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Congleton Review

This came out in September but it’s a nice autumn album, Shaw’s mostly downbeat, and at the least atmospheric, selection matching the current gloomy weather (though we suppose it would match the mood on sunny days, too). The sleeve notes say the album is pandemic-based, Shaw having daily voice lessons via Skype “to address several decades of bad vocal habits” and then being told he was “an English tenor,” a term he did not know but which led to this.

It’s all nicely performed and we always think a tenor the best of voices, always melodic and never overpowering. Composers featured include Ivor Gurney, Benjamin Britten, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Gerald Finzi and Roger Quilter.

“Five Elizabethan Songs” open, Gurney’s work composed in 1913/14 when he was still a student. At a stretch you could hear the portent of war in the slightly gloomy sound but track one has the words of Shakespeare’s “Orpheus” (he who charmed the Sirens, looked back at Eurydice as they left Hades, was killed by chopping up and later came to grief in a Nick Cave song) and track two is called “Tears,” so pretty gloomy anyway.

The next section of songs from Vaughan Williams and is more thoughtfully pastoral than gloomy (“Lark” style violin in places, too). This section includes “Along the Field,” a lively piece with violin. “Four Songs, Opus 14” from Roger Quilter follows, more reflective, and musically perhaps the standout.

Lyrically the most entertaining is “Folksong Arrangements for High Voice and Harp” by Benjamin Britten, from “Lord! I married me a wife! / She gave me trouble all my life! / Made me work in the cold rain and snow” to the good old traditional “The sheep’s in the meadows, the kye’s in the corn” (later in the album there’s even a “With a hey, and a ho, and a hey nonino”).

The album closes on a second highlight, “Let Us Garlands Bring”, Opus 18 from Gerald Finzi — we like Finzi on no better basis than he was from Newbury and for many years we were printed there, and occasionally used to go on jollies to the place (including being refused entry to the roughest pub in the town on the grounds of sobriety) which is livelier and more melodic.

An enjoyable and approachable album for fans of lighter opera, art songs and folk.

It’s out on Divine Art, DDX 21110.