John Mark Ainsley & Roger Vignoles

John Mark Ainsley singing from the telephone directory would still sound like pure poetry to your ears. This British tenor is an extremely sensitive Lieder singer, whose voice gives stirring colour to each word he sings. For this recital, Ainsley turns to some of the finest composers of the English song repertoire. Chief among them is Benjamin Britten, whose arrangements have immortalized the songs of Purcell. Composers such as Quilter, Warlock, Moeran and Finzi may not immediately ring a bell, but they produced a stream of songs. Vaughan Williams' passion for collecting folk songs set in train a genuine revival of the 'art song' before the First World War and during the inter-war period. The incredibly rich treasury of English poetry has been yet another factor in the flowering of the Lieder genre. Besides contemporary poets, Shakespeare too remained an inexhaustible source of inspiration during the twentieth century. Here, John Mark Ainsley and Roger Vignoles present some of the best settings of his work. Songs by Purcell, Britten, Ireland, Moeran, Tippett, Finzi, Butterworth, Macmillan, Quilter and Vaughan-Williams to texts by Shakespeare, Housman and others.