Editorial Reviews

The purpose behind this album is demonstrating the more resigned, elegiac reactions to the First World War among British poets and composers. It includes both musical setting of poems, performed by tenor Andrew Kennedy and pianist Julius Drake, as well as actor Simon Russell Beale reading poetry. The collection includes works by both well-known and obscure artists. Among the poets are Rupert Brooke, A.E. Housman, James Joyce, and Thomas Hardy, as well as Edward Thomas, Charlotte Mary Mew, Edmund Blunden, and Vera May Brittain. Eugene Goossens is the composer who may be most familiar to modern audiences, even though he is better remembered as a conductor. Ivor Gurney, who contributes both music and poetry, is somewhat known, but after the war he spent most of the remainder of his life in a mental institution. William Denis Browne, who is largely forgotten, had only begun to excel as a composer when he enlisted. He was a friend of Brooke's and was with Brooke at the poet's death, and one of these selections is a reading of a poem he wrote as a memorial to Brooke; Browne was killed in 1915. Each of these songs is lyrical, melodically lovely, evocative, and beautifully put together; any of them could easily slip into the repertoire. The songs by Goossens, though, are in a class by themselves; they are so strikingly original and musically strong that they make the listener sit up in wonder at his inventiveness and imagination. Their musical language is slightly more adventurous than that of Gurney and Browne, and his settings have a breathtaking emotional depth. "A Winter-night Idyll," "Gentle Lady," "O cool is the valley now...," and "All day I hear the noise of waters..." are simply stunning. Kennedy's light, lyrical voice is well suited to the gentle melancholy of the songs, and Drake provides a sensitive accompaniment. Beale's readings are understated and deeply moving. Altara's sound is warm, present, and exceptionally clean, with fine balance. Stephen Eddins, All Music Guide

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