Madeleine Dring (1923-1977)
Through the Centuries: Songs
Kitty Whately (mezzo-soprano)
Julius Drake (piano)
rec. 2025, Potton Hall, Dunwich, UK
Chandos CHAN20390 [63]
This is a fine collection of mostly unknown songs by a composer of wide-ranging stylistic ability and sympathies with an eclectic variety of poetry. Early writers such as Shakespeare, Dryden and Sydney are favoured but also more modern poets such as Michael Armstrong (1923-2000) the author of the work which for me which stands out in this collection, the Four Night Songs composed in 1976 just before Dring’s untimely death aged just 53.
Because she was a busy performer/composer, she spent little time cataloguing her music and there are an enormous number of songs – more, in fact, are still to be fully discovered. Not only that, but many, such as the settings of Love is a sickness and The Faithless Lover, cannot be dated. Furthermore, many of them were never published in her lifetime; for example, the lovely setting of Weep you no more, sad fountains – which many of you will know was first set by Dowland who may well also be the poet – was not published until 1993.
What I love about the booklet, apart from the really useful notes about the songs by the doyen of British programme notes, Lewis Foreman, is that not we not only have all of the texts, but also several photographs of the composer performing in London theatres in plays like ‘Babes in the Wood’, and ‘Corn in Egypt’. There is also a photo of Dring and her cabaret duettist Margaret Rubel. All this demonstrates her as an actress and entertainer and how she was able to perform and compose ditties and light-hearted songs for the theatre and for both the BBC and ITV. We are also given some of her more serious pieces such as the memorable ‘Night Songs’. Let me offer a little more detail.
Although the disc has many lighter songs very much in the sometimes quite lush harmonic language favoured by some English composers in the 40s and 50s, the two longer song-cycles songs are a little different. Love and Time composed sometimes in the 1970s sets sixteenth and seventeenth century verse, and in them Dring allows herself more space, as it were, with often a piano prelude and more harmonic daring. The lovely madrigal by Thomas Bateson Sister Awake is turned by Dring into a rather atmospherically mysterious song of yearning to open this cycle. Another trait is that she quite often ends a song with a reminder, both textually and musically, of the opening one or two lines, as in Ah how sweet it is to love.
As a cycle, the Four Night Songs, mentioned above, last well over twelve minutes. The opening piano prelude with its uncertain harmony sets the mood perfectly for ‘Holding the night in the palm of my hand’. A composer like Frank Bridge came to my mind. There is some word painting in each song. The second song with its staccato opening sets up ‘Stars rain like pebbles’ but soon darkens and slows for ‘night’s black moat’, and climaxes for ‘the brilliant eye that burns’. Song three, ‘Through the centuries I have held your hand’ is a truly loving and passionate love song. The last, ‘Separation’, concerns love unrequited and is based around a series of repeated seventh and ninth chords with a winding and deeply lyrical and expressive vocal line. It is a song of regret and deep sadness. It ends on an unstable harmony, but one that is reconciled to its fate.
The CD ends, somewhat surprisingly, with an arrangement made by Madeleine Dring of Cole Porter’s ‘In the still of the night’. This performance exemplifies how Kitty Whately has so easily and unforcefully characterised each of these contrasted songs and how Julius Drake has created a bed of security in his accompaniment to allow the songs to take flight. They have also recorded a wonderful disc of French melodies entitled “Horizons” (CHAN 20324) which I also heartily recommend, but this disc is something special.
Gary Higginson
Other review: Nick Barnard
Contents
Love is a sickness
Echoes
Encouragements to a Lover
The Enchantment
Melisande
My true-love hath my heart (1944)
Love and Time (1970’s)
Weep you no more sad fountains
From Seven Shakespeare Songs (published 1992)
The Faithless Lover
Four Night Songs (1976)
In the Still of the Night
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