This spellbinding recital of English songs was first issued nearly ten years ago on an Oxford University Press LP. It is now transferred to CD and deserves the widest possible circulation. Ian Partridge, accompanied with intuitive sensitivity by his sister Jennifer, brings rare accomplishment to these 21 items. His pleasing tenor voice, capable of lusty strength or poetic delicacy, is matched by his intelligent delivery of the texts. The poems clearly mean as much to him as the music, so that there is a marvellous fusion of voice and verse into an artistic whole called song. The recording is exemplary, with just enough resonance to add extra excitement to Partridge's ringing top notes and the balance between singer and pianist is ideal.
So much for the performance. The selection of songs is equally good. Some of the best of Warlock is here, and when he was at his best what an extraordinary composer he was. The Frostbound Wood ranks among the elite of English songs and is performed with exactly the right degree of austere simplicity. How often in recitals do we hear After Two Years, a setting of Aldington, yet what a moving song it is, every line pregnant with hidden meaning. Balulalow, of course, is a classic as is the setting of Passing by; fewer listeners will perhaps know Away to Twiver, with its delightfully graphic accompaniment. As for Sleep and My Own Country, they are pearls beyond price.
The nine Vaughan Williams songs are, with two exceptions, among the least known of his settings. The exceptions are the delightful ''Water Mill'' often called Schubertian but nearer to English folk-song, and the mystical ''The New Ghost''. These are from the Four Poems of Fredegond Shove, the woman poet who was related to Vaughan Williams's first wife. The other two, ''Motion and Stillness'' and ''Four Nights'', do not deserve their neglect, the latter (as the anonymous note points out) recapturing the mood and style of the pre-1914 Housman songs. But the treasure is to have the three 1925 Whitman settings. This poet always sparked off some especially characteristic vein in Vaughan Williams. Each of these settings is founded on a ground bass and shows that this composer, as much as Holst, liked to set himself a technical problem. Dating from the period of Sancta civitas and Flos campi, they have the same ecstatic intensity. A stimulating disc.'