REMEMBER YOUR LOVERS

 

TIPPETT The Heart's Assurance: Song, The Heart's Assurance, Compassion, The Dancer, Remember your Lovers; Music, Boyhood's End,

Songs for Ariel: Come unto these yellow sands, Full fathom five, Where the bee sucks

BRITTEN Canticle 1

PURCELL arr. Tippett & Walter Bergmann If music be the food of Love, Music for a while, Sweeter than roses, An evening hymn,

An Epithalamium (A Wedding Song), What shall I do? 'Twas within a furlong of Edinburgh Town, Ah! How Sweet it is to Love, Rondo (I attempt from love's sickness)

PELHAM HUMFREY arr. Tippett & Walter Bergmann

A Hymn to God the Father

 

John Mark Ainsley (tenor)

Iain Burnside (piano)

 

The first of a series of CDs co-produced in association with BBC Radio 3 - Voices. Tippett's songs are few in number, but dazzling in quality, contrasted here with one of Tippett's sources of inspiration: Henry Purcell.

 

John Mark Ainsley, one of Britain's most prolific tenors, was born in Cheshire, began his musical training in Oxford and continues to study with

Diane Forlano. His vast discography covers the baroque and classical repertoire, the German Lied and English song: his recent recording of On Wenlock Edge being nominated for a Gramophone award. A highly gifted performer on the opera stage, he was awarded the Munich Festival Prize for his performance as Orfeo in 1999. At the 2003 Salzburg Festival he created the role of 'Der Daemon' in the world premiere of Hans Werner Henze's L'Upupa which he reprised at the Teatro Real, Madrid. He recently sang The Madwoman in Britten's Curlew River in Frankfurt where he will return for Captain Vere in Billy Budd. He also sings his first Pelleas for the Deutsche Oper, Berlin, Orfeo for English National Opera and Skuratov in Janacek's From the House of the Dead at the Aix-en-Provence, Amsterdam and Vienna Festivals.

 

"John Mark Ainsley is a model of style and verbal clarity." 

Hugh Canning, The Sunday Times

 

"Listen to the sheer quality of music-making as tenor John

Mark Ainsley is alive to every halting breath of a song."

The Times

 

"the Prince of English tenors"

Nicholas McGegan

 

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