Down by the Sea: A Collection of British Folk SongsNaxosAt the risk of prejudicing any latecomers and with 2013 barely half gone, I declare this release to be my choral album of the year. I’d be stupefied if anything stronger comes long.The title is misleading, enticing you to expect horny-handed fishermen’s heave-hos of the kind enshrined by Kathleen Ferrier in Blow the Winds Southerly some 65 years ago. Put the thing on play, however, and you’ll find that most of the music is by living composers, with a bare half-dozen by Vaughan Williams, Holst, Grainger and Moeran.The oldies are the least interesting of the fifteen tracks. Wrap your ears around Judith Bingham’s "The Orphan Girl" and marvel at her ingenious harmonies. John Duggan’s "Over the Moon" puts you right there: into the blue beyond. Hilary Campbell’s setting of "Blow the Wind Southerly" drags the old ditty two generations away from Ferrier’s hand-crafted, perilous simplicities to an era of faceless industrial fishing. Campbell is the conductor here of the professional chamber choir, Blossom Street.The standout track is James MacMillan’s "Lassie, Wad Ye Loe Me?," a Scottish maiden’s misty dirge with a defiant undertone. MacMillan wrote it as a wedding song for a pair of pals. I shall be singing it in the shower all next week, and inviting friends to join. Terrific stuff.___Norman Lebrecht is a regular presenter on BBC Radio 3 and a contributor to the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg and other publications. He has written 12 books about music, the most recent being Why Mahler? He hosts the blog Slipped Disc.
