Customer Reviews

Shakespeare's Kingdom

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Here are a handful of songs from many different composers, while all texts are selected from Shakespeare's work. Most of them are well enough, although some are very rare and not outstanding, not in a standard repertoire. For example, this CD contains as well the well-known "Was ist Sylvia" by Schubert as "Willow, Willow" by Grainger (a truely wonderful song). And the result is a many-different-style CD. Walker and Johnson's performace are pretty well.For me, "Sylvia" is the most convincing interpretion among all other versioons. Walker's tone are dark and tragic, fits almost the songs here(I like especially the Orphelia suite by Brahms and R.Strauss). It can be more shiny in some obscure songs. The recording is a bit hollow.

'Shakespeare's Kingdom' is NOT another collection of attempts to recreate what music actually played at the Globe Theatre may have actually sounded like. Rather, it is a collection of short musical pieces written largely by European composers to passages from Shakespeare's plays.

The most famous contributors are Shubert, Shumann, Brahms, Richard Strauss, Berlioz, Grainger, and Brittin. Obvious by its absence is any part of Mendelsohn's major musical works done for the performance of 'A Midsummer Night's Dream'. This is no great loss, as there are numerous good performances of this work.

I give this but four stars not because the works are not sufficiently stellar, but becuase this recording is more of a sampler which will do much to interest you in other works by these composers, but the works themselves do not really hang together very well one with the other. The pieces are written in both English and German and come from a wide variety of Shakespeare's tragedies and comedies.

This is a great Hyperion quality recording if you can find it cheap.

I bought this CD for one reason only: Richard Strauss' Ophelia's songs. 3 songs out of the whole CD that are wonderful by themselves, and very rare to find. Sarah Walker has a very good voice that gives Ophelia's maddness a tragic and touching colour.

Allas!...
This is a theme CD, and as such, they thought more of the concept and less of the listeners. Ophelia's cycle is made of 3 songs. we were unlucky enough to have another version to that song cycle - by Brahms. For some bizzare reason, the producers of this CD decided to brake the cycles. you hear one song of Strauss, and then one of Brahms etc'.
That's outragious, and dumb.
Still, if you can program your stereo, it's worth the buy just for that magical cycle. Truely one of a kind.

This has long been one of my favorite thematic recital disks. Despite the mix of languages, composers, and musical eras, the program doesn't come off as a hodge podge. Shakespeare's humanity provides cohesion enough, abetted by thoughtful selections and faultless performances.

Sarah Walker is one of the most communicative singers around -- but her voice is hard to capture on disk: Felicity Lott and (believe it or not) Renée Fleming are other artists that the microphone doesn't seem to coddle. But this disk does full justice to Sarah Walker's warm and somewhat matronly sound. Her performances here are among my very favorite recordings of each song.

The program is half in German and French (all but the first on the subject of Ophelia), half in English. In several instances we get to hear settings of the same or similar text back to back. The contrasts are utterly fascinating, never smacking of academic tedium.

Mme Walker's "An Sylvia" is one of my top three interpretations of this delightful song, up there with Ameling on Philips and Ainsley on Hyperion. The heartbreaking Schumann setting "Herzeleid," is a minor masterpiece, a seldom heard song from late in the composer's career. It introduces the Ophelia sequence. Accompanist Graham Johnson ingeniously programmed the angular Ophelia-Lieder by Strauss between fragments of the same texts by Brahms that are more archaic in style. Berlioz's melting version of "La Mort d'Ophelia" (a translation of Gertrude's report) is followed by a rare setting of the same verses by Saint-Saens that is a more standard, third-person ballad account. It doesn't equal the immortal lament that Berlioz fashioned, but it's certainly of interest and gets a vivid performance here.

The Lady Macbeth scena, composed by one Joseph Horovitz, is another rarety, and deserving of its centerpiece position in this recital. It's a convincing example of modern declamatory style, the ideal mode of expression for this antiheroine. The recital concludes with a group by well-known English song composers: Elgar, Parry, Grainger, etc. Not a nit to pick here, every song is a gem. We get two haunting versions of "Willow, Willow" and two beguiling versions of "Fancy" (Britten and, of all people, Poulenc!). I especially loved Geofrey Bush's setting of "It was a Lover and His Lass" -- a rousing, syncopated send-off.

In short, this recital is utterly absorbing from beginning to end. I recommend it heartily.

If you love Shakespeare, and / or Brahms, Schubert, Schumann, Berlioz and R. Strauss, you need to have this superb album in your collection. Walker is the most gratifying performer in opera and lieder, for beauty of voice (ravishing, audible silk); technique (perfection), intelligence (never-failing); phrasing (absolutely unsurpassed); and interpretation -- Walker does not merely "sell" a song, or act convincingly, she etches her performance on your soul. Just listen to her interpretation of the excerpts from MacBeth, set to music by Joseph Horovitz: Walker is a candidate for best Lady MacBeth. One wonders what she would do with the part as straight drama. If that isn't enough, she caresses the Schumann and the Berlioz, nails the Brahms (no accompaniment -- totally exposed voice), and slinks away with the tango "Under the Greenwood Tree." And if you think this album is great, wait until you hear her Schubert; Blah, blah, blah; and Julius Caesar (there is no other Cornelia but Walker.)