This is a good week for intriguing recital discs by rising British singers. Black Is the Colour brings the mezzo-soprano Anna Stéphany, who scored a big success in Glyndebourne’s La Clemenza di Tito last summer, together with the nine-piece Labyrinth Ensemble – mostly musicians from the Zurich Opera, where she spent three years as part of the company. They make a good team. Stéphany’s mezzo-soprano radiates warmth and substance, and Labyrinth bring lean and focused energy to a programme that begins with Luciano Berio’s Folk Songs. His 1964 composition is a restless compilation that starts off in the US with the song from which the disc takes its name, then hops around the Mediterranean before winding up in Azerbaijan, with a song that literally makes no sense: Berio’s wife, the singer Cathy Berberian, transcribed it phonetically from an old record.
When she’s singing folk songs in English, Stéphany can’t help but sound like an opera singer trying to dial it back. Still, she manages it better than most, and makes mesmerising work of the lamenting numbers in various dialects later on. She is even more assured in Ravel’s Histoires Naturelles, which come up vividly in a new chamber arrangement. Perhaps her French heritage gives her an advantage here, but it’s not so much her natural way with the language that brings the peacock, the grasshopper and the rest to such stylish life as the combination of quicksilver lightness and heavy-lidded languor in her tone – something that suits the long, chant-like lines of Falla’s Psyché, her closing song, equally well.
Best of the rest
Sophie Bevan’s Songs of Vain Glory, with pianist Sebastian Wybrew, was recorded live at London’s Wigmore Hall in 2014. (Why the wait?) It’s a thoughtful programme of wartime or war-inspired songs: Ivor Gurney, Frank Bridge and Benjamin Britten as you might expect, but also some that are less familiar (by Charles Ives, Liza Lehmann and Elgar). There are also a few music-hall numbers: Ivor Novello’s We’ll Gather Lilacs and Haydn Wood’s Roses of Picardy sound poignantly lovely, thanks to Bevan’s bright but soft-edged soprano and Wybrew’s understated decoration. The recording captures the rapt attention of the audience in the hall.
Also worth checking out this week is the final volume in Hyperion’s survey of Debussy’s songs. Soprano Lucy Crowe infuses the music with energy and feeling, and song pianist extraordinaire Malcolm Martineau anchors everything impeccably. It’s a beautifully judged finale to a worthwhile series that should stand out even among the many Debussy recordings in this centenary year.
