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This magical and haunting set, produced by Mark Brown, is perfectly sequenced, leading off with the stunning "Shallow Brown," then the 11 JUNGLE BOOK songs in their recording première, finally 14 more familiar Grainger folk settings, varied in their instrumentation and voice combinations but thematically grouped. Thus "Good-bye to love" (a gorgeous keepsake), "Died for love" and "Power of love" are programmed sequentially, shortly followed by the similar "Willow, willow." I play "Shallow Brown" regularly but then let the disc play out (74 minutes) because the Polyphony performances, conducted by Stephen Layton, are so completely captivating and smartly sequenced.
Grainger set the sea chantey "Shallow Brown" in 1910, and there are excellent competing digital recordings by Richard Hickox (Chandos) and John Eliot Gardiner (Philips). Layton has the edge, however, in the JUNGLE BOOK coupling and in using Grainger's unorthodox instrumentation (which ought not succeed, but does, powerfully) for "Shallow Brown": harmonium, guitar, mandola, mandolin, ukulele, piccolo, clarinet, bass clarinet, bassoon, contrabassoon, alto saxophone, horn, strings, piano, baritone, choir. This unique ensemble, thrumming away behind the voices singing the simple lyric, creates the illusion of a multi-voiced pipe organ, and the harmonium/mandolin combination gives the song special urgency and plaintiveness. The effect is very similar to hearing the late Jo Stafford sing her spine-tingling "Shenandoah" (not by accident Grainger had his antipodean take on that greatest American river song, and Polyphony included it on their 1994 Grainger prequel disc AT TWILIGHT).
Grainger the Aussie expat was quite taken by Kipling from 1898 on, assembling his JUNGLE BOOK settings incrementally over the next 60 years. They are mostly sung a cappella, although the odd "Shallow Brown" instrumentation creeps in slyly, and listeners will be (pleasurably) reminded more of Holst's CHORAL HYMNS FROM THE RIG-VEDA than of Charles Koechlin's impressionist LIVRE DE LA JUNGLE or Miklos Rozsa's fine score for the Korda film. The folk settings feature solos by Libby Crabtree, John Mark Ainsley and the outstanding baritone David Wilson-Johnson, and besides the love-song triptych there's a wonderful "Three ravens" and more Kipling in "Running of shindand" and his surprisingly moving "Recessional" (like Delius, Grainger was impious, but he loved his Kipling, and this anthem is nearly as fervent as "Shallow Brown").
Grainger specialists will be arrested by this programme, playing it as regularly as I do, and the composer would want special credit given the harmonium player Peter Wright and pianist Penelope Thwaites, both sounding particularly Graingeresque under Layton's leadership. Hyperion's reputation was consolidated through superior piano discs, but this is a no less remarkable choral achievement (with obbligato keyboards) and the digital engineering, by Antony Howell and Julian Millard, is notably immaculate.
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BooksRMe
Nice rare original recording of the Jungle Book and Shallow Brown
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on October 28, 2022Norman L. Castleton
Percy Grainger Jungle Book
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on September 1, 2011
