A Survey Of British Tenors Before Peter Pears
MARSTON 5302 0-2 (3CDS)
NEW RELEASES OF HISTORICAL vocal recordings from Marston are deliciously unpredictable. They drop ‘when ready’ and when they arrive, their lineups of bygone singers are chock-full of surprises. Call it the shock of the old. This latest multi-disc set is typical: 75 tracks presenting 32 tenors in opera, oratorio and art song curated from recordings made between 1901 and 1950. The common element is not that all are strictly speaking British tenors (Evan Williams was an American, though presented himself as Welsh), nor even that all are male (famed female tenor Ruby Helder is on the roster). The unifying feature over the four-hour playing time is the largely British, all Englishlanguage repertoire sung in a style that died out after WWII, when the ethos exemplified by the influential Peter Pears took hold. Repertoire changed, as did what counted as fine vocal practice in such technical and stylistic matters as vibrato and tone quality.
The thesis of this Marston release is that the singers represented followed an earlier tenor grand tradition that flourished from the late-18th century in Britain through such artists as John Braham, Michael Kelly and John Sims Reeves. The earliestborn singer here is Reeves’s acknowledged successor, Edward Lloyd. If you grew up in Britain in the immediate postwar period, you might recall some of the later singers here (such as Heddle Nash) from BBC radio broadcasts. Some of the earlier artists enjoyed big followings in their heyday, and a few, pre-eminently John McCormack, achieved star status. But for the most part, the singers here are forgotten, their artistry existing only as fragile artifacts, expertly restored to vivid life by the Marston label’s eponymous founder, Ward Marston.
The set has two Canadian connections, one merely incidental with the inclusion of tenor Hubert Eisdell, who moved to Canada and taught at both the Toronto Conservatory of Music and Lakefield College near Peterborough, ON. The other connection is essential in that the set is the brainchild of Stephen Clarke, a retired Toronto lawyer with a passion for voice and recording history here credited as record producer. Besides serving as Chair of the Historic Singers Charitable Trust in England, he is now Adjunct Professor, Historical Recording at University of Toronto and Executor of the Trust, established in the name of the late John Stratton, which continues
