Parry

Twelve Sets of English Lyrics, Vol. 2

Sarah Fox (soprano), James Gilchrist (tenor), Roderick Williams (baritone), Andrew West (piano)

Somm SOMMCD 270 61:05 mins

The hundredth anniversary of Sir Hubert Parry’s death falls in October, and this second album surveying the 74 songs of his ‘English Lyrics’ is a timely tribute.

Those who know Parry mainly from the robustly self-assured ‘Jerusalem’ and ‘I Was Glad’ may find the more sophisticated nuances of these songs surprising. ‘O world! O life! O time!’, to a poem by Shelley, finds Parry probing the mysteries of mortality in tentative harmonic side-steps, with a brief swell of existential anxiety on the climactic ‘No more – Oh, never more!’. Soprano Sarah Fox judges the song’s temperature astutely, and is equally impressive in the deathdraped ‘Gone were but the winter cold’. Baritone Roderick Williams is verbally deft and engaging in the tetchily humorous ‘Love is a bable’, and he too gets a deeper moment in ‘Dirge in Woods’, especially in the drained stoicism of the coda.

Tenor James Gilchrist shows a sharp interpretive sensitivity in ‘Bright Star!’, a setting of Keats’s final sonnet, although his fast vibrato can suggest febrility. Pianist Andrew West supports the singers empathetically, adding much to a recital which nudges a regard for Parry the songwriter even higher than did volume one of this excellent series. Terry Blain

PERFORMANCE ★★★★ RECORDING ★★★★★