MusicWeb International One of the most grown-up review sites around 2023
Approaching 60,000 reviews
and more.. and still writing ...

Search MusicWeb Here Acte Prealable Polish CDs
 

Presto Music CD retailer
 
Founder: Len Mullenger                                    Editor in Chief:John Quinn             


CD REVIEW

Some items
to consider

new MWI
Current reviews

old MWI
pre-2023 reviews

paid for
advertisements

Acte Prealable Polish recordings

Forgotten Recordings
Forgotten Recordings
All Forgotten Records Reviews

TROUBADISC
Troubadisc Weinberg- TROCD01450

All Troubadisc reviews


FOGHORN Classics

Alexandra-Quartet
Brahms String Quartets

All Foghorn Reviews


All HDTT reviews


Songs to Harp from
the Old and New World


all Nimbus reviews



all tudor reviews


Follow us on Twitter


Editorial Board
MusicWeb International
Founding Editor
   
Rob Barnett
Editor in Chief
John Quinn
Contributing Editor
Ralph Moore
Webmaster
   David Barker
Postmaster
Jonathan Woolf
MusicWeb Founder
   Len Mullenger

 

AVAILABILITY
Crotchet AmazonUK AmazonUS

 

Simple Gifts - King’s Singers 40th Birthday
Arrangements of Folk melodies and popular songs by Philip LAWSON (b.1956), Bob CHILCOTT (b.1955) and Philip KNIGHT (1917-1985)
(see below for track details)
King’s Singers (Robin Tyson, Paul Phoenix, Philip Lawson, Christopher Gabbitas, Stephen Connolly)
rec. Arsis Centre, October 2007, January 2008
SIGNUM CLASSICS SIGCD 121 [48.46]
Experience Classicsonline

Signum has raised its profile considerably in the last ten years. In that decade they have produced about 150 CDs. The Signum stable includes the King’s Singers this being the group’s tenth CD in as many years. You probably have recordings from the group dating back over twenty years on EMI or other majors. This disc is somewhat different from so many others. That’s all to the good because as was said by Caroline Gill in a recent article (Gramophone, July 2008): "…..there is no doubt that the King’s Singers are a musical phenomenon and their fan base follows them everywhere". If you are a fan you will need no further persuasion.

I have played parts of this CD to various people. My wife, an average music-lover said "awful". My son, a student musician (oboist and singer), said "dreadful". Why these reactions, none of my friends like it either. Indeed some laughed at the ‘souped-up’ quality of the arrangements, with reactions like ‘naff’, ‘twee’ and ‘sickly’. Oh dear! When you add a measly playing time of just 50 minutes, a very studio-bound close-miked recording, with added reverb, and many fade-outs endured on several tracks, including the arrangement of ‘Steal Away’ you might be tempted to abandon this review straight away. However it’s worth sticking with me and reading on.

Let’s have some help from the fold-up booklet notes. These consist of an interview with one of the singers, baritone Philip Lawson. He is perhaps the arch culprit as ten of his arrangements feature here. On the reverse of the notes by the way is a ‘pin-up’ photo of the gents, looking sleek and serious all at once. Anyway, to the booklet conversation and the music.

Lawson says clearly that "the studio experience is two-edged". He adds that they were in danger of "falling in love with the technology". They recorded the disc in the "drum room", an especially large one I suspect in the house of Status Quo’s Francis Rossi (with the help of Greg Jackman who ‘mixed’ the album), hence the ‘pop-like’ sound of the disc. Lawson describes how they recorded one track per day, rather a luxury, hence the reason why they seem to have had such a long recording period for this their first ‘album’ for ten years. "Once the singing was finished", adds Lawson "there was mixing to be done".

Elsewhere Lawson tells us that "over the last few years we have recorded many classical albums so we all thought it was time to redress the balance". He adds that the songs will "refresh the close harmony section of concerts and the content of (their) master-classes". He also reminds us that the album is "not representative of everything we do". So where does that leave the prospective purchaser.

The English folksongs come out best of all. In fact two ‘The Water is wide’ and ‘The Turtle Dove’ are utterly entrancing. The spirituals are quite successful, especially ‘Deep River’ although the arrangements seem to be searching to be deliberately different. Despite Lawson’s arguments to the contrary, the popular songs like Randy Newman’s ‘When She loved Me’ too easily fall into tune with ‘da-di-du’ vocalised accompaniments. I personally find fades-outs rather tacky. Nevertheless all of the singing here is absolutely superb - the finest of any male group and the competition is nowadays quite considerable. The balance and the tuning are miraculous as the singers negotiate some very tricky corners, modulations and dissonances. Sudden changes of dynamic and melody moving between parts creates a sense of producing just the right atmosphere for each individual track. This was their aim and also the reason why the disc took so many days to bring to fruition.

So, you ‘pays yer money and yer takes yer choice’. If all this seems appealing then snap up the disc. I should add that Philip Lawson says that the DVD ‘Byrd to Beatles’ which I have not encountered yet is more representative of their repertoire. Well, why not buy that too.

Gary Higginson

1. Billy Joel arr. Philip Lawson She’s Always a Woman [3.21]
2. James Taylor arr.Lawson You can close your eyes [3.41]
3. Traditional English arr. Bob Chilcott Greensleeves [3.01]
4. Traditional American arr/Chilcott A Gift to be Simple [2.07]
5. Spiritual arr.Lawson Swing Lo Sweet Chariot [3.00]
6. Stephen Stills arr.Lawson Helplessly Longing [2.32]
7. Spiritual arr.Lawson Deep River [4.01]
8. Trad. American arr.Chilcott Black is the Color [2.18]
9.Trad. English arr. Lawson I Love my Love [[3.42]
10.Trad. English arr.Lawson The Water is Wide [2.44]
11. Randy Newman arr.Lawson When She Loved Me [3.15]
12. Sting arr.Lawson Valparaiso [3.48]
13. English Trad arr Lawson The Turtle Dove [3.21]
14. Paul Simon arr.Lawson April Come She Will [2.13]
15.Spiritual arr. Chilcott Steal Away [2.54]
16. John David arr. Peter Knight You are the New Day [2.38]



 


Advertising on
Musicweb


Donate and keep us afloat

 

New Releases

Naxos Classical
All Naxos reviews

Hyperion recordings
All Hyperion reviews

Foghorn recordings
All Foghorn reviews

Troubadisc recordings
All Troubadisc reviews



all Bridge reviews


all cpo reviews

Divine Art recordings
Click to see New Releases
Get 10% off using code musicweb10
All Divine Art reviews


All Eloquence reviews

Lyrita recordings
All Lyrita Reviews

 

Wyastone New Releases
Obtain 10% discount

Subscribe to our free weekly review listing

 

 


EXPLORE MUSICWEB INTERNATIONAL

Making a Donation to MusicWeb

Writing CD reviews for MWI

About MWI
Who we are, where we have come from and how we do it.

Site Map

How to find a review

How to find articles on MusicWeb
Listed in date order

Review Indexes
   By Label
      Select a label and all reviews are listed in Catalogue order
   By Masterwork
            Links from composer names (eg Sibelius) are to resource pages with links to the review indexes for the individual works as well as other resources.

Themed Review pages

Jazz reviews

 

Discographies
   Composer
      Composer surveys
   National
      Unique to MusicWeb -
a comprehensive listing of all LP and CD recordings of given works
.
Prepared by Michael Herman

The Collector’s Guide to Gramophone Company Record Labels 1898 - 1925
Howard Friedman

Book Reviews

Complete Books
We have a number of out of print complete books on-line

Interviews
With Composers, Conductors, Singers, Instumentalists and others
Includes those on the Seen and Heard site

Nostalgia

Nostalgia CD reviews

Records Of The Year
Each reviewer is given the opportunity to select the best of the releases

Monthly Best Buys
Recordings of the Month and Bargains of the Month

Comment
Arthur Butterworth Writes

An occasional column

Phil Scowcroft's Garlands
British Light Music articles

Classical blogs
A listing of Classical Music Blogs external to MusicWeb International

Reviewers Logs
What they have been listening to for pleasure

Announcements

 

Community
Bulletin Board

Give your opinions or seek answers

Reviewers
Past and present

Helpers invited!

Resources
How Did I Miss That?

Currently suspended but there are a lot there with sound clips


Composer Resources

British Composers

British Light Music Composers

Other composers

Film Music (Archive)
Film Music on the Web (Closed in December 2006)

Programme Notes
For concert organizers

External sites
British Music Society
The BBC Proms
Orchestra Sites
Recording Companies & Retailers
Online Music
Agents & Marketing
Publishers
Other links
Newsgroups
Web News sites etc

PotPourri
A pot-pourri of articles

MW Listening Room
MW Office

Advice to Windows Vista users  
Questionnaire    
Site History  
What they say about us
What we say about us!
Where to get help on the Internet
CD orders By Special Request
Graphics archive
Currency Converter
Dictionary
Magazines
Newsfeed  
Web Ring
Translation Service

Rules for potential reviewers :-)
Do Not Go Here!
April Fools




Return to Review Index

Untitled Document


Reviews from previous months
Join the mailing list and receive a hyperlinked weekly update on the discs reviewed. details
We welcome feedback on our reviews. Please use the Bulletin Board
Please paste in the first line of your comments the URL of the review to which you refer.