James Griffett and Paul Esswood, with Mark Brown who here produces, have been closely associated as co-founders of Pro Cantione Antiqua, and the present recital is a delightful product of their collaboration. The programme is well chosen, with solo groups for both singers, who come together, balancing admirably, in Abraham and Isaac. The alternation of piano and guitar accompaniment supplies a further element of welcome variety, and both players, Judith Ridgway and Timothy Walker, give unfailing pleasure.
For the present reviewer, there were two agreeable surprises, which possibly should not have been surprises at all. One was to find how well the folk-songs sung by Esswood can suit such a voice, and the other lay in the skill with which Griffett softens, colours and generally makes pliable a voice which, on record at least, has not always sounded so sympathetic. He is also very good with words: in the sheer clarity of enunciation (no texts are supplied but every word is intelligible) and in their expressive inflexions. The Six Chinese Songs achieve an ideal intimacy of performance, and in the folk-songshe characterizes, where appropriate, vividly and without exaggeration.
The Canticle benefits greatly from the pure, credibly boylike, tone of Esswood's voice in the upper range. He sings with feeling, whereas I found Griffett's Abraham rather too comfortable, toolittle perturbed: even in the farewell to Isaac there is tenderness in his tone but scarcely grief. Esswood's own folk-song group, which opens the record, is excellent, with The Salley Gardens broadly phrased, The foggy foggy dew brisk and nonchalant, and The ash grove freshly moving, with its delicate trickle of accompaniment as streamlets meander and the jarring incongruities of key as ''with sorrow, deep sorrow'' the singer searches for his love. The recording, made at Haberdashers' Aske's, near London, is fine in all respects.'