The pity of war is an album in 10 million

The pity of war is an album in 10 million

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norman lebrecht

November 10, 2018

From the Lebrecht Album of the Week:

Another themed album, but for once a timely theme. Ian Bostridge has chosen sets by two composers who fell in the First World War and two who knew the terror of war without having experienced it. George Butterworth’s setting of A. E. Houseman’s A Shropshire Lad captures at once the timelessness of English landscape and the hopelessness of young men in the trenches. Bostridge wrenches the heart with his falsetto lines in ‘Is my team ploughing?’, the appeal of a fallen soldier. Butterworth fell on the Somme to a sniper’s bullet in August 1916….

Read on here.

And here.

Comments

  • David A. Boxwell says:

    American baritone John Brancy (and pianist Peter Dugan) are also doing sterling work ploughing this same ground. Check them out on Youtube and their own self-published recording.

    • PETER LONGSHAW says:

      a very fine artist; I was lucky to hear him in NY in March…as well as the ‘classical’ gems his WHERE ARE ALL THE FLOWERS GONE? was heart-wrenching…he deserves a stellar career

  • Fred says:

    Ian Bostridge the cracking mousetenor, a product of the anglo-saxon mob….A on-voice but a great musician and intelligent man, yet not even 0 years ago he wouldn’t have been hired to sing Ruiz

  • william osborne says:

    Insufficient acknowledgement is given to the British tenor tradition including its vocal coloring and clarity of diction. It also lends itself to more modern conceptions of opera, such as seen in Britten’s Church Parables.

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