CD review: Songs of Stevenson
Songs of Stevenson by Brian Bannatyne-Scott
A Scottish voice of distinction
Brian Bannatyne-Scott has become familiar to readers of the Edinburgh Music Review through his very entertaining story of his life as an international opera singer. He hopes to turn this into a book but hasn't neglected the business of making music even if all his opera and concert dates have been cancelled due to Covid. He has just recorded a very interesting CD which features the great but neglected Scottish composer Ronald Stevenson along with also some of the songs of Francis Scott and Ralph Vaughan Williams. I have been listening to Brian's new CD for over a month now on holiday in Austria via Apple Music, so Brian will be at least 10p better off! The sound quality is very good via my hearing aids or my Bose noise cancellation headphones, but I wanted to wait till my return to listen to the CD on my B&O 9000 HiFi and yes it sounds even better! It confirms what I knew from listening to Brian in concert over the years that his is a remarkable voice of the highest quality. It is rich, melodious and flexible and has great colour. It is worth recalling that Brian's voice was recognised early on as of great quality when he won the Kathleen Ferrier prize in 1981 and his blog tells us he has had a very successful international career but as he points out is somewhat neglected in Scotland. Of course, had Brian been a tenor, he might have achieved greater success and been better known in Scotland; certainly, his voice stands comparison with the great Kenneth McKellar in the past or Jamie MacDougall today. But as Brian tells in his stories, the tenors tend to get the girls and the fame in opera, while the bass gets the character parts!
The CD begins with the fine but neglected Scottish composer Ronald Stevenson who was a very important part of the Edinburgh music scene till his death in 2015. His talent was somewhat neglected by the British and international musical establishment, no doubt because of his Scottish location. Hopefully, Brian's CD will help change that situation. Ronald Stevenson's settings of the poems of Robert Louis Stevenson remind us what a fine poet RLS was, but also demonstrate Ronald Stevenson’s own strengths as a writer of modern music with melody, allowing Brian's voice to colour these songs. The CD continues with the songs of the even more neglected Scottish composer Francis George Scott (1880-1958) who came from the Borders. There he taught the young Hugh MacDiarmid at Langholm and later set many of his poems to music, including two on this CD, which sound much more in the Scottish folk tradition than Stevenson's, which are firmly in the ‘Lieder’ style of classical music. However, they are a delight and Brian sings them wonderfully, reminding us that MacDiarmid was indeed a great poet. Ronald Stevenson next sets three poems by MacDiarmid to music (they were great friends and neighbours) from MacDiarmid's epic poem ‘Hymn to Lenin’. Brian delivers them with power and a punch that I think MacDiarmid would have approved of. In all these songs Brian is superbly accompanied by Jan Waterfield on the piano; they clearly have a great understanding and empathy.
The last section of the CD is from a concert performance from 2003 recorded in the splendid surroundings of the Canongate Kirk in Edinburgh. It is the setting by Ralph Vaughan Williams of the poems by RLS of his travels. Some of these are very well known, like ‘The Vagabond’, others deserve to be better known. What is also interesting is that this is Brian's voice almost 20 years ago, and very well accompanied here by pianist Alan Jacques. Is the earlier voice better? I would say not, maybe a little younger and lighter but the quality of the voice that won the Kathleen Ferrier prize 40 years ago is very much still with us. That makes it sad that concert house and opera house audiences can't listen to it during the Covid crisis. Hopefully, that will change soon, and Brian can get back on stage. In the meantime, this is a splendid reminder of what we are missing.
