Catalogue

Summary:

Pizzicato Supersonic - “What a beautiful surprise! What a marvelous discovery! …The young tenor excels in this program and if he reminds one at times of the young Peter Pears, it is indisputable that invests his own personality in what he is singing. His timbre is clear and of great beauty. His diction is exemplary and one easily understands the sung texts. The voice passes well in the top and evolves, supple and with perfect mastery, from the most beautiful fortissimos to the lightest piano nuances.” – Pizzicato

BEST CLASSICAL DISCS OF 2011 - “It’s the kind of recital disc that stakes a claim on you the first time out, the freshness of Phan’s voice radiating sensitivity, care for both the composer and the listener, and what can only be called sincerity. Yet what makes it compelling, and keeps drawing you back, is the way Phan weaves, almost imperceptibly, tendrils of that disturbing element present in almost all of Britten’s music, and an identifying feature of it, into all that beautiful singing…Phan has every note of this densely composed, mostly high-lying music securely in his grasp… The singing is consistently thrilling…” – Bay Area Reporter

FAVORITE NEW ARTISTS OF 2011 - “Winter Words is one of the best recitals I’ve heard this year…it marks Phan’s entry as an artist who must be heard.” – National Public Radio, USA

“These are enjoyable performances, freshly sung and played as is the repertoire throughout this CD …” – Michael Greenhalgh, MusicwebInternational.com

BEST CLASSICAL MUSIC ALBUMS OF 2011- Timeout NY

BEST CLASSICAL MUSIC OF 2011 – “American tenor Nicholas Phan, with piano accompanist Myra Huang, conveys the radiant austerity of Britten’s setting of eight Thomas Hardy poems.” – Toronto Star

BEST CLASSICAL MUSIC CDs OF 2011 -“Phan has a lithe, beautiful voice, but it’s his masterful characterization of these songs – by turns desolate, humorous, and turbulent – that makes such a deep impression. That’s something to be treasured, wherever it pops up” – The Boston Globe

BEST CLASSICAL MUSIC RECORDINGS OF 2011 – The New Yorker

BEST CLASSICAL ALBUMS OF 2011 – “Britten’s song cycle Winter Words is inexplicably neglected. These bleakly beautiful, sometimes satirical and stunning settings of eight Thomas Hardy poems prove ideal for Nicholas Phan, the sweet-voiced young tenor, sensitively accompanied by Myra Huang. The performers are equally satisfying in Britten’s Seven Sonnets of Michelangelo and several folk song arrangements.” – The New York Times

“Phan has both the introspection and the power for this idiosyncratic approach to Italian fire … The Hardy tableaux of Winter Words are all atmospherically evoked alongside the best … but what wins this disc its five stars is the spacious, deeply moving delivery of my favourite among all the folksong settings, ‘The Last Rose of Summer’ … [Huang] always catches the distant gleam and proves a superb ghost-partner in ‘The Ash-Grove'” ★★★★★ BBC Music Magazine

“Phan’s fresh tenor voice, Myra Huang’s intelligent pianism and the recording’s warm acoustic conspire to make an inviting, distinctive recording…Phan’s upper range blooms, not by fanning out at the top but in a more integrated emergence of vocal brightness…his main strength is spinning a long, expressive line in ways that seem to confide in the listener.” – Gramophone

“Others have identified Phan, a young American tenor, as a star in the making, and this fine Britten recital confirms it. The voice is graceful, mellifluous and durable, but behind it lie sharp intelligence, poetic insight and a confident individuality, allowing him a deeply personal response to the Hardy cycle Winter Words. In the Seven Sonnets, Phan is equally at ease with the demands of the bel canto devices.” – The Sunday Times

Winter Words is the solo debut release by American tenor Nicholas Phan. The recording was made in the wake of a recital tour in 2010-11 which culminated in his Carnegie debut at Weill Hall. A graduate of the Manhattan School of Music and an alumnus of the Houston Grand Opera studio Nick has performed with the opera companies of Los Angeles and Seattle, symphony orchestras of Atlanta, St. Louis and San Francisco, and the Marlboro, Ravinia and Edinburgh Festivals, among others. He sang in Stravinsky’s Pulcinella with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under Pierre Boulez which was nominated for a Grammy Award.

Nick presents a deeply personal perspective of Britten’s music, encompassing his own performing experiences to audience reaction. He says: “I’ve been a fan of Britten since playing his Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra with my youth orchestra in Detroit as a teenage violinist. But my great devotion to his music increased to an obsession when an excellent pianist and good friend asked if I’d perform with her at a small university in Missouri. She suggested Winter Words, saying, “I think these would sound really great in your voice, and I’ve wanted to play them for ages, so indulge me.” I researched and played through Britten’s settings of Hardy’s poems and before long, I was hooked.”

Approaching the performance in a small Midwestern town with some trepidation (“how would they react?”), Nick describes the audience’s overwhelmingly positive response: “my favourite piece on the program … the most lasting impression.” Such is the enduring quality of Britten’s sophisticated yet direct song writing, of which Nick is a leading torch-bearer.

Tracklist:

BENJAMIN BRITTEN (1913–1976)

Winter Words, Op. 52
1. At day-close in November (1:45)
2. Midnight on the Great Western (or “The Journeying Boy”) (4:50)
3. Wagtail and Baby (A Satire) (2:13)
4. The Little Old Table (1:28)
5. The Choirmaster’s Burial (or “The Tenor Man’s Story”) (4:17)
6. Proud Songsters (Thrushes, Finches, and Nightingales) (1:08)
7. At the Railway Station, Upway (or “The Convict and Boy with the Violin”) (2:53)
8. Before Life and After (3:12)

Folksong arrangements
9. Come you not from Newcastle? (1:18)
10. Little Sir William (2:52)
11. The Salley Gardens (2:50)

Seven Sonnets of Michelangelo, Op. 22
12. Sonnetto XVI “Sì come nella penna e nell’inchiostro” (2:14)
13. Sonnetto XXXI “A che più debb’io mai l’intensa voglia” (1:33)
14. Sonnetto XXX “Veggio co’bei vostri occhi un dolci lume” (3:56)
15. Sonnetto LV “Tu sa’ ch’io so, signor mie, che tu sai” (2:00)
16. Sonnetto XXXVII “Rendete a gli occhi miei” (1:52)
17. Sonnetto XXXII “S’un casto amor, s’una pietà superna” (1:23)
18. Sonnetto XXIV “Spirto ben nato, in cui si specchia e vede” (4:45)

Folksong arrangements
19. The Ash Grove (3:21)
20. Last Rose of Summer (4:28)
21. The Plough boy (1:26)

Total duration: 55:51

Nicholas Phan, tenor
Myra Huang, piano

Recorded 13 April 2009 (tracks 1-8) and 24 June 2010 (tracks 9-21), Bicoastal Music, Ossining, NY, USA
Producer, engineer and editing: Marlan Barry