This CD, titled The Sunlight on the Garden, is a worthwhile labour of love from mezzo-soprano Clare Wilkinson. Her father, Stephen – formerly conductor of the BBC Northern Singers, among much else – turned 98 in the spring, and he has a body of compositions spanning more than eight decades; many of the two dozen songs recorded here, setting words by Yeats, Brooke, Shakespeare, MacNeice and others, were written well after he had turned 80. Wilkinson’s style is melodic and lyrical in the English song tradition of Finzi, Gurney and Warlock, and you could certainly call it old fashioned, but that would be to miss the point: Wilkinson sets poetry to music lucidly and succinctly, and he is never sentimental. His daughter’s mellow, direct voice is the ideal vehicle for his expressive, confiding vocal lines, as is James Gilchrist’s clear, airy tenor; indeed, all six of these musicians, including pianists Anna Markland and Ian Buckle, give highly persuasive performances.
