CD1

Seven Sonnets of Michelangelo
A Charm of Lullabies
Who are these Children?, The Red Cockatoo Fish in unruffled Lakes
Songs and Proverbs On this Island

CD2 Dans le Bois*
Second Lute Song
Chamber Music V
The Birds
If it’s ever Spring again
The Children & Sir Nameless Dawtie’s devotion;The gully
Tradition
Of all the airts the wind can blow
*Oh why did e’er my thoughts*

The second volume in the highly praised survey of all Britten’s songs for voice and piano. As before, the great song cycles rub shoulders with individual songs, and early works. There are world premier recordings here as well.

‘For this first volume of Britten's collected songs, Martineau has gathered a gratifyingly formidable array of young British singing talent. Ben Johnson is commanding in an urgent passionate reading of The Holy Sonnets of John Donne. Andrew Tortise conveys rapturously intense emotions in Canticle 1, ‘My Beloved is Mine’, as personal an expression of the composer’s love for Peter Pears as anything he wrote. Perhaps the best is left until last, when Robin Tritschler gives a fresh-sounding ‘Winter Words’.

’ Sunday Times ****