STILL FALLS THE RAIN
SONGS BY BENJAMIN BRITTEN
with Alan Cumming, narrator
Myra Huang, piano
Sivan Magen, harp
Jennifer Montone, horn
Avie Records
ABOUT THE ALBUM
No art is made in a vacuum. All artists seek to communicate with their community and the world around them and are inspired by various catalysts and muses. When I was a college student, I became fascinated by the deep love between Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears and how it spurred and fed their creativity and musicality. In exploring their published correspondence, I discovered that Pears was not Britten’s only muse; the composer was inspired by many other musical collaborators and artists.
During the 1940s and ’50s Britten enjoyed close friendships with various inspiring talents, notably the poet Edith Sitwell and horn-player Dennis Brain. Brain was principal horn in the Royal Air Force Orchestra when Britten first met him in 1942, and he composed incidental music for wartime broadcasts by the RAFO. Immediately impressed by Brain’s playing, Britten took every opportunity to write horn solos for the project, and the two men quickly became friends. Their friendship is enshrined in Britten’s Serenade for tenor, horn and strings, a piece which catapulted Brain to the forefront of the British classical music scene as a virtuosic soloist. Britten also had Brain in mind when writing Canticle III – Still falls the Rain, a setting of Sitwell’s poem about the air raids on London in 1940.
After undergoing heart surgery in 1973, Britten found that his right hand was partially paralysed, and he could no longer accompany Pears in concert. Ever particular about his replacement, Britten wrote some new pieces for the harpist Osian Ellis to perform with Pears. Britten had written much with Ellis in mind, including elaborate harp parts for A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Curlew River and the War Requiem, as well as a solo Suite for Harp. Britten made extreme technical demands on Ellis; there are anecdotes about him giving the harpist lessons during rehearsals for the first performance of Curlew River.
Julia Cameron uses a baseball analogy (in her book Walking in this World) to show how artists need a ‘catcher’s mitt’ – a person to show the artist where their art is aimed. She writes: ‘We make art to communicate not only to ourselves, but also to the world. Someone or something must represent that world.’ Britten was clearly in tune with this idea, and surrounded himself with such muses, or catcher’s mitts, who both stimulated his imagination and disciplined its exercise, pushing technical and expressive boundaries and creating a richer world of musical colour and expression.
Similar personal connections have brought me to the pieces on this recording. Sivan Magen and I became close friends during our summers at the Marlboro Music Festival. We sought music to perform together and were naturally drawn to Britten, as his music forms a significant part of the harp and voice repertoire. Jennifer Montone and I became friends after her debut recital at Carnegie Hall (the very first solo horn recital to be presented by the Hall in its 125-year-history), at which we performed Britten’s Third Canticle together. Myra Huang and I have forged a strong friendship over years of touring and performing Britten. In thinking about the history of these pieces and how I have come to them myself, I observe how Britten’s music was born from love and friendships – no doubt one reason why his music still speaks to us so compellingly.
CRITICAL ACCLAIM
THE NEW YORK TIMES
BEST CLASSICAL ALBUMS OF 2012
“The young tenor Nicholas Phan again proves himself an affecting interpreter of Britten’s music.”
MUSICAL TORONTO
“A powerful show of Benjamin Britten’s genius from a wonderful young tenor…Phan has exactly the right balance of sweetness and power, augmented by a wonderful way with sung English and the shaping of a musical phrase in ‘Still falls the Rain’.”
RHAPSODY
TOP 20 CLASSICAL ALBUMS OF 2012
“The tenor made a fine debut in 2011 with a take on an obscure Benjamin Britten song cycle, so it makes sense for him to try another. This time it’s “The Heart of the Matter,” written with poet Edith Sitwell after the composer used her work in his third Canticle, “Still Falls the Rain”…Once again, Phan’s earnest voice makes the case. Helping him out is actor Alan Cumming; freed from the bounds of TV, he lets his Scots accent run in a winning way through the spoken parts. Out of left field, sure—but a cool odd shot."
CLASSIC FM
YOUNG ARTIST TO WATCH
“This is a fine album, containing a song cycle, extended pieces and some charming folk song arrangements. Nicholas Phan sounds lovely on this recording and I’d love to hear him do more Britten.”
BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE
“★★★★ Having scaled the heights of Britten’s song-cycle masterpieces, including a sun-kissed account of the Michelangelo Sonnets, tenor Nicholas Phan moves into rarer territory in his second disc for Avie. As Phan explains in his excellent notes, horn player Dennis Brain and harpist Osian Ellis inspired most of the settings here.
Jennifer Montone is well-matched on horn in The Heart of the Matter, Phan’s first swelling note immediately establishes his refinement and steel, rare among Britten’s recent tenors. Its centrepiece is the superbly florid Canticle III, a setting of Edith Sitwell’s Still Falls the Rain…
Pleasure is uninterrupted in the Burns and folk settings, where Phan’s sophistication is easily matched by harpist Sivan Magen. Britten’s astonishing way with the harp, especially in extreme registers, reaches it apogee in Canticle V, a setting of T.S. Eliot’s The Death of Saint Narcissus. Pithier language than Sitwell’s elicits tough responses, electrifyingly realised by Phan and Magen, as the self-admiring youth becomes ‘a dancer before God’. The tenor turns in a first-class performance, and pianist Myra Huang lends the songs personality throughout. More please!”
GRAMOPHONE
“Unabashed by the number of young British rivals already in the catalogue, the American tenor Nicholas Phan is on his second solo Britten disc. The programme focuses on works conceived for voice with horn or harp...Phan sings with a fine mixture of poetry and strength, matched by horn soloist Jennifer Montone and pianist Myra Huang. In Canticle III, which gives this disc its title, his enunciation of Sitwell’s text is notably clear.
Apart from a couple of encores, the rest of the disc is for tenor and harp. In a Birthday Hansel, Phan bravely tackles the Scottish dialect and fields a higher-quality voice than either of his immediate predecessors on disc…In Canticle V, The Death of Saint Narcissus, Phan and Sivan Magen, the harpist, give themselves time to create a nicely wondrous atmosphere and this well-sung performance compares well with the market-leaders, Pears himself and the ever-imaginative Langridge. A group of eight folksongs completes the tenor-and-harp offering, adding up to an attractive Britten release from across the Atlantic.”
WQXR
“...Phan has no need to mimic the tics of others because he has so many strengths of his own: a dapper, cultivated timbre, splendid enunciation, and keen intelligence and musicianship…Eloquently accompanied by the horn player Jennifer Montone and the pianist Myra Huang, Phan gives a performance fully worthy of the austere dignity of Britten’s music and Sitwell’s verse. Heavenly grace seems to infuse his tone in the Canticle’s closing phrases, sung in the redeemer’s voice: “Still do I love, still shed my innocent light, my Blood for thee.” A bonus for lovers of great acting: Alan Cumming performs The Heart of the Matter’s spoken sections.
The harpist Sivan Magen is a magician. He accompanies Phan in folksong settings, Canticle V (based on a hermetic and disquieting T. S. Eliot poem), and Britten’s last song cycle, A Birthday Hansel. Whether weaving a faux-naïve spell in “Dafydd Y Garreg Wen” (the song of an aged bard) or sending forth an ever-more-venomous cloud of sound in “She’s Like the Swallow,” Magen’s playing is prodigious in color and imagination, the ideal accompaniment for Phan’s sensitive singing.”
BBC RADIO 3
“an American Britten recital that really deserves it’s place among the best of the Brits in this anniversary year”
INTERNATIONAL RECORD REVIEW
“Phan’s voice has an ideal timbre for Britten, without any idiosyncrasies”
ARIAMA
ARIAMA’S ACCLAIMED - BEST ALBUMS OF 2012
“[Edith Sitwell’s] poem about the 1940 London blitz Canticle III - Still Falls the Rain that’s the emotional core of this recording. The performance of Phan, Montone and Huang is stunning. It’s impossible to be unmoved by the clarity and emotional intensity of Phan’s singing. That hair-raising moment when he declaims “O ile leape up to my God: who pulles me doune” is devastating…
…Phan’s singing is electrifying, a wonderful marriage of drama and musicianship, and it’s impossible to resist the sheer beauty of his voice. Cumming (on hand to read some of the poems) is a model of restrained eloquence, and Montone’s playing is rich and full-toned while Huang is marvelously sensitive…Sivan Magen draws so much color from his harp and his richly nuanced performance partners beautifully with Phan’s superb singing. If there is a voice and harp hall of fame somewhere, I think Magen and Phan’s performances of a set of folksong arrangements, particularly “She’s like the swallow,” earns them first ballot induction.”
PIZZICATO MAGAZINE
SUPERSONIC AWARD
“After his outstanding Britten recital last year, tenor Nicholas Phan shows once again what a fabulous Britten interpreter he is. The program begins with ‘The Heart of the Matter’, the centerpiece of which is Edith Sitwell’s poem about the attacks of the German Luftwaffe in 1940. Together with the excellent hornist Jennifer Montone, the pianist Myra Huang and narrator Alan Cumming, Nicholas Phan creates a thrilling atmosphere in this poetic and musical tale.
The collaboration with the harpist Sivan Magen likewise leads to very exceptional results. Singer and instrumentalists both drive the rhetoric of these songs to the hilt, one with virtually unlimited artistic means, the other with a fantasy of sound that underscores Phan’s excellent sensitivity to text and nuance with similarly well-nuanced color and expression.
The inspired phrasing is not the only thing we admire in Phan’s singing: there’s also his pleasant, clear and never-sour timbre, his excellent clarity of diction and profound musicality, which contribute significantly to the impression we have of this CD.”
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Special thanks to
Tina Assimos, Steven & Robin Kunkel, Wie & Cassia Pan, Sem & Katherine Phan,
Many thanks also to the army of generous supporters who contributed to the production of this album.
Nicholas Phan's solo recording projects are a sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a non-profit arts service organization.
Contributions for the charitable purposes of Nicholas Phan's solo recording projects must be made payable to “Fractured Atlas” only and are tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law.
