A Painted Tale: Blow • Dowland • Ferrabosco • Lanier • Purcell **
Nicholas Phan, tenor
Michael Leopold, lute
Ann Marie Morgan, viola da gamba
17th February 2015
AV2325
£7.79 (1CD Jewel Case | 20-page booklet) | 40% discount (usual price £12.99)
Summary:
“here’s a disc disc to remember come all those end-of-year round-ups … There’s a directness to Phan’s delivery, a clarity to his diction that has previously found its home in Britten’s text-driven settings … Simple pleasures – musical interplay among sympathetic colleagues, text and music each revealing the other, a voice doing what it does best – are celebrated, amplified here”
Editor’s Choice – Gramophone
For his third AVIE album, tenor Nicholas Phan turns to a group of Renaissance and Baroque English composers who greatly influenced Benjamin Britten, the muse of his two previous recordings – Still falls the Rain (AV 2258) and Winter Words (AV 2238), his solo debut recording which topped the Best Classical Recordings lists of NPR, The New Yorker, and The New York Times. A Painted Tale – the title taken from a lyric by 16th century composer Thomas Morley – features songs with lute and viola da gamba by Blow, Dowland, Ferrabosco, Lanier and Purcell. Describing the programme, which tells a story of love gained and then lost, Nick says, “Reading the poetry in these songs I am fascinated by how little the human experience has changed over the centuries. By assembling these various songs into what I call ‘a pastiche song cycle,’ I hope that creating a dramatic context for these pieces will highlight how relevant this material still is today.”
Tracklist:
1. Thomas Morley (1557/8–1602) A Painted Tale (2.39)
2. Henry Purcell (1659–95) O solitude (5.42)
3. Robert Johnson (1572/3–1637) Have you seen but a bright Lily grow (1.54)
4. John Blow (1649–1708) Fairest work of happy nature (3.23)
5. Blow The Self Banished (2.01)
6. Nicholas Lanier (1588–1666) Fire, Fire (1.52)
7. Blow O turn not those fine eyes away (3.17)
8. Purcell Sweeter than roses (3.21)
9. Purcell She loves and she confesses too (2.16)
10. Lanier No more shall meads be deck’d with flowers (7.00)
11. John Dowland (1563–1626) My thoughts are winged with hopes (2.34)
12. Blow Of all the torments, all the cares (3.57)
13. Dowland Can she excuse my wrongs (2.33)
14. Purcell Not all my torments (2.48)
15. Alfonso Ferrabosco (1575–1628) So, so Leave off this last amenting kiss (2.49)
16. Dowland In darkness let me dwell (3.52)
17. Dowland Now, O now I needs must part (4.37)
18. Dowland Come Heavy Sleep (3.46)
19. Lanier Stay, Silly Heart (3.33)
20. Purcell Evening Hymn (5.11)
Recorded 21 & 22 October 2014 at Skywalker Sound, Marin County, CA
Producer, engineer and editing: Marlan Barry
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