There are several attractive features to this collection of French songs by soprano
Mary Bevan
. Start with the voice itself;
Bevan
's warm tone, rich without being thick, is wonderful right from the first note in
Gabriel Faure
's
Clair de lune, Op. 46, No. 2
, and, in general, she has never sounded better. Her phrasing is confident and relaxes as she draws the listener on her own terms into the short
Britten
songs of
Les Illuminations, Op. 18
. Those songs point to a second positive feature:
assembles a group of songs for the fairly unusual forces of soprano and string group, either the
Ruisi Quartet
or the full dodecatet of the
12 Ensemble
in the
and several other pieces. This, too, works to
's advantage; the
is, in effect, conducted from the music stand by the singer (there is no conductor), and the show is all hers, although her usual fine accompanist,
Joseph Middleton
, is also present and careful. Some of the songs were arranged for these forces, either by their composers or by
Robin Holloway
, and a couple of these arrangements are world premieres. The program itself is also strong, with the aphoristic
pieces giving way to an atmosphere of almost unrelieved gloom in works by
Ravel
,
Duparc
Chabrier
Chausson
, and
Debussy
before lightening pleasantly in the songs by
Augusta Holmes
, an underrated composer, at the end. There are few complaints here, although
Signum Classics
gets the accent mark wrong on
Holmes
name, and the label's church acoustic washes out some of the finer distinctions in the string orchestra and string quartet settings. In general, a splendid outing from
. ~ James Manheim