If the Fates Allow
Music by Purcell and His Contemporaries
Helen Charlston (mezzo-soprano)
Sounds Baroque
rec. 2022, All Saints’ Church, East Finchley, London
Texts included
BIS BIS2734 SACD [58]

This is by no means the first time I’ve heard Helen Charlston, the lavishly-admired former BBC New Generation artist, who specialises in music of the baroque. She has a resonant and powerful mezzo and is a stylish exponent but – and we may as well get this out of the way now – I continue to worry whether she is being recorded sympathetically. What emerges here is a very insistent sound and to my ears her voice, here recorded in All Saints’ Church, East Finchley, London could do with significantly more space around it, and distance. It emerges with a sheer loudness that is not easy to tame which is especially problematic in the world of baroque song.

That said, if the recorded sound is more to your taste, there is much to admire about this Purcell-and-contemporaries recital. The divisions in I love and I must are accomplished and her ample chest voice is put to good service. There is much colour and variety of articulation – listen to her subtle singing of ‘drop’ and ‘whip’ – in Music for a While. In Tell me, some pitying angel which was always known in Dorothy Silk or Isobel Baillie’s day as “The Blessed Virgin’s Expostulation” Charlston’s diction is excellent, her vibrato much more pronounced than Baillie’s back in the 1940s or Emma Kirkby’s in recent years. It’s just that the sound she makes comes across as hard and unyielding.

There are no complaints about her expressive commitment to a song such as What a sad fate is mine though the aesthetic is very far from the Early Music singers of the 1970s and 80s, for which many listeners will be grateful. However, the sound of her voice is too insistent and microphone placement and acoustical distance are surely the major concerns. I attempt from Love’s sickness suggests that she is trying too hard, that she isn’t comfortable enough – musically not textually – to sing simply or softly. However, compare Charlston with Catherine Bott in John Eccles’ Restless in thought. Bott’s voice is lighter and more focused, aptly in the case of the divisions. Charlston’s heavier voice brings a greater intensity allied to a similarly greater sense of personalisation – a difference of aesthetic and vocal-expressive engagement with her material. This is even more true in the case of Daniel Purcell’s Morpheus thou gentle god where Charlston’s intensity brings a theatrical engagement even in the contrasting and consoling B section. Bott remains an admirable artist in this repertoire, as naturally is Kirkby, but we are now living in more committed vocal times in this repertoire.    

The accompanying musicians make their mark in Christopher Simpson’s The Division Viol: Divisions in D Major – the gravity and dextrous beauty of Jonathan Manson’s bass viol playing is supported by William Carter’s theorbo and Julian Perkins’s harpsichord. John Blow’s sprightly Mortlake Ground, appropriately, like so many of Purcell’s songs based on a ground, is played finely by Perkins.  

The notes consist of a ‘question and answer’ between Charlston and Emma Kirkby about the music and composers and, to some extent, the performances here. Which does, for better or for worse, sport something of a ‘Greatest Hits’ look about it. 

As you’ll have gathered, I’m in two minds about this recital

Jonathan Woolf

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Contents
Henry Purcell (1659-1695)
I love and I must, Z. 382
Oedipus: incidental music No. 2 Music for a While, Z583 (1693)
Tell me, some pitying angel, Z. 196 “The Blessed Virgin’s Expostulation”
Christopher Simpson (1602/06-1669)
The Division Viol: Divisions in D Major (1659)
Henry Purcell
What a sad fate is mine, Z428
If music be the food of love, Z. 379c (Third Version) (1692-95)
The fatal hour comes on apace, Z421
The History of Timon of Athens, The Man-Hater, Z. 632: No. 10, The Cares of Lovers (1694)
The Indian Queen, Z. 630, Act III: I attempt from Love’s sickness (1695)
John Eccles (1668-1735)
She ventures, and he wins: Restless in thought (1695)
John Blow (1649-1708)
Morlake Ground (for keyboard)
Henry Purcell
If music be the food of love, Z. 379a (First Version) (1692-95)
Daniel Purcell (c.1664-1717)
Morpheus thou gentle god (c.1720)
Henry Purcell
O solitude, my sweetest choice, Z406 (1687)