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Recording Review - My Own Country

My Own Country Herald HAVPCD 311 Soloist: witxwbek witxwbek BCSD Details Review by Martin Carson: "My Own Country" is the title of a new CD by the boy soprano, Harry Sever. It is a CD I have been eagerly awaiting for some months, yet, as it turns out, it is also the CD for which I have been longing, perhaps for a quarter of a century. I have always hoped to hear a young, sensitive and competent English singer explore some of the secular repertoire written by his own countrymen. This "Recital of English Song" gives us just that. The programme of twenty songs offers two from each of the composers represented. Sullivan 1. Orpheus with his lute 2. Edward Gray Parry 3. Weep you no more 4. Willow, willow, willow Quilter 5. Over the mountains 6. Drink to me only Dyson 7. A poet's hymn 8. Song of the Cyclops Armstrong Gibbs 9. The stranger 10. Five eyes Gurney 11. Down by the Salley Gardens 12. Snow Howells 13. O, my deir hert 14. King David Warlock 15. My own country 16. Rest, sweet nymphs Head 17. Tewkesbury Road 18. Lavender Pond Britten 19. Tom Bowling 20. The choirmaster's burial. "My Own Country" a Recital of English Song Harry Sever with Robert Bottone, piano Most of our good boy sopranos from the past have been persuaded to repeat a very limited repertoire of Handel, Bach, Faurй, Reger, Mendelssohn and Mozart and, more often than not, it has been sacred music. Connor Burrowes broke the mould with his "Consort Songs" and "A Quiet Conscience". These two CDs blew a breath of fresh air into a garden filled with a somewhat cloying fragrance. Happily, less than a decade on, another breeze may clear the air again. I do not propose to attempt to measure Faurй or Franck alongside Howells and Head, and I am quite aware of Mozart's and Bach's undisputed mastery of the art. However, there comes a time when even the most beautiful music begins to pall, in our world of interminable wall to wall sound. Harry Sever's programme should provide the most seasoned (dare I say jaded) listeners with many new gems to evaluate and, perhaps, treasure. The singing is as intelligent and as beautiful, as our previous experience of Sever's performances has led us to expect of him and with Robert Bottone's fine piano playing we do not hear mere accompaniment but a welcome, joyful conspiracy to make music together. I experienced a wash of sadness as I listened to Britten's arrangement of Dibden's "Tom Bowling" and his setting of Hardy's "Choirmaster's burial" not because they are particularly "grave" pieces. In fact both are blessed with gratitude, peace and a modicum of humour. What brought on my moment of melancholy was that thought that, as the recital approached its well-calculated ending, Harry Sever's seems to be a lone voice in a land where singing boys are ever more isolated inside our ancient cathedral buildings. There is plenty of music, without doubt, but it has a very narrow spectrum, and most boys are but passive listeners. In his acknowledgements, Sever thanks members of the staff at Winchester College for "their ongoing support". We should do the same, and hope that this protected garden is seeded with more such delights. I also hope that Harry Sever will be blessed with a fine adult voice so that he may continue to enjoy his music and to share it with others. (some additional comments) In the Herald CD called ”Something‘s Coming", a young Harry Sever was allowed three solo items: The first was Schubert‘s ”Who is Sylvia" which was pleasant, in an artless way, but showed little of what was to come other than a hint of the emerging characteristic timbre of his voice. Four tracks later he seemed to have risen markedly in his performance. (I know, I promise, that the order of tracks gives us no clue as to the of recording - but I like the illusion this gave.) Britten‘s ”The Birds" was compelling. The piece is a tiny jewel, often given too much of a bravura treatment. Sever seemed to sing it a pensive mood, a foretaste of the type of singing at which he is now especially good. Finally, he iced the cake with an extraordinary rendering of Bernstein‘s ”Somewhere". Probably dependent on the listener‘s own personality (and age), this can be a difficult song to endure. I have not heard it sung by a boy soprano before and have wondered why it was chosen. Despite his young age at the time of recording, and the need for some adjustment with regard to the song‘s use outside its original context, this was a powerful performance in its own way, for me certainly the most exciting on the CD (though not to be taken lightly, nor in excess). In the Quiristers‘ next album ”Hear my Prayer", also from Herald, Sever was given the opportunity to play the role of English choirboy soloist. Such is usually (perhaps traditionally) cool and detached as he sings in the intimate confines of the cathedral quire. While Sever gives the illusion of being the steely, remote and highly accomplished choirboy, there is something about his singing here which puts it in a league different from that of the many others we have heard in this repertoire over the years. There are constant subtle hints of drama, not enough to make the old-school English cathedral canon apoplectic, but sufficient to raise at least one of his sleepy eyebrows and even possibly to cause him to make an observation to the Organist and Choirmaster. National press critics have described the recent performances by Sever and his two associates in Glydebourne‘s ”Flute" as ”ravishing" and the best ever heard - so I feel less lonely in voicing my appreciation of this young singer‘s undoubted skills. My own favourite of these reviews was one in the ”Independent" by Michael Church, reporting a ”Tsunami Benefit" concert at the Royal Albert Hall. This was an event cloyingly rich with ”the cream of crossover" musicians: the Opera Babes. the Celtic Tenors, Dual, Russell Watson, Bond, Julian Lloyd Webber, Aled Jones et al. Church was not over impressed but did his best to be as positive as musical taste allowed. When he reached the end, however, he wrote . . . ”The best came last, in the form of the 13-year-old treble Harry Sever, who brought real artistry to a difficult song. Here was a singer who really inhabited the music he sang, making everything that had gone before seem like painting by numbers." Bearing in mind that the Albert Hall itself advertised the concert with the words, ”The leading lights of the classical musical world have agreed to perform at a major one-off benefit concert here . . . ”, Church‘s comments are a remarkable tribute to Sever‘s expertise. So, we come to the present time and a new solo recording by Harry Sever to show us how this expertise has developed. He has played the schoolboy, and the choirboy, and now he has aimed at being a serious musician. Nothing in the recital suggests that he has bitten off more than he could chew. I imagine that each item has been thoughtfully planned and carefully prepared yet it all seems so easy - just the way it should. The ambience is absolutely right, for these are songs for the intimacy of the drawing room, and listening to the CD is like having a private audience. Nothing can escape the listener and Sever is the ideal singer for there is so much of interest here, not merely the beautiful voice on which so many young singers solely rely. The recital opens with Sullivan‘s familiar ”Orpheus with his lute", in which the ever-maturing Sever demonstrates that he still has plenty of high notes left. ”Edward Gray", also by Sullivan, is a sad song, not great music perhaps, but given a fighting chance by this lovely performance. I am always hungry for sad, reflective songs and so there is much on this CD on which I can feast. Parry is represented with ”Weep you no more, sad fountains" and ”Willow, willow, willow" which offer much melancholy under which to bask. Quilter‘s ”Over the mountains" lifts the spirit for a brief while before his arrangement of the familiar and beautiful ”Drink to me only" takes us back into a more reflective mood. George Dyson gives us some drama in the form of the ”Song of the Cyclops", which Sever takes in his stride, and before that a thoughtful setting of Herrick‘s ”A Poet‘s Hymn. This is a delightful piece which extols the virtues of the hearth and home. Cecil Armstrong Gibbs is one of those composers which some of my generation will remember from school choir days and, indeed, the favourite ”Five Eyes" is here to bring back happy memories of old Hans‘s cats Jekkel, Jessup and one-eyed Jill. There is also his setting of de la Mare‘s ”The Stranger" which matches the slightly surreal world of this poet whose scenes left us just a little haunted as children. Ivor Gurney‘s setting of ”Salley Gardens" returns us to sadness once again, and deeper still with Edward Thomas‘s ”Snow". This song I have heard Sever sing in a concert and it is a tribute to his skill that, hearing it again, I could have been at the same performance, such is the consistency of his singing. The mood lifts slightly with Howells ”O my deir Hert" and ”King David". I would be surprised to hear, from a boy soprano, a better rendition of the latter and I have heard many before now. The title song is the first of two by Peter Warlock, again peaceful, and leading us to rest, sleep and sweet dreams, ”Rest Sweet Nymphs" being the other. I have seen Sever perform Head‘s ”Tewkesbury Road" and, were it not such a long first line, would have thought this an apt sentiment to describe his current state: ”It is good to be out on the road and going one knows not where." You certainly feels that he means it when he sings these words. Head has set some interesting poems and, with the poet Cicely Fox Smith, has made a beautiful place of the Surrey Commercial Docks in their song ”Lavender Pond", a beauty enhanced by Sever‘s gentle, lyrical singing. In the last two songs, an arrangement and a setting by Britten, we are returned to a sweet melancholy, sweet for there is both rejoicing and whimsy in these farewell songs to the dear departed. The first is ”Tom Bowling" and how fortunate we would be to have such a touching eulogy sung for us after our own passing. ”The Choirmaster‘s Burial" (not an unconscious farewell to choral days I hope) closes the recital, not on a low note, for there is humour in Hardy‘s poetry and one feels quite pleased that the choirmaster has the last laugh on the vicar, ”Such the tenor man told when he had grown old." This record is a benchmark recording. Though one or two have touched on the repertoire, and at least one treble recording from the past made a valiant effort to promote secular music of this period, this is the first to produce such a polished article Let us hope that there will be another, though, beyond crossing fingers and stroking black cats, there is little we can do to prolong the time Harry Sever can sustain his excellent soprano voice. In fact, we might better utilise our feline friends in granting the wish that he will be able to sing to us again as a tenor or baritone in a few years time. Do not miss this CD. It is worth every penny you will spend on it. Review by Lynn Schoch: I fully intended to keep my distance from this disc until no one was interested in talking about it any more. I knew if I let myself go on this sort of recording, I would offend just about everybody. It sounded like the work of a mature treble doing "art songs." A disc for the connoisseur. I have heard too many mature boy sopranos who were really budding falsetists (and I prefer Alfred Deller). Art songs get into all the manners and mannerisms that are trained into singers in the western musical tradition, a tradition that sets operatic singing as the highest expression of vocal performance. Although I "like" opera and I go (because my wife "loves" opera) many times a year, I always get the feeling of a mannered falseness-singers are told how to make their musical noises and the closer they get to the expected musical gestures (and the further from their own musical voices), the better they are received. For the same reason, I am wary when the phrase "trained musician" is applied to a young person. I usually take this to mean that a coach who believes there is only one right way to sing and only one right sound to make has infiltrated a defenseless youngster and filled him with the propaganda of western musical technique, rooting out anything of what might be an individual voice. To those blighters of youthful creativity, "artistry" and "technique" reign supreme and snuff out singing that is simple, unaffected, intimate, real. I hasten to add that I am not a professional musician, so I can be as narrowminded as I want to be with no professional accountability. And before the professionals on this list have me bodily removed, I confess that as much as I might nurture them, I don't really trust such prejudices. For one thing, they say to the young singer, "You can only grow so much in this business; if you work diligently over a long period, we will hate the result." Hardly fair, that. For another thing, prejudices like these are much more conventional than creative just now. I quote a reviewer of the "Better Land" series: "The vogue in boys singing seems to be going towards the innocence of extreme youth rather than the artistry of a more mature soprano sound . . . Gone was the vibrato, gone the maturity and the expressive and emotive range." Instead, our ideal is now "young innocent voices, relatively untrained particularly if accompanied by video footage of very small children in floaty white robes!" Humph. When my ideas are held up to such legitimate ridicule, I look for a rock to crawl under. And who is this ideologue? This writer of a manifesto of what worlds should be open to young singers? None other than Harry Sever himself. So here we have a singer who not only has strong opinions about his art, but has the ability to write them down effectively. Perhaps I should hang up the "wisdom" of my old age and listen to what this fellow has to say-or better yet to sing. The first thing to notice about the CD is that this is a true treble voice that moves with ease and grace throughout its range. It can jump tall intervals at a single bound with no worry of explosions or crash landings. Mr Sever sings with lightness and intimacy. The performances feel more like a soirйe in the music room of a Queen Anne villa than a public recital. He accomplishes a musical whisper that makes for powerful rendition of a song where sobs of regret and lost love are smothered by the grass of the lover's grave. He can also manage a strong forte that communicates strength without hooting or shouting. Sever has been taught, or rather has learned, how his soprano voice can be used for best effect. Technique, polish, and attention to detail abound. He can end a piece on a very high note. But the result is not "See! I can sing high and I got the note right!" but rather "Now that I'm up here, let me show you what I can do with this note." It starts soft, gets louder, then trails away with a just a hint of vibrato. This guy is in charge. The album begins with Arthur Sullivan's "Orpheus and His Lute," a piece I know well, both the words and the music. Always good to start with the familiar. Sucks the audience in, makes them feel like they're in their own country, as it were. I had noticed that the disc had a lot of unfamiliar songs, but scattered among them were ones I thought I knew. "Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes" is another where both words and music are familiar (though as a very young student, I faced this song as an elementary trumpet study and wondered where the straw would be in this drinking exercise; I've never been able to take the song seriously since). And then there's the Willow song that I thought was a haunting melody that Alfred Deller had done, but not at all; it was a Parry setting I had never encountered before. Similarly, there's a "Salley Gardens" in a setting by Ivor Gurney, and a "Balubalow" by Herbert Howells. Familiar, but unfamiliar. My horizons are being stretched here; this album should carry a warning on the label. I am a fan of consonants in singing, and Sever is ever respectful thereof. I particularly liked his Paean to the English Consonant in "Song of the Cyclops," a Dyson setting of words by the late Tudor Thomas Dekker. Now the reason I couldn't bring myself to hold off acquiring this album. Many, many years ago I was wading through a stack of old sheet music in a book store in Indianapolis and came across a cover with wondrous Victorian graphic and filigree work. Suitable for framing, I thought. When I got the piece home, my wife played through it for me, and I thought I had made a magnificent discovery. It was a tribute to a fallen sailor, to my ear, dignified and military, a perfect example of "maestoso" and not the least bit "lugubrioso." Staunch, aware of loss, but not sad. I related this story to a member of this list some time ago, and he replied most politely noting that my discovery had also been made by one Henry Wood and several generations of attendees at the Proms. And, by the way, he added, the song was really sad and not the least bit military as I had imagined. When I read that Harry Sever included Charles Dibdin's "Tom Bowling," I was instantly emailing my credit card number (in two emails, etc, etc) to the little shop on the corner. So what was it going to be, Mr Sever? Maestoso or lugubrioso? As it turned out, neither. Sever's performance does not go the military route, but definitely dwells on the sadness and loss. Nothing overdone, nothing morbid, but a painfully tender and vulnerable loss. I couldn't stop listening to this track. And dammit, another of my pet prejudices exploded. Sever has got it right. I doubt I will ever be able to hear it the old way again. This brings us to what I have found to be a most interesting discussion on this list-how one person could feel little emotion in a performance that moved others to tears. I have had similar discussions in the opera. After a soprano has spent ten minutes prostrate on stage singing for all her might before snuffing it, I fear I feel relief, not sorrow. Others have declared me heartless for that, and I know they are right, but I just can't get into their frame of mind. Perhaps some of this is happening here as well. One member of this list points us to some scientific studies that attempt to identify how music makes its effect. I quote from one of them: "It was found that anger was associated with the presence of vibrato; joyous phrases had vibrato, a short final duration, and a shallow spectral slope; sadness was associated with absence of vibrato, long duration, and a low intensity, whereas fear was related to a steep spectral slope." I can just imagine Mr Sever's coach sitting down with him and outlining these precepts,"A little more spectral slope on that one, Harry." If one were creating music electronically, these dicta may be useful, but it is inconceivable to me how these scientific conclusions can account for what Sever achieves on this album. I like better the cultural argument that it is the proponents of the stiff upper lip who will like Sever's work best. While I admit strong Anglophilia, I know that the more I try to think British, the more American I realize myself to be. Yet, I find that emotions often take their strongest hold in restraint. The whispered curse is more frightening than the shouted epithet, the quaking voice more touching than the wail. It has been suggested that the American ear won't respond as readily to the kind of efforts Sever is engaged in as well as the British ear. Now, here is a hypothesis that stands in need of a test. Perhaps with a recital in the American Midwest, not too far from Indiana. . . There are those who don't like secular music; they may not warm to this album. Neither will those who are focused on the perceived masterworks of Western music. If you are threatened by the unfamiliar, this album will threaten you. Other singers have been mentioned in comparison with Harry Sever: Paul Phoenix, Connor Burrowes, Aled Jones, Cyrille, DuBois. This is a truly brilliant group, and Sever's presence in no way diminishes any of them. They are all worth repeated hearings. But I do think Mr Sever has proved himself a member of this group, as a master of the soprano voice, as an explorer of its possibilities. Yes, he has been taught, and I can't know this for sure, but I sense that the voice that results is Sever's own. He is in command of it; what he does with it finally is HIS doing. He knows what he can do; he knows what it can do. He has made the world of the treble voice truly his own country.