to music composed for Vishnevskaya. The baritone Phillip Smith shows outstanding talent in the De La Mare settings, and Robin Tritschler goes to the heart of ’Winter Words’. Malcolm Martineau has a Britten-like authority at the piano" ****

Michael Kennedy - The Sunday Telegraph - 29 May 2011

"... Martineau paces his survey of Britten’s songbook with the same lightly worn expertise he brings to his accompaniments, alternating lighter and darker material in a way that maintains the listener’s interest..Robin Tritschler’s radiantly lyrical performance of the Thomas Hardy cycle ’Winter Words’." ***

Financial Times - 28 May 2011

"... Who would have thought the young boy would have set Tennyson’s ’Tis better to have loved and lost’ as a hypnotic little waltz, let alone Burns’s ’O that I had ne’er been married’? The John Donne sonnets and The Poet’s Echo (Katherine Broderick) are very fine, but the most compelling track is Canticle I, a masterpiece delivered by Andrew Tortise. "

Nicholas Kenyon - The Observer- 12 June 2011

"... For this first volume of Britten’s collected songs, Martineau has gathered a gratifyingly formidable array of young British singing talent. Ben Johnson is commanding in an urgent passionate reading of The Holy Sonnets of John Donne. Andrew Tortise conveys rapturously intense emotions in Canticle 1, ’My Beloved is Mine’, as personal an expression of the composer’s love for Peter Pears as anything he wrote. Perhaps the best is left until last, when Robin Tritschler gives a fresh-sounding ’Winter Words’" ****

Stephen Pettitt - The Sunday Times - 29 May 2011

"... Masterful.an excellent set ..."

BBC Radio3 CD Review - 2 July 2011

"..this series promises to be a major addition to the Britten discography."

Gramophone magazine - September 2011

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