FINZI/STILL/GOOSSENS. Gerald Fine'. "Let us Garlands bring": Come away, come away, death; Who is Silvia? ; Fear no more the heat o' the sun; 0 Mistress Mine; It was a lover and his lass. Robert Still. Seven Songs for Soprano: A song of pain and beauty (Gurney); Ode to a Skylark (Shelley); The Kingfisher (Davies); When I am dead, ray dearest (Rossetti); Sister Awake (anon.); The Song of the Sirens (Browne). Six Songs for baritone: Sonnet (Keats); August (from "August 1914"—Masefteld); Beauty Bathing (Munday); Awaiting Execution (Tichborne); To Julia (Herrick); Sunset on the Morea (Byron). Eugene Goossens. Threshold (Holmes); A Winter-Night Idyll (Holmes); A Woodland Dell (Holmes); Seascape (Holmes). Heather Harper (soprano), John Carol Case (baritone), John Russell (piano). Record Society © RS60 (12 in., 25s. 10d. plus 5s. 8d. PT.). The Record Society, 6 Stratford Place, London, W.1.

A certain provincialism—or let us be kind and say insularity—makes itself apparent in this collection of British songs. Finzi's Let Us Garlands Bring (the correct title of this set of five, though nowhere mentioned on the label or in the presentation material), which was written in 1942 and dedicated to Vaughan Williams, is in the Quilter tradition of well-bred early twentiethcentury lyricism, never striking very deep, never ruffling listeners with the unexpected, but agreeable and always professional. The four songs by Goossens were composed ten years earlier, but are more adventurous in idiom, though perhaps relying excessively on the "scrunchy" chords thrown up by chromatic passing-notes. It is apparent, however, that there is imagination behind them, and their flexible, singable vocal lines are a sign of a skilled craftsman. Of Robert Still, who is given the lion's share of this disc, I know little save that he was a pupil of Ernest Walker and that an Argo disc four years ago of two of his chamber works was greeted by A.P. with something less than enthusiasm. On the evidence of these songs, he does not appear to have any discernible personal style (is this what the note means by saying that "his music has acquired more than a hint of cosmopolitan flavour"? Myself. I can think of little less cosmopolitan and more English), and the only common factors in this very uneven collection (which at moments come very near to banality, as in Ode to a Skylark) are a lack of rhythmic variety and an unfortunate tendency to place "e" or "ee" vowels on high notes. Otherwise, his songs are well enough made, though rather conventional.

Heather Harper, John Carol Case and John Russell (a friend of Finzi's and Still's) carry out their parts with distinction; the impeccable clarity of enunciation of both singers is specially notable. Unhappily the balance is far from good—Miss Harper becomes metallic at times, Mr. Case comes dangerously close to blasting during his Still songs and sometimes sounds as if his voice were being fed through an echo chamber, and the piano tone in the Goossens is much too distant and constricted —and the recording is downright bad, with an irritating flutter in places (e.g. A Woodland Dell) and noisy "motor-boating" surfaces throughout. L.S.