Benjamin Britten - Folksong Arrangements

Herald rating: * * * * *
Benjamin Britten - Folksong Arrangements

Herald rating: * * * *
Deborah Riedel - Cherry Ripe - (both Melba, through Ode Records)

The redoubtable Dame Nellie Melba may have lent her name to a peach dessert and very, very crisp toast, but I would imagine she would be much prouder to be associated with the sterling work of the Melba Foundation. This is an organisation which, with the welcome leg-up of a $5 million ($6.3 million) government grant, is catching the best of Australia's singers and other musicians on CD.

Two recent and handsomely packaged Melba releases show that faith and funding have been amply rewarded. A collection of Benjamin Britten's Folksong Arrangements, sung by tenor Steve Davislim, has the controversial Simone Young putting down her baton to provide piano accompaniments.

These rather arty takes on the simplest of folk-ballads were spoofed in their time by Dudley Moore, but decades on, they are lovely period pieces, with mellow joys of their own. The credit here must go to Davislim's unerringly warm tenor, from his elegant foray through Sally Gardens to his closing salute to summer's final rose.

The sequence of the songs brings special pleasures, especially when, after the chiming reveries of The Ash Grove we are dashed back to earth and 17th-century politics with the astringent Oliver Cromwell. An arrangement of Early One Morning has a prettiness that deserves to come back into vogue.

Deborah Riedel passed away early this year after a decade battling cancer. She was just 50 and one of Australia's finest sopranos, at her peak as Sieglinde in Adelaide's 2004 Ring.

Her album, Cherry Ripe, describes itself as "Vocal Treasures of the 18th and 19th Century" and so they are. It is a collection of 21 light, airy ballads and arias, lovingly delivered by a soprano whose singing only occasionally reveals the strain of ill-health. The masterly Richard Bonynge presides over the stylish Arcadia Lane Orchestra.

The title song is a perky daiquiri to get you in the mood, but the operatically inclined will cherish the many little-known arias by composers like the German Peter von Winter, including a dashing Polish specimen by the splendidly named Marco Antonio da Fonseca Portugallo - no prizes for guessing the nationality there.

Not all is frivolous and frou-frou; an Ingemisco from a Requiem by Mayr is particularly moving and Deborah de Graaf's clarinet obbligato in Generali's Per Pieta is just one instance of the exemplary contributions from the band.

William Dart

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