Christopher Glynn piano
Roderick Williams baritone
Mark Eden guitar
James Gilchrist tenor
Katie Bray mezzo-soprano
Ailish Tynan soprano
Since his death aged 89, the music of Stephen Dodgson (1924-2013) has become a common thread in the new releases column. This is volume three of his songs and sensibly each has the same performers who demonstrate clearly how ‘inside’ the composer’s language they are. But his music can be found also on the Toccata Classics label, Naxos and Dutton.
I am coming to the songs for the first time but there is enough variety on this disc to make it a good introduction to the original and skilful gift that Dodgson clearly had for word setting. In his incisive booklet essay Robert Matthew-Walker writes ‘it is not too fanciful to claim that Dodgson’s settings began from the rise and fall of the chosen text’.
The poets includes Thomas Beddoes in the Three Songs which open the disc, Marvell, Australian folk poetry in the Bush Ballads (Third series) Wilfred Owen and Cecil Day-Lewis. Impeccable yet eclectic choices all.
The guitar accompanies Daphne to Apollo words by Matthew Prior (d.1721), to my mind the least successful song on the disc, although Katie Bray does wonders with its quick contrasts, otherwise the piano is mostly used and, in a Brittenesque way, comments on and even sometimes shapes the progress of the sung line.
Let us take an example: five songs by five poets, make up a 16 minute cycle entitled London Lyrics. The guitar accompanies, an instrument Dodgson for which really enjoyed writing. In the first, London is a Milder Curse the agitated vocal line is complemented by a quirky, irritated guitar until the lines Farewell London when it calms and even drops out. Harmonics open the second song ‘Shadwell Stair’ which is haunted. The voice is ‘sotto voce’ ideal for the ‘shadow that walks there’ reaching an aching climax at ‘when the crowing syrens blare’.
James Gilchrist colours the texts perfectly, ideally capturing the mood. A lazy, night-time mood is captured in Margaret, Maud and Mary Blake three English dowagers, as the ‘three Nubian queens’ passing ‘down the Thames’. And in River Music the guitar has an arpeggiated accompaniment-like figure which floats under the voice as it ‘ebbs and flows’. I hope you’ve got the idea.
Roderick Williams is wonderfully sensitive and he is also in top form especially in duetting with Katie Bray in the Bush Ballads.
All texts are supplied and there are copious footnotes indicating where the composer, either by design or accident, altered the texts.
Gary Higginson
British Music Society
