My Heart’s in the Highlands
Glen Cunningham (tenor), Anna Tilbrook (piano)
rec. March 2024 St. Mary’s Parish Church, Haddington , UK
Notes, texts and translations included
Delphian DCD34336 [71]

The young tenor, Glen Cunningham, and his pianist, Anna Tilbrook, celebrate their Scottish heritage in a programme of music connected to Scotland, not only in the folk orientated songs of Robbie Burns, but also in settings of Burns by Schumann, and Robert Louis Stevenson by Liza Lehmann and Reynaldo Hahn. To these are added a completely new song cycle, also to texts by Robert Louis Stevenson, by the Scottish composer, Stuart MacRae. 

It makes for an interesting programme, with the folk song settings framing the songs by Schumann, Lehmann, MacRae and Hahn. Thus, we start with a setting of Burns’s Ca’ the yowes to the knows in an arrangement by Claire Liddell, which segues into the eight songs from Schumann’s Myrthen, which set texts by Burns in German translation. They are possibly less well known than other songs from Myrthen, like Widmung or Der Nussbaum,and I doubt anyone would guess the Scottish provenance of these Schumann songs. Nor, I wager, would anyone guess that the song, Dem Roten Röslein Gleicht mein Lieb from Schumann’s Opus 27 Lieder und Gesänge is actually a setting in German of the famous My love is like a red, red rose, which follows it.

Liza Lehmann is less well represented in the catalogue than Schumann, though a selection of the songs from The Daisy-Chain have been recorded by mixed voices and are available on the Naxos label. Cunningham selects four of the five songs to texts by Robert Louis Stevenson. These are children’s songs to be performed by skilled adults, and the vocal writing is often taxing; Stars, for instance, requiring the sort of lyrical outpouring that Cunningham’s rather dry tenor is not quite capable of. Toby Spence manages it slightly better on the above Naxos recording, but it really needs a fuller voice than either of these two tenors can provide.

Two of the texts are also set by Reynaldo Hahn in his Five Little Songs, written while Hahn was a private in the French army during World War I, where he saw action on the front line. These too are settings of Robert Louis Stevenson, ‘children’s songs’, though it is unlikely that any child could sing or play them. They are quite charming, though yet again, there is nothing particularly Scottish about them. 

Not surprisingly, I suppose, the most Scottish sounding of the songs are those by Stuart MacRae, particularly For age an’ youth, which sets a Scots style vocal line against a sort of imitation bagpipe in the piano accompaniment. Cunningham is at his best in these songs, but even here I wanted more of tonal beauty. He compensates with the intelligence of his delivery, but throughout I’m afraid I found his vibrato intrusive and the sound he makes unpleasantly hard and uningratiating. 

I should just mention that Anna Tilbrook is a most sensitive accompanist and adapts brilliantly to the style of each composer.

The recital ends with the title song, My heart’s in the Highlands, in an arrangement by Michael Barnett (and supplemented by Tilbrook) that was transcribed from a 1962 Kenneth McKellar recording. I just wish that Cunningham sang it with some of McKellar’s beauty of tone.

Philip Tsaras

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Contents
Traditional arr. Claire Liddell (b.1937) Ca’ the yowes to the knows
Robert Schumann (1810-1856) From Myrthen, Op.25
              Jemand
              Der Hochlände-Witwe
              Hochländers Abschied
              Hochländisches Wiegenlied
              Haptmanns Weib           
              Weit, Weit
              Niemand
              Im Westen
Robert Schumann: Dem rotenRöslein gleicht mein Lieb, Op. 27 no. 2
Traditional arr. Thomas Swift Gleadhill (1827-1890) My love is like a red, red rose
Liza Lehmann (1862-1918) From The Daisy Chain
              Stars
              The Swing
              The Moon
Traditional arr. Alfred Moffat (1863-1950)Ae fond kiss
Stuart MacRae (b.1976) Five Stevenson Songs
              ENVOY
              For age an’ youth           
              Bright is the ring of words
              KATHARINE
              EVENSONG
Traditional arr. Claire Liddell Ye banks and braes o’ Bonnie Doon
Reynaldo Hahn (1874-1947) Five Little Songs
              The Swing          
              Windy Nights
              My Ship and I
              The Stars
              A Good Boy
Traditional arr. Claire Liddell Wee Willie Grey
Traditional arr. Michael Barnett/Anna Tilbrook My Heart’s in the Highlands