This is a very frustrating disc. For many opera lovers, particularly
London-based Wagnerians, Bryn Terfel put himself beyond the pale
when he pulled out of Wotan in the Royal Opera Ring in
2007 with very little notice. Since then his appearances on British
operatic stages have been more rare, though he still has interesting
plans for the season ahead. Crossover albums like this, and one-off
appearances like the Last Night of the Proms, have now become
Terfel’s staple. He recently suggested in a newspaper interview
that he is considering scaling back his career now that he has
reached his mid-40s! We must surely find it sad that he seems
to have cut himself off from a vast wealth of operatic roles in
which we will never hear him. It was with that background that
I came to this new collection. This disc is no masterpiece. While
there are still parts of it that appealed through even my cynical
exterior, it feels like a like a waste of nearly everybody’s talent.
In the booklet notes Terfel makes a big
deal about what great music these British folksongs are. If
that is the case then it is a shame that so many of the arrangements
here are so downright odd! Some of them just seem perverse:
Loch Lomond, for example, is far too militaristic, and
has none of the melancholy longing that this song should surely
produce. Molly Malone, similarly, has too many cheeky
interventions from the woodwind to allow the song to flow. Similarly,
and perhaps most surprisingly, My
Little Welsh Home
is just plain dull, with none of the heft that appears in the
other Welsh numbers so dear to Terfel. It is the English arrangements
that come off best: Passing By and Blow the Wind Southerly
are gentle and refined, and entirely in keeping with the mood
of both music and words. The pronounced role given to the strings
helps here too.
The best number on the disc,
however, My Lagan Love, is just lovely. The melody unfolds
against a warm, flowing backdrop, and Sharon Corr’s contribution
is fantastic. She is a genuine folk musician, an expert in this
kind of repertoire, and her solo violin, so different to an
orchestral leader, really marks this song out as special. It
was entirely appropriate that a musician of her stature should
be asked to take part.
It’s a shame that you cannot
say the same of Bryn’s other collaborators. Kate Royal adds
nothing to Scarborough Fair, sounding banal and a bit
out of place, while the excruciating and entirely misplaced
duet with Ronan Keating wrecks Danny Boy. This is symptomatic
of one of the problems of crossover: it feels like he has just
got in two star names to sell discs while in fact they add nothing
to the music. Why on earth didn’t he just sing the songs by
himself?!
So this disc has enough to enjoy,
but it just feels like a stocking filler. I’ll listen to it more
as an indicator of the great roles which Terfel will never record
because he’s too busy spending his energy on projects like this.
Simon
Thompson
