The English Tenor – Works by Britten, Finzi, Gurney, Quilter, Vaughan Williams
Scott Robert Shaw (tenor), Luba Podgayskaya (piano), Eva de Vries (violin), William Drakett (piano), Emilie Bastens (harp), James Williams (piano)
Divine Art DDX 21110 72:28 mins
The ‘English tenor’ of the title is actually the Australian Scott Robert Shaw, and this is his debut solo recital. It reveals a voice of satisfying tonal smoothness, deployed to plangent effect in ‘Sleep’ from Ivor Gurney’s Five Elizabethan Songs. By the end of Gurney’s cycle, however, a certain interpretive reticence is evident – Shaw makes little of the opportunity to characterise the bird imitations in ‘Spring’, and generally delivers text straight, with a narrow range of dynamics and limited highlighting of meaning or emotion.
There’s more sap and individuality in ‘Good-Bye’ from Vaughan Williams’s cycle Along The Field. Eva de Vries provides a spirited violin accompaniment, though her contribution is at times diluted by a recorded balance favouring the voice.
The opposite problem handicaps Britten’s Eight Folk Song Arrangements for High Voice and Harp, where Emilie Bastens’s harp is a touch too prominent and rather dry in timbre. Her playing is, however, excellent, especially in the jaunty ‘The False Knight Upon the Road.’ Here, though, Shaw’s limited differentiation between the song’s two characters drains interest over the setting’s seven stanzas.
Finzi’s Let Us Garlands Bring is the best-known music in Shaw’s programme, and the most demanding interpretively. ‘Come Away, Come Away, Death’ has an impressive solemnity, although Shaw’s reluctance to lean proactively on individual words or paint them texturally is an impediment to deeper involvement. But some of his caution is cast aside in the airy, affable account of ‘It Was a Lover and His Lass’ which closes the recital, where pianist James Williams is a chirpy partner. Terry Blain