Classical home listening - a good week for tenor-piano recitals

The Guardian 0

Ian Bostridge and Antonio Pappano, Stuart Jackson and Jocelyn Freeman and James Gilchrist and Anna Tilbrook span the centuries from Purcell to Jonathan Dove

• Six songs to a distant beloved – separated by blue mountain and misty valley – comprise An die ferne Geliebte, usually reckoned the first song cycle ever written. It’s the opening work on Beethoven: Songs and Folksongs (Warner), a wide-ranging recital featuring the tenor Ian Bostridge with Antonio Pappano as the responsive, ever flexible pianist, and contributions from Vilde Frang (violin) and Nicolas Altstaedt (cello). Settings of Goethe texts include the half-crazed Song of the Flea from Faust and the heartfelt Sehnsucht (Longing), the latter used four times by Beethoven and by countless other composers.