Havergal Bian - The Complete Songbook Vol. 1

Havergal BRIAN (1876-1972)

The Complete Songbook Volume 1

Three Songs Op.6

Little Sleeper Op.13a

John Dowland's Fancy

Three Contemporary Songs

Legend

Three Elizabethan Songs

Three Unison Songs

Three Illuminations

Soliloquy Upon a Dead Child

Three Songs for Tenor Op.13b

Mark Stone (Baritone)

Jonathan Stone (violin)

Sholto Kynoch (Piano)

Havergal Brian’s many songs and part-songs as well as the Gothic Symphony confirm what an accomplished word-setter he was. The 16 solo songs given here are mostly arranged in groups either of the composer’s – the sets Opp 6 (1901) and 13b (1906, setting Gerald Cumberland) – or juxtapositions of the performers’ whims: Three Elizabethan Songs setting Shakespeare and Daniel (1919-25) or the humorous Unison Songs for children, ‘The Mountain and the Squirrel’ (1913), ‘The Lost Doll’ and ‘What does little birdie say’ (both 1914).

Mark Stone and Sholto Kynoch prove strong interpreters of the songs, some of the most individual in the British repertoire. Eight have been recorded before, by Brian Rayner Cook and Roger Vignoles in a superb set reissued in 2005 (Toccata, 6/83R, 3/06). There is little to choose in quality between their renditions, best compared directly in the volatile textures of ‘The soul of steel’ (1921) and the gentler ‘Since love is dead’ (1922). Stone has a strong voice and fine tone to rival Rayner Cook’s (he would make an excellent soloist in Brian’s as yet unrecorded Fifth Symphony, Wine of Summer) and is ably accompanied by Kynoch.

The disc also contains two piano works, Illuminations (1916) and John Dowland’s Fancy (1934), and, in Legend for violin and piano (c1920), effectively Brian’s complete chamber music (other works including a String Quartet have not survived). Jonathan Stone provides a finely nuanced account of the Legend to match Stephen Levine’s pioneering but less well-recorded account (Toccata, 8/82R, 3/06); Kynoch’s accounts of the piano works is exemplary, if not displacing Raymond Clarke’s (Athene-Minerva, 4/98). Stone Records’ sound is at a fairly low level but the range is very wide, as can be heard comparing ‘Little Sleeper’ with ‘The soul of steel’. Strongly recommended.