The Slipped Disc daily comfort zone (263): Pop goes Purcell
mainI’m not sure about this: Annie Lennox sings Dido Lament with a Covid-isolated chorus.
She says: ‘I feel a tremendous sense of empathy and concern for everyone who has lost a dearly beloved friend or family member this year and hope this recording can offer a moment of shared collective mourning for those whose lives have been taken.’
Here’s the real thing:
There is only one version of Dido’s Lament by a non-classical artist that is worth listening to.
https://youtu.be/sA5UAbl1OWY
Janet Baker every time.
“I’m not sure about this”….
A typical stuffy condemnation of pop singers who attempt to sing music of another era.
Annie Lennox may not be unsurpassable, as Janet Baker is (I’m in total agreement with Elizabeth Owen here), but I think Annie sings well, and given the current tragic circumstances, I was moved by her rendition.
And when Annie writes “I feel a tremendous sense of empathy and concern for everyone who has lost a dearly beloved friend or family member this year and hope this recording can offer a moment of shared collective mourning for those whose lives have been taken”, in my opinion, all criticism is disarmed.
The arranger has mucked about with the ground bass – the key to the structure of the whole piece. The result is quite bland. In fact, the whole thing just hints at the original.
I like Annie Lennox’s voice.
And Purcell still gets the fat royalty checks either way, right?
Was someone worried that he didn’t?
No. Here’s the real thing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFMkSf8I2bE
I remember Mermaid Theatre’s A-team production of “Dido” with Kerstin Flagstad and darlin’ Maggie Teyte, who was replaced by Elisabeth Schwarzkopf as Belinda in HMV’s recording.
More recently, Chicago Opera Theater did “Dido” with the marvelous Rufus Muller’s Aeneas, quite eclipsing their Dido, which doesn’t happen often, and didn’t with the Mermaid’s Flagstad. “Remember me … emember me…”, like the Ghost in “Hamlet”.
If you want Purcell sung by a non-classical voice, try the Norwegian jazz singer Susanna Wallumrod’s album, If Grief Could Wait. She imbues Purcell’s dying, burning, raging, solitude-seeking lovers with a perhaps surprising contemporary ‘feel’. The older generation of high classical sopranos singing “I rage, I burn” and suchlike in cut-glass accents never convinced me that they really did rage and burn; but Wallunrod does. (Purcell is interspersed with Leonard Cohen songs.)
I’ve listened to this three times over the last week and it gets better and better. I’ve never been a fan of Annie Lennox till now, but in this doing I find the quality of her voice and the way she uses it incredibly moving. I’m pretty sure Purcell himself would be very appreciative of the fact people still perform his music at all, and all the more so if he could hear the range of very different yet respectful approaches people take.