Tenor Philip Langridge is today’s most thoughtful and musically adept interpreter of Britten’s songs, and this effort–traversing some of the composer’s most difficult and introspective vocal scores–results in some of this singer’s more intellectually astute and artistically compelling performances. In fact, herein lies some very “heavy” stuff, some of the 20th century’s most important and original songs, at once personal (the Michelangelo sonnets were Britten’s first settings for tenor Peter Pears) and profoundly expressive treatments of texts selected from John Donne, Michelangelo, and Thomas Hardy.
You don’t fool around with a subject such as “Oh my blacke Soule!” or “Death, be not proud”, nor do you casually saunter through a love sonnet or a lament for innocence lost, and Britten is nothing less than a master of matching mood to text and utilizing voice and piano to create a unique and unforgettable sound world totally within the context of the poetry. Langridge’s luxurious, lyrical, very Pears-like vocal quality and similarly Pears-esque phrasing suits this music perfectly. This disc was an essential addition to the catalog when it first appeared on Collins in 1996 (joining Britten’s and Pears’ own indispensable recordings for Decca), and it remains so in this welcome Naxos reissue. [3/17/2004]
