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Leo Jan ek Diary of a Man who Disappeared
Sung in an English translation by Bernard Keeffe
Richard Lewis Frederick Stone Ernest Lush
BBC Studios, 1957
LM7403 £7.99
£7.99
mpLIVE will release a series of rare broadcasts made by the tenor Richard Lewis (1914-1990) in the prime of his long career thanks to a generous donation of tapes and funding by his widow, Elizabeth Muir-Lewis. Lewis was unsurpassed among British tenors of the mid-twentieth-century in his willingness and ability to tackle challenging contemporary scores. Between 1953 and 1965 he appeared in the British premi res of Stravinsky s The Rake s Progress and Schoenberg s Moses und Aron, as well as in the world premi res of Walton s Troilus and Cressida, and Tippett s The Midsummer Marriage and King Priam.
His ringing tone and musical sensitivity in even the thorniest passages of these scores can readily be appreciated, alongside his lyric gifts at telling a more intimate story, in these cantatas/song-cycles by Tippett and Jan ek – both of whom were still very much new music to British audiences when these fine studio recordings were made. Boyhood s End nostalgically celebrates the abundance of life through the vivid recollections of a South-American childhood by the writer and naturalist W H Hudson (1841-1922). The Heart s Assurance is a stark reflection on ephemerality and extinction, with a poignant dedication to the memory of Francesca Allinson, a close friend of the composer who had killed herself in 1945, apparently in love with Tippett and unreconciled to there being no possibility of a more intimate relationship with him. Tippett sets poetry by Alun Lewis and Sydney Keyes, two men who had themselves died tragically young during the war. Jan ek s quirky cycle of folk poetry, telling the story of a young man beguiled from his oxen by a mysterious gypsy woman, makes a perfect foil.
Tippett / Janacek
Michael Tippett Boyhood s End The Heart s AssuranceLeo Jan ek Diary of a Man who Disappeared
Sung in an English translation by Bernard Keeffe
Richard Lewis Frederick Stone Ernest Lush
BBC Studios, 1957
LM7403 £7.99
£7.99
mpLIVE will release a series of rare broadcasts made by the tenor Richard Lewis (1914-1990) in the prime of his long career thanks to a generous donation of tapes and funding by his widow, Elizabeth Muir-Lewis. Lewis was unsurpassed among British tenors of the mid-twentieth-century in his willingness and ability to tackle challenging contemporary scores. Between 1953 and 1965 he appeared in the British premi res of Stravinsky s The Rake s Progress and Schoenberg s Moses und Aron, as well as in the world premi res of Walton s Troilus and Cressida, and Tippett s The Midsummer Marriage and King Priam.
His ringing tone and musical sensitivity in even the thorniest passages of these scores can readily be appreciated, alongside his lyric gifts at telling a more intimate story, in these cantatas/song-cycles by Tippett and Jan ek – both of whom were still very much new music to British audiences when these fine studio recordings were made. Boyhood s End nostalgically celebrates the abundance of life through the vivid recollections of a South-American childhood by the writer and naturalist W H Hudson (1841-1922). The Heart s Assurance is a stark reflection on ephemerality and extinction, with a poignant dedication to the memory of Francesca Allinson, a close friend of the composer who had killed herself in 1945, apparently in love with Tippett and unreconciled to there being no possibility of a more intimate relationship with him. Tippett sets poetry by Alun Lewis and Sydney Keyes, two men who had themselves died tragically young during the war. Jan ek s quirky cycle of folk poetry, telling the story of a young man beguiled from his oxen by a mysterious gypsy woman, makes a perfect foil.
