Remember Your Lovers: Songs by Tippett, Britten, Purcell & Pelham Humfrey

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John Mark Ainsley brings the full range of his formidable musicianship to these hard-wrought but haunting masterpieces. His ringing high register and almost miraculously expressive pianissimo... — BBC Music Magazine, December 2005, 5 out of 5 stars More…

Release Date: 3rd Oct 2005
Catalogue No: SIGCD066
Label: Signum
Length: 72 minutes

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January 2006

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Tippett: The Heart's Assurance: Song

Work length2:55

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$1.40

John Mark Ainsley, Iain Burnside

Tippett: The Heart's Assurance

Work length2:22

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John Mark Ainsley, Iain Burnside

Tippett: The Heart's Assurance

Work length12:47

$3.00

$4.20

John Mark Ainsley, Iain Burnside

Compassion

Track length4:18

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The Dancer

Track length2:13

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Remember Your Lovers

Track length6:16

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$1.40

Purcell: If music be the food of love Z379A

Work length2:03

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John Mark Ainsley, Iain Burnside

Tippett: Music

Work length3:27

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John Mark Ainsley, Iain Burnside

Purcell: Music for a while, Z583

Work length3:23

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John Mark Ainsley, Iain Burnside

Tippett: Boyhood's End

Work length12:32

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$2.80

John Mark Ainsley, Iain Burnside

Purcell: Sweeter than Roses (from Pausanius, the Betrayer of his Country, Z585)

Work length3:27

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John Mark Ainsley, Iain Burnside

Purcell: An Evening Hymn 'Now that the sun hath veiled his light', Z193

Work length3:54

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John Mark Ainsley, Iain Burnside

Britten: Canticle I - "My Beloved Is Mine And I Am His" Op. 40

Work length7:37

$1.50

$2.10

John Mark Ainsley, Iain Burnside

Purcell: An Epithalamium (A Wedding Song)

Work length2:40

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John Mark Ainsley, Iain Burnside

Purcell: What shall I do?

Work length1:34

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John Mark Ainsley, Iain Burnside

Purcell: Twas within a furlong of Edinburgh Town (from The Mock Marriage, Z605)

Work length2:13

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John Mark Ainsley, Iain Burnside

Humfrey: A Hymne to God the Father

Work length2:45

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John Mark Ainsley, Iain Burnside

Purcell: Ah! How Sweet it is to Love

Work length1:55

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John Mark Ainsley, Iain Burnside

Purcell: I attempt from love's sickness to fly in vain (from The Indian Queen)

Work length1:50

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John Mark Ainsley, Iain Burnside

Tippett: Songs for Ariel

Work length5:14

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$4.20

John Mark Ainsley, Iain Burnside

Come unto these yellow sands

Track length1:52

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Full fathom five

Track length2:03

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Where the bee sucks

Track length1:19

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Reviews
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Reviews

December 2005

John Mark Ainsley brings the full range of his formidable musicianship to these hard-wrought but haunting masterpieces. His ringing high register and almost miraculously expressive pianissimo are on fine display and his enunciation is so clear that for most of this disc you barely need the booklet texts.

wonderfully performed

2010

John Mark Ainsley and Iain Burnside make a formidable combination and they are matched here with a formidable programme. Tippett's writing for voice and piano is unremitting in its demands and much less certain in its rewards.
The performers' concentration must be absolute: that is fact. Whether the listener will be proportionately moved is a matter for doubtful speculation.
It goes against the grain to say this, because the Tippett of youthful ecstasy (as in The MidsummerMarriage and the Concerto for Double String Orchestra) exerts a strong allure. But there's no escaping the fact that Boyhood's End and The Heart's Assurance exert a slim hold on the memory – only a few specific phrases, particularly of the singer's music, having stuck.
That is extraordinary, and it is reinforced by the inclusion here of the Canticle by Britten which the mind retains, both in feeling and specific detail.
That work, the setting of Francis Quarles's 'So I my best-beloved's am', presumably has been chosen, as the one item in which Tippett is neither composer nor arranger, because it accords with the line 'Remember your lovers', taken as the title-phrase. I'm not sure it was a good idea, as Britten's mastery suggests just what is so often wanting in Tippett: economy and repose.
The other composer present in force is Purcell and here, curiously, Tippett's self-discipline is impressive, even as against Britten's in his comparable arrangements. Burnside writes in his introductory notes: 'While Britten's dense pianistic approach now jars on ears that have undergone the Early Music revolution, Tippett and [Walter] Bergmann stay light on their feet.' The recording is fine with excellent presence.

Listen to the sheer quality of music-making as tenor John Mark Ainsley is alive to every halting breath of a song.

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