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Track(s) taken from CDA67168

Merciless Beauty

composer
Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958)
1921
author of text
Geoffrey Chaucer (c1343-1400)

John Mark Ainsley (tenor), The Nash Ensemble, Leo Phillips (violin), Elizabeth Wexler (violin), Paul Watkins (cello)
Recording details: October 1999
All Saints' Church, East Finchley, London, United Kingdom
Produced by Mark Brown
Engineered by Antony Howell & Julian Millard
Release date: September 2000
Total duration: 6 minutes 22 seconds
 

Reviews

‘John Mark Ainsley's performance is among his best on record in these austerely beautiful, imaginatively scored settings’ (Gramophone)

‘It would be hard to find an interpreter more beautifully suited to the Blake Songs than John Mark Ainsley’ (BBC Music Magazine)

‘Superbly sung. A warm recommendation’ (International Record Review)

‘John Mark Ainsley’s voice has exactly the right timbre for this music. First-rate. A most desirable disc. Very strongly recommended’ (Fanfare, USA)

‘Hyperion could have no better champion here than John Mark Ainsley. With beautifully sensitive playing from the Nash Ensemble, his clean, mellifluous tenor draws us in to the hidden riches of this marvellous music’ (Amazon.co.uk)
The beneficent influence of folksong can be felt in Merciless Beauty, settings of three rondels by Geoffrey Chaucer. Composed in 1921, they were first performed by Steuart Wilson (tenor) at a recital in the Aeolian Hall on 4 October that year.

from notes by Michael Hurd © 2000

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