Britten - British Folk Songs & Britten Abroad

BRITTEN Folk Song Arrangements
The Salley Gardens. Little Sir William. The Bonny Earl o’Moray. The Trees They Grow So High. The Ash Grove. Oliver Cromwell. The Plough Boy. Sweet Polly Oliver. The Miller of Dee. The Foggy, Foggy Dew. O Waly Waly. Come You Not From Newcastle. The Brisk Young Widow. Sally in Our Alley. Early One Morning. Ca’ the Yowes. Tom Bowling. Greensleeves. Avenging and Bright. How Sweet the Answer. The Minstrel Boy. Dear Harp of My Country. Oft in the Stilly Night. The Last Rose of Summer

Steve Davislim tenor
Simone Young piano

MELBA 301120 (65:49)

Michelangelo Sonnets
Poet's Echo
Holderlin Fragments
French folksongs

Susan Gritton soprano
Mark Padmore tenor
Iain Burnside piano

Signum SIGCD122

Two CDs received together, a useful collection of Britten's English Folksongs and invaluable contemporary versions of some of Britten's most important vocal works; his major cycles in Italian, Russian, and German together with eight French Folksong arrangements.

Davislim & Young have edged into prominence in what was Pears/Britten territory, and it has brought back nostalgic memories of playing all the folk songs, English, Irish and French, with my son long ago... Two groups of the French ones are to be found in the Signum disc, another programme held together by Ian Burnside's contribution at the piano and, doubtless, prominently in programme building and rehearsal.

Signum's disc has the full 28-page booklet also on line http://www.signumrecords.com/catalogue/sigcd122/SIGCD122_web.pdf
A pity that there, as too in the booklet, the texts and translations are not printed parallel.

Strong recommendations for both.

Peter Grahame Woolf