Roderick Williams and Andrew West - Birdsong review | classical album of the week

The Guardian 0

(Somm Recordings)
Baritone Williams brings his characteristic attention to text and tone to pieces usually sung by young women, including works by Schumann and Brahms

Birdsong, or … songs for birds. There are two threads running through this recital recording from the baritone Roderick Williams and pianist Andrew West. One is that their programme is punctuated by songs about nightingales, swallows, peacocks and hoopoes. The other, more intriguingly, is that many of them are usually sung by higher voices. Williams is trying to loosen ideas of who should sing what, and simultaneously conducting an experiment: does it change the song if the singer is not a woman but a man?

Related: Roderick Williams on the Last Night of the Proms: ‘Maybe I should dress as Britannia and wave a Jamaican flag’