Our Indifferent Century

Our Indifferent Century

Our rating

4

Dr Natasha Loges

Published: December 26, 2023 at 2:00 am

Our Indifferent Century

Works by Britten, Finzi, William Marsey, Joanna Ward

Francesca Chiejina (soprano), Fleur Barron (mezzo-soprano), Natalie Burch (piano)

Delphian DCD34311   64:33 mins 

We begin with Britten’s On this Island. Chiejina’s and Burch’s compelling performance is richly mature and painstakingly coloured. Despite occasional vocal vulnerability, Chiejina’s luxuriant voice always holds our attention.

William Marsey’s 2022 Removal and other powers flows naturally from Britten, hypnotic and unmoved, were it not for the women’s compassionate voices. The text, from an immigration bill, is set in disconnected stretches, the word ‘Home’ for instance (in Home Secretary) echoing endlessly, the final triumphant ‘Rights’ (from Human Rights) resounding before a closing tintinnabulation.

Finzi’s Before and after Summer dates from the years surrounding the Second World War. Barron’s enunciation is pinpoint precise. Her account of  ‘Channel Firing’ is heart-breaking, while ‘He Abjures Love’ is turbulent and unsettling. That said, the cycle loses focus (in ‘Amabel’, both Finzi and Hardy lapse into silliness), and I would have welcomed a smaller selection.

The opening of Joanna Ward’s SUMMER DRESSES / STRANGER-FRIENDS (bean piece 5) could be more vocally tranquil, to match the piano. This perfect counterpart to Marsey is unnerving, hallucinatory and exquisitely played, offering sun-drenched shards of memory.

Burch evokes countless, varied pictures and moods while always supporting and balancing the singers, despite many dense textures. She is a gifted sound-painter, breathing life into every detail, such as the random fall of leaves which opens ‘The Too Short Time’. Together with clear texts, fine recorded sound (despite the occasional untidy edit) and Lucy Walker’s eloquent liner notes, this album is thought-provoking, beautifully executed and timely. Natasha Loges

Dr Natasha Loges

Journalist and Critic, BBC Music Magazine

Natasha Loges is the head of postgraduate programmes and professor of musicology at the Royal College of Music. She is a regular critic for BBC Music Magazine and broadcaster on BBC Radio 3 and BBC TV. Her research interests include German song, concert history, 19th-century performance practice and gender studies, with a particular focus on the lives and music of Brahms and the Schumanns. Her PhD, undertaken at the Royal Academy of Music, was titled 'Text and Context in Brahms's Lieder'. Her books include Brahms in the Home and the Concert Hall: Between Private and Public Performance (Cambridge University Press, 2014), Brahms and His Poets (Boydell, 2017), Brahms in Context (Cambridge University Press, 2019), Musical Salon Culture in the Long Nineteenth Century (Boydell, 2019) and German Song Onstage (Indiana University Press, 2020).
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