Down By The Salley Gardens (CD)
Julius Drake’s playing is unfailingly sensitive and beautifully measured… Classical Review
Julius Drake provides rich-scented accompaniments… The Scotsman
Performers:
Bejun Mehta & Julius Drake
Release Date: 5 September 2011)
Number of Discs: 1
Label: Harmonia Mundi
ASIN: B00585QLZK
Tracks
1 Howells: King David
2 Quilter: It was a lover and his lass
3 Gurney: Down by the salley gardens
4 Vaughan Williams: Silent Noon
5 Britten: Lord, what is man?
6 Britten: Job’s Curse
7 Vaughan Williams: Linden Lea
8 Quilter: Come away, death
9 Quilter: O mistress mine
10 Quilter: Blow, blow, thou winter wind
11 Finzi: At Middle-Field Gate in February
12 Howells: The Widow Bird
13 Berkeley: The Horseman
14 Howells: The Little Boy Lost
15 Stanford: La Belle Dame Sans Merci
16 Vaughan Williams: Bright is the ring of words
17 Finzi: The Sigh
18 Warlock: Jillian of Berry
19 Hely-Hutchinson: Set in the manner of Handel
20 Quilter: Take, o take those lips away
21 Finzi: Since we loved
22 Quilter: Hey, ho, the wind and the rain
23 Purcell arr Tippett: Music for a while
Click here for an interview with Bejun Mehta about this recording
What the critics say
Andrew Clements, The Guardian, 1 September 2011
Bejun Mehta certainly can’t be faulted on his eclecticism in his whistle-stop tour of English song with pianist Julius Drake; his selection of 23 settings ranges chronologically from Charles Villiers Stanford to Lennox Berkeley. As well as the usual early 20th-century suspects – Vaughan Williams, Quilter, Warlock, Gurney, Finzi – there are songs here by Herbert Howells and Victor Hely Hutchinson; Britten and Tippett are here in spirit, too, represented by their Purcell arrangements. It all seems a bit breathless, though, and Mehta’s singing is so heart-stoppingly beautiful and musically perceptive that you wish he had recorded whole cycles rather than just representative songs. I’ve not heard any of Finzi’s songs sung by a counter-tenor before: Mehta chooses one of the Hardy settings from A Young Man’s Exhortation, and the beautiful Robert Bridges miniature Since We Loved to show how wonderfully his timbre wraps itself around Finzi’s melodic lines. There is so much more for Mehta to explore on future discs.
Fiona Maddocks, The Observer, 11 September 2011
The American Bejun Mehta, particularly well known for the more predictable Baroque countertenor repertoire, now steps elegantly into the field of early-ish 20th-century English song. These 23 tracks, intelligently chosen and not all familiar, include Herbert Howells, Gerald Finzi, Peter Warlock and Vaughan Williams, with Purcell arrangements by Tippett and Britten. Mehta’s gift for mood and atmosphere is heard in the light beauty of Quilter’s “It was a lover and his lass”, the sweet melancholy of Gurney’s “Down by the Salley Gardens” or the veiled mystery of Lennox Berkeley’s “The Horseman”. Pianist Julius Drake provides customary alert, expressive accompaniment.
Kenneth Walton, The Scotsman, 13 September 2011
MANY of these pieces have featured in Bejun Mehta’s past visits to the Edinburgh Festival. He has an extraordinary countertenor voice, which has the wholesome ripeness of the female mezzo soprano knocked into turbo drive by the audible hint of natural testosterone. For these are not typical countertenor songs – all are from the flowing English school that stretches from Purcell (arranged Benjamin Britten) to the willowy later repertoire of Roger Quilter, Vaughan Williams (his delightful Linden Lea and sultry Silent Moon), Gerald Finzi, Herbert Howells and Ivor Gurney’s Down by the Salley Gardens. Julius Drake provides rich-scented accompaniments to match the Mehta’s uncanny sound.
Marc Rochester, Classical Review, 14 September 2011
It is fascinating to hear Ivor Gurney’s Down by the Salley Gardens, words that, for many,
are inseparable with Benjamin Britten’s setting. Gurney’s is altogether more gentle and reflective, although I wonder if the American countertenor Bejun Mehta is not over-egging the cake with his penchant for long drawn-out portamento. Britten does feature in this survey of English 20th-century song, but surprisingly not with an original song but with his spicy realizations of two Purcell songs. These, like so much else here, were intended for a very different voice, and it is noteworthy that one of the strongest competitors to this disc in terms of duplication of repertory, comes from a baritone – Bryn Terfel’s matchless recital with Malcolm Martineau (DG).
Mehta has superlative vocal control – beautifully demonstrated at the very end of Michael Tippett’s re-working of Purcell’s Music for a While – and his delivery is forthright and sharply focused, but it does not always suit the subtlety and studied restraint of much of this repertory. He overdoes the drama, rolling out massive climaxes and implying a substance to small songs that they simply do not possess.
He lays the emotion on with a trowel, with Quilter’s insouciant Shakespeare setting, O Mistress Mine, veering dangerously close to passion, and he overplays his hand in the humor of Peter Warlock’s brief but action-packed Jillian of Berry. Those very flaws, however, transform themselves into strengths with a marvelously over-the-top performance of Victor Hely-Hutchinson’s once popular pastiche of nursery rhymes Set in the Manner of Handel.
When Mehta can withhold the melodrama and settle for clear, unpretentious delivery of the words – and I have to say his diction is absolutely impeccable – he produces something quite magical. Gerald Finzi’s brittle At Middle-Field Gate in February is given a matchless performance as, above some mystic piano chords which could have come straight from The Planets, Mehta intones Hardy’s peerless verse with a poise and restraint as near to perfection as you can get.
Julius Drake’s playing is unfailingly sensitive and beautifully measured, exploiting every nuance in these ingeniously crafted piano accompaniments; his trotting horse-hooves for Lennox Berkeley’s evocative setting of The Horseman have a particularly vivid impact.
I remain unconvinced that this repertory is really suited to a countertenor; but I would certainly recommend the disc as an interesting and novel take on some of the finest songs to have come out of England in the last century and a half.
Michael Johnson, ConcertoNet.com, 22 January 2012
We associate the counter-tenor voice with works composed in the 18th century or earlier, or with specific and rather unusual roles such as Oberon in Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. This CD breaks new ground for the voice type as it consists of early 20th century songs by British composers (this includes three songs by Henry Purcell – two of them arranged by Britten, one by Michael Tippett). There are 23 songs by no less than 11 composers born between 1852 (Sir Charles Villiers Stanford) and 1913 (Britten).
The composer with the largest number of pieces is Roger Quilter, with six, all based on Shakespeare. Other poets represented include Thomas Hardy, William Blake, Percy Shelley, and Walter de la Mare.
The songs are not grouped by composer or arranged thematically. The result is a varied and well-paced ramble. It begins sombrely with Herbert Howells’s King David in which Mehta’s vibrato – which overall adds richness to its tone – almost becomes a beat (the same thing occurs in other slow, serious songs such as Lord, what is man? by Purcell/Britten.)
The CD’s title song, based on a folkish poem by W. B. Yeats, is composed by Ivor Gurney, rather than the more familiar Britten version.
My favourite number on the disk is its longest: Stanford’s La Belle Dame Sans Merci to the poem of John Keats. The ballad is recounted as a gripping mini-drama.
Offsetting the many serious songs are amusing tidbits such as Warlock’s Jillian of Berry, a half-minute lark about a girl who exchanges beer for kisses, and Hely-Hutchinson’s Set in the manner of Handel. This turns out to be Old Mother Hubbard delivered in high tragickal style. The booklet’s rather dense but informative notes explain this was one of a number of nursery rhymes set in the style of well-known composers, just as decades later comedian Dudley Moore set Little Miss Muffett in the style of Britten.
Familiar chestnuts include Vaughan Williams’ Linden Lea delivered in an engagingly jaunty manner, and his Bright is the ring of words, which sounds a bit odd delivered by other than a baritone.
As one would expect, Julius Drake’s accompaniment is a full partner in the performance. Bejun Mehta has had another career as a recording producer and, while he was not the producer of this disk, I’m sure the recorded results were closely scrutinized – and to good effect.
The counter-tenor voice is still controversial in some quarters; its place in Handel’s operas is under debate to cite one example. This disk could well prove to be a groundbreaker for counter-tenors who want to explore the repertoire that hitherto has been the province of more “conventional” voice types.