Andrew Kennedy is an ideal interpreter of Ian Venables’ music, which he sings as if to the manner born. He has already recorded some of the songs, including The Hippo and At Midnight, on the Signum label (SIGCD204), so there is a small degree of overlap. Kennedy has also recorded Songs of Eternity and Sorrow, coupled with Ralph Vaughan Williams’ On Wenlock Edge and Ivor Gurney’s Ludlow and Teme on Signum SIGCD112 and other songs, including Flying Crooked and A Kiss, on a CD mainly of Ivor Gurney on Somm SOMM057, so you would have some 14 minutes of overlap if you already owned all those earlier recordings.

I must express my thanks at this point to Mr Siva Soke of Somm recordings for pointing out that his label actually beat both Signum and Naxos to the post in recognising Ian Venables’ talent with a recording of the complete Love’s Voice, Vitæ summa brevis, Flying crooked, At Midnight and The Hippo in 2006. (Nathan Vale and Paul Plummer, SOMMCD063). My oversight is all the more culpable because we reviewed that recording very favourably here on Musicweb International—see reviews by Jonathan Woolf—here—and Colin Scott-Sutherland, who thought ‘the whole quite ravishingly beautiful’—here. The typically enterprising Somm recording overlaps some 27 minutes of the new recording. The coupling, appropriately, is of music by Gurney, Ireland and Finzi.

Kennedy’s Signum recording of Wenlock Edge is particularly fine, offering a very strong challenge to existing recommendations, perhaps even supplanting them. I’ve recommended it in my November 2010 Download Roundup—here. I’d be inclined to go for that recording first, then for the new CD, which opens with the longest work, On the Wings of Love (trs.1-5) a cycle of five songs setting the words of authors as diverse as the Emperor Hadrian (in translation) and W B Yeats. The first song, Ionian Song, is dramatic at times but predominantly wistful and lyrical. It won me over immediatmore....

Review By John France,MusicWeb International,November 2010

Two things need to be understood when approaching the songs of Ian Venables. Firstly, his music sits fairly and squarely in the tradition of English vocal music. From the Elizabethan lutenists to Tippett by way of Finzi and Warlock, it is easy to detect influences and allusions. Venables typically writes in a largely tonal - sometimes stretched a bit - idiom that is usually both approachable and memorable. Furthermore even the briefest of glances at the list of poets that he has chosen to set, reveals many names that are a part of the English literary tradition. These include Tennyson, Hardy and Harold Monro (1879-1932). The second point is an outworking of the first. There is absolutely no way that Venables’ music is derivative or pastiche of any other composer, living or dead. This is not ‘souped-up’ Finzi or exhumed Moeran or anyone else. It would be like saying that Bach’s music was only Böhm or Buxtehude with ‘knobs on’. Venables is his own man: he writes what he pleases. At times his music is less likely to have an instant appeal but often the effect is immediate. What lies at the bottom of Ian Venables’ art is his willingness to have listened to other composers, to have absorbed their style and message and to have synthesised a new musical voice that is in their musical trajectory but is not beholden to it.

Finally, one or two characteristics that are nearly always present in Venables’ songs are a deep response to the text - frequently the poets too - and the ability to move the listener, often beyond the call of duty. Much of his music is melancholy: it is often beautiful and is always well-crafted. The present CD introduces the listener to a number of songs and cycles: some of these are well known to British music enthusiasts, but others are first recordings and are therefore valuable additions to his catalogue. I was seriously impressed by the song-cycle On the Wings of Love which is a setting for tenor, clarinet and piano of poems by a variety of non-English writers. It was composed in 2005-2006. I rely heavily on the composer’s web pages and the sleeve-notes for my comments on this work. The title of the song-cycle was taken from Plato’s Symposium which is that philosopher’s great discourse on the nature of love. Venables has attempted to explore the ‘universal theme of love in its widest possible sense and not just in the realm of human affections’. The composer chooses a number of texts from poets old and modern, and from a variety of backgrounds and countries. The first song is a setting of Constantine P. Cavafy’s ‘slippery time’ poem, ‘Ionian Song’, where he suggests that in spite of the old gods having been thrown down and their temples destroyed, they are still watching over their land. Venables has interpreted this poem in a subtly timeless manner: he has created a fine balance between a relatively ‘modernistic’ declamatory style and a heart-achingly beautiful lyricism. This song is a mmore....