Kate Royal: A Lesson in Love (EMI)
Rating: 4/5
Verdict: "Enterprising English soprano creates a Woman's Life and Love for all times."
Even before iTunes, there was fun to be had putting together the song recital of one's dreams. There would be old favourites as well as surprises. Perhaps the chosen few would range through the centuries, as well as pitting lied against melodie and art song. The curatorially inclined might even devise an underlying theme.
Kate Royal has achieved all of this in her new album, A Lesson in Love. Squired by that prince of accompanists, Malcolm Martineau, the English soprano traces a familiar cycle of longing, hope, love and disillusionment through 29 tracks.
What better than Wolf's Die Kleine, delivered with an almost adolescent gusto, to catch a sexually frustrated young girl, spurred on by the sight of three young hunters - passions that eventually find fulfilment in Frank Bridge's Love went a-riding.
Marriage is contemplated through two Ruckert settings from Schumann's Myrthen cycle, presented with an almost psychological subtlety; fulfilment comes in Duparc's Extase, mercifully free of the squally top notes that mar an earlier Debussy song.
The occasional shrillness aside, one cannot fault Royal's unflinching energy and vitality. Gretchen's spinning wheel in the celebrated Schubert song positively bounces along and the flirting of Canteloube's Tchut, Tchut is almost contagious.
The heart of the album lies in the final songs of betrayal. Unlike the heroine of Schumann's Frauenliebe und leben, Royal does not sign off into domestic contentment.
Lieder set us on the downward spiral, including Die Manner sind mechant!, an arch cabaret-style song by Schubert. Prepared to be chilled by a vengeful Wolf song, a little storm of fury, despite its laughably translated title, May a chasm engulf my lover's cottage.
By the end, British and American songs dominate with Britten's O Waly, Waly and the traditional Irish Danny Boy beautifully accounted for.
The final note of Copland's lovely Heart, we will forget him, is only just rescued by a hasty vibrato, but this is an almost forgivable blemish on a most enterprising project.
