When Quilter sat down at the piano, did he always put his hands on the keyboard in the same kinds of place? This is how I imagine him. And did he sometimes get tired of those places and want to compose like somebody else, Ravel or Holst or Lehar? The wonder is that, in this small output, and output of small things, he was almost always, utterly and unmistakably, himself. ‘Almost always’: two items in this programme prompt that. One is the very last, a duet with a waltz-refrain, dated 1940 when it might have been taken up (but I don’t remember it being so) by Anne Ziegler and Webster Booth. He hadn’t quite the courage to carry on and make a really big thing of it, adding the bold banality that might have ensured success. The other is the setting of Shelley’s Indian Serenade (“I arise from dreams of thee”). The longest of the songs and the most elaborate, it is also the furthest from the drawing-room and nearest to what I suppose we have to call ‘art-song’; and, perhaps not surprisingly, it is the least characteristic and (I find) the least attractive. For once he seems to have decided to be somebody else. The man of fastidious literary taste chooses the sickly poem, makes his hands do unhabitual things, and conscientiously constructs. Meanwhile the charm has fled, out of that chamber window to which Shelley was led (“who knows how?”) by the spirit in his feet.
The delicacy and restrained passion of Quilter’s characteristic writing finds a sensitive exponent in Graham Johnson. Both singers bring an affectionate touch, the sense of personal pleasure that in previous Quilter recitals on record seemed to me to characterize Benjamin Luxon’s singing (Chandos, 3/90) more than John Mark Ainsley’s (Hyperion, 11/96). Lisa Milne is delightful in the Ophelia song, How shall I your true love know? and in the spirited Charlie is my darling. Anthony Rolfe Johnson is most gratefully heard in the quieter songs such as An old carol (“I sing of a maiden”). It is interesting to hear the Herrick cycle, To Julia, in the arrangement Quilter made for accompaniment by piano quintet. Also moving and fascinating to hear again the song in which he really did extend – and remain – himself: his arrangement of Ca’the yowes to the knowes.'