Amidst the Shades

This haunting and beautifully planned album brings together several of the very best British song writers, from Shakespeare’s England to three of the nation’s current leading women composers. Singing all these with plangent and intense expressiveness is Welsh soprano Ruby Hughes. Hughes begins with a selection of John Dowland’s evergreen songs. In contrast to “Come again, sweet love”, full of a delicious yearning, Hughes gives an appropriately tart edge to “Can she excuse”, with lutenist Jonas Nordberg providing its ear-catching accompaniment with its rollicking rhythms. But it is with “Time stands still”, a song which truly lives up to its title in Hughes’ rapt performance, when it becomes clear this album is quite special. So begins this captivating recital, which artfully modulates from the England of Elizabeth I to that of Elizabeth II, smoothly transitioning through Purcell to Britten, and then to new works by Errollyn Wallen (Master of the King’s Music), Cheryl Frances-Hoad and Deborah Pritchard. Along the way, Nordberg takes the spotlight with stylish renderings of character pieces by Dowland, and the gravely beautiful “Last will and testament” by the lesser-known Anthony Holborne. Another fine instrumentalist, Mime Yamahiro-Brinkmann on viola da gamba, joins Hughes and Nordberg to add an appropriately doleful tone to the three Funeral Tears by John Danyel, lutenist to Elizabeth I. The viola da gamba gives continuity as the programme jumps two generations forward to Henry Purcell, for whose song “Amidst the shades” Hughes taps a yet richer expressive seam.