![]() The dynamics are almost operatic, and Ainsley turns “O might those sighes and teares” into something self-lacerating that Britten’s Captain Vere might sing. Here, Ainsley and Martineau give a performance of extremes. The Holy Sonnets of John Donne have been lucky on records. Martineau has other goals and is not always inclined to equipoise, but this new recording is one of the best we have. ![]() Poulenc as a pianist had a way of setting a song slowly spinning, like planets in orbit. Ainsley is particularly good in the ominous, denatured setting of “Une roulette couverte en tuiles.” In the recording by the work’s creators, Poulenc and Pierre Bernac, the singer is caught in loose voice, barely under control, so Ainsley’s version is welcome. The fourth song is marked “freely but intensely,” qualities that are well projected and that also suitably mark the performance of Tel Jour Telle Nuit. This cycle is perhaps more rewarding for the performers than for listeners, but (once past a perplexing, urgent version of the first song) Ainsley and Martineau give a thoughtful performance, with Ainsley even correcting a misprinted word in the third song. But the big bookends of the recital, Lennox Berkeley’s Five Poems Opus 53 and Britten’s Holy Sonnets of John Donne, are full-bore British.īerkeley did write more than a dozen songs to French texts, but here he is setting words by Auden. For the third song Scheer writes a gloss on the Louise de Uilmorin poem “C’est ainsi que tu es,” memorably set by Poulenc, and Heggie’s Poulenc pastiche is skillfully done. John Mark Ainsley and Malcolm Martineau gave the premiere (in 2008), and Gene Scheer’s text refers to Poulenc’s cycle Tel Jour Telle Nuit, which is also on the program. The generating idea for this recital was perhaps Jake Heggie’s song cycle Friendly Persuasions. ![]() Poulenc and Britten both set the same Shakespeare text, “Fancy,” and the two songs are notable for the way each of the composers, who ordinarily wrote music that sounds like no one else’s, in this instance each wrote something not very individual. ![]() Most of them used to go by a single title-“My Senior Recital, I Hope You’ll Come”-but there is at least a bit of justification for this one. RECITAL ALBUMS ALL HAVE SILLY TITLES NOW. ![]()
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