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BI 2475
I Wonder as I Wander
Label Catalogue Number:
BIS-2475
BIS-2475
Running Time: 01:15:00
Release Date: December 2020
Originally recorded in 2019
Originally recorded in 2019
Genre:
Classical
Classical
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About
When deciding on the repertoire for his début disc, James Newby’s first choice fell on An die ferne Geliebte, songs that he had been performing ever since the beginning of his career. But Beethoven’s song cycle – and perhaps even more so the quasi-operatic Adelaide – also sets a tone for the entire disc, that of longing and of wanting to be elsewhere, near the distant beloved. These are emotions that Schubert, perhaps more than any other composer, has plumbed in depth, and Newby went on to select five of his songs that in various ways depict the restlessness and loneliness of the eternal wanderer.
Mahler is another composer who knew something about longing – for instance that it can be deadly, which he demonstrated with his Zu Straßburg auf der Schanz, in which a soldier awaits execution after trying to desert to his homeland while the piano imitates the muffled rolling of drums. The military theme continues in the high-strung Revelge, as a young soldier marches towards his death, thinking about his sweetheart with ever-greater desperation. The final song by Mahler, Urlicht, expresses the anguish and pain of earthly life, and the longing for Heaven and, in effect, death. Framing this programme with five folk song arrangements by Benjamin Britten, James Newby and Joseph Middleton, his partner at the piano, explore Man’s never-ending search (geographical or psychological) for that distant object of desire: who, what or wherever it may be.
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Reviews
Critics’ Choice 2021 – Robert Moore
American Record Guide – January/February 2022
“… Trailing honors and awards as he goes, Newby seems like a new generation’s successor to Simon Keenlyside, Roderick Williams, and Christopher Maltman in the lineage of great British baritones. I doubt that anyone else has taken a faded Victorian valentine like “The Last Rose of Summer” and turned it into a vocal tour de force. On the strength of this debut album, Newby might turn out to be the best of them all. No one who loves great singing can afford to skip him…”
Huntley Dent – Fanfare – May/June 2021
“… As soon as I heard this soft but urgent sparsely unaccompanied voice in Britten’s setting of ‘I Wonder as I Wander’ I knew something special was at hand. Newby has a lovely, lyrical, medium-weight baritone voice. His warm and burnished tone, precise articulation, skilled vocal coloring, and carefully nuanced attentiveness to the text equip him well as lieder interpreter… One admires his vocal control as he reduces his voice from full strength to a slender thread while retaining tonal quality. Newby is well prepared to be a major lieder singer for our time…Middleton is one of the best collaborative pianists of his generation. His command od dynamics, nuances of phrasing, and precise articulation are superb. Together this team has given us a splendid album. The engineering and technical aspects of this production with its first-class SACD sound are outstanding…”
Robert A Moore – American Record Guide – May/June 2021
Performance **** Recording ****
“… This is a fine debut disc, its repertoire giving Newby ample chance to demonstrate his expressive and dramatic range … superbly accompanied throughout by Joseph Middleton …”
Sarah Urwin Jones – BBC Music magazine – March 2021
"... The lieder are arranged round Beethoven’s cycle of distant love, with two of Schubert’s Wanderer Songs and a Mahler group that combines rare communicative zeal with nuanced insights, in a notable debut. "
Hugh Canning - Sunday Times (Culture magazine) - 17 January 2021
"... an impressive debut from a young singer to watch."
Hugo Shirley – Gramophone magazine – January 2021
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