Dunelm Records, 2005
Strings in the Earth and Air
By Nigel Foster, Paul Martyn-West
Contains (Tracks 14 to 29): Candlelight: A Cycle Of (12) Nursery Jingles, Along The Stream, Take, O Take Those Lips Away, Heracleitus, The Fox.
[In 1923] …Warlock wrote Candelights, twelve brief ‘nursery jingles’. James Griffett sang these with string quartet and wind accompaniment but only a handful [ASV CD QS 6143 now reissued on Regis RRC1316]. Way back, and very unavailable – to the best of my knowledge – is David Johnston and Daphne Ibbott on Galliard GAL 4012 (it’s an LP) and they did record the whole cycle. These two take the palm for sheer swagger, and they bring a gutsy confidence to what might otherwise seem rather twee settings (not that I think they are), though Martyn-West and Foster are more than able interpreters in their way. They also bring a lighter, more questioning intimacy to the complex Three Songs of 1916-17, whereas someone like the baritone Christopher Maltman – with John Constable on Collins 15002 (now Naxos: review) – offers a more adamantine determinism.Jonathan Woolf, MusicWeb International
Further information: Discogs and MusicWeb International
Available from: Amazon
