Gramophone Magazine
Awards Issue 2021
Editor's Choice
Presto Editor's Choice
September 2021
Ruby Hughes (soprano), Joseph Middleton (piano)
Mahler: Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen
Ives, C: The Housatonic at Stockbridge
Ives, C: Mists
Grime: Bright Travellers
Ives, C: Serenity
Ives, C: The Children's Hour
Ives, C: Songs My Mother Taught Me
Mahler: Kindertotenlieder
trad.: Suo gan
After appearing on a quartet of very different BIS releases, ranging from early baroque arias to orchestral songs by Alban Berg and Mahler’s ‘Resurrection Symphony’, the British soprano Ruby Hughes has devised a song recital, together with her regular Lieder partner Joseph Middleton. The process began in 2018 when the two gave the world première of Helen Grime’s Bright Travellers, a set of five poems charting the interior and exterior worlds of pregnancy and motherhood. Ruby Hughes soon set about planning a programme which would converge with Grime’s music and the themes of new life and of love in all its aspects. The recital is bookended by two song cycles by Gustav Mahler which explore love, grief, loss and reconciliation through quite different lenses. In the opening cycle we experience Mahler as solitary wayfarer and hear of unrequited love. In Kindertotenlieder, the second cycle, the poet Friedrich Rückert pours out his pain as a grieving father in songs about the beauty and innocence of children. Completing the programme is Charles Ives – described by Ruby Hughes as Mahler’s ‘musical kindred spirit’ – with a selection of love songs, prayers and lullabies.
"It's relatively unusual to hear a light, bright soprano in the two Mahler cycles, but Hughes's vernal freshness and vulnerability pay real dividends in the second Wayfarer song in particular, complemented by some sparkling, detailed playing from Middleton; the real attraction here, though, is Helen Grime's vivid and often visceral Bright Travellers, which paints a compelling picture of the joys, anxieties and pain of pregnancy and early motherhood." - Katherine Cooper, Presto Classical, September 2021.
