Through The Centuries - Songs Of Madeleine Dring

Madeleine Dring: Love and Time: Sister, awake; Ah, how sweet it is to love!; I feed a flame within; The Reconcilement; Four Night Songs: Holding the Night; Frosty Night; Through the Centuries; Separation; From Seven Shakespeare Songs: The Cuckoo; Take O take those lips away; It was a lover From Six Songs: Love is a sickness; Echoes; The Enchantment; My true-love hath my heart From Seven Songs: Encouragements to a Lover; Melisande; Weep you no more, sad fountains; The Faithless Lover; Cole Porter, arr. Madeleine Dring: In the Still of the Night

Kitty Whately mezzo soprano. Julius Drake piano.

Chandos CHAN 20390

chandos.net

Whether or not you count yourself among devotees of the song recital, there is something here to give pause. English mezzo-soprano Kitty Whately turns her attention to Madeleine Dring, a composer whose relative neglect remains one of the more puzzling anomalies of the British music revival. Born in 1923 into a theatrical family, Dring was admitted to the Royal College of Music at the remarkable age of nine, going on to study composition with Herbert Howells and taking further lessons from Gordon Jacob and Ralph Vaughan Williams. She built her career in the theatre, earning a reputation for conjuring catchy, well-crafted numbers at short notice — a gift that perhaps worked against her longer-term standing. She died of a brain aneurysm at just fifty-three, and the piecemeal nature of a theatre career left her musical legacy frustratingly scattered. The resurgence of interest in her work has consequently lagged behind that afforded to contemporaries such as Elizabeth Lutyens, Elizabeth Maconchy, Grace Williams, and Ruth Gipps.

Whately and her long-standing recital partner Julius Drake have chosen widely from among Dring's output, and the programme reveals a composer of real elegance and wit. The centrepiece is the Four Night Songs, settings of words by Dring's friend Michael Armstrong, completed just before her unexpected death. These are deeply affecting pieces, and here they receive a performance of quiet sublimity: Whately shapes the poetry with natural authority, while Drake's accompaniments — gorgeous, perfectly weighted — provide the most subtle of cushions beneath her.

Throughout, there is a classiness to proceedings that feels entirely right for this repertoire. Whately's voice is clear and beautifully focused, her diction exemplary; Drake, as ever, is the model of a thoughtful and responsive partner. The recital closes with a beguiling account of Cole Porter's In the Still of the Night, in Dring's own arrangement — an affectionate final gesture that illuminates her theatrical roots.

An appealing and rewarding disc that may well whet the appetite for further exploration of Dring's output on the Chandos label.