The lunchtime concerts I attended last autumn included plenty of German leider and I hadn't yet got round to looking any further into that rich area of Romanticism so I'm grateful to Carolyn, and, of course, Iestyn Davies, for bringing these Mendelssohn and Schumann pieces to our attention long before I might have made any such attempt. But, in a mixed programme, we begin with Purcell.
And if the opening of Sound the Trumpet, in Iestyn's countertenor, strikes one as shrill then Carolyn immediately outshrills him with an even more audacious reply. It is busy music and, whether it's in the piano, or the tempi, or where, even the slower pieces seem more upbeat than the delicate langour that might be anticipated in the likes of the title track. I don't think Carolyn is a flashy performer, her voice is so clear and confident that it can carry any of her extensive repertoire without the need for show or effect. I'm sure Joseph Middleton is a consummate accompanist and it may just be that I'm more accustomed to the softer nuances of the lute on such songs but maybe I'd prefer to stay with that prejudice. I'm sure I'll appreciate it more on further playing. It is irresponsible, perhaps even disrespectful, to review records as one first hears them.
But still, in the first of the Mendelssohn songs, Ich wollt', mein Lieb', ergosse sich (I wish that I could pour my love/ Into a single word),
My image would then pursue you
Into your deepest dream.
would benefit from being taken at less of a sing-song pace.
However, it is fitting to think of these as drawing room entertainments rather than high art. They are lightsome things, Maiglockhen und die Blumlein dancing on the air and racing to its early conclusion. And it's not until Scheidend (Separation) that Iestyn gets first run on his duet partner in a moving solo and the first track to be flicked back to the start for an second listen. Nowhere near as desolate as it could have been but Iestyn is apparently a luxury singer rather than one to provoke anxiety. Carolyn's reply in Neue Liebe is nimble and quicksilver but not adequate to bring her level.
Back in tandem on Sonntagemorgen, I'm tempted to compare and contrast Mendelssohn's account of Sunday Morning with Lou Reed's and if Felix is restful and confident of his redeemer in gentle outdoor solitude, on the whole I'll not trade it for Lou's pacific, if chemically-induced, state of awareness.
The Schumann selection is much more as required with Carolyn regaining more than parity with Nachtlied and Stille Liebe and if you German isn't up to translating those, I'm not doing it for you. More restrained, drawing the listener in to their private world and with gorgeous touches, it soon becomes clear that these are the point of the album and what we were being led up to, the still centre of a varied recital. Iestyn is up to a fine response with Die Einsiedler, not only delivering some world- weariness shot through with hope but also the way that German, which we Englischers might not always find attractive, sometimes has a better word for things than we do.
Something appears to go wrong with the track listing when it says Track 24 on the machine while playing It was a lover and his lass,
In springtime, the only pretty ring time,
When birds do sing, hey ring a ding a ding,
and the booklet tells you Shelley wrote that. We are onto songs by Roger Quilter by now.
It made me think of the episode in Terry Eagleton's memoir, The Gatekeeper, in which a student turns up with a paper on, was it, Wordsworth's The Ancient Mariner, and Prof. Eagleton thinks either there's been a terrible misunderstanding or the lad's made the literary discovery of the century.
But we are back with Shelley for Music, when soft voices die that seems to demand comparison with Doherty's Music When the Lights Go Out and I'm left to wonder how much damage the decades of exposure to pop music have done to me if I'm with Pete on that.
I thought Carolyn had ended on a flourish on track 28 but suspected the show would end with a duet. The booklet doesn't line up with the running order on the disc so bottom marks to the editors for that. But at least it tells us what track 29 is, something in the same tradition as the delightful time that James Bowman and Catherine Bott did Oh, What Very Charming Weather from The Arcadians, but not as good.
Although I had hopes for it, and it's not out of the question that I'll enjoy those things outside of the Schumann more in time, it was never likely that this disc was going to challenge Carolyn's Bach Cantatas for any available investiture. Whether one takes to something, first impressions counting for a lot, is often more a matter of taste than an appreciation of artistic excellence and this will get a few more chances yet but once it's off the playlist and filed on the shelf it's not obviously going to get picked when it's up against all the other discs on those shelves.