Musical Concepts, a select line of high-quality classical recordings whose focus includes the reissue of important and landmark recordings, is pleased to announce the release of “Alfred Deller: The Complete Vanguard Recordings”.
This reissue series will make available, for the first time in over twenty years, all of Alfred Deller's Vanguard recordings. The counter-tenor’s own solo vocal work, as well as anthems, operas, songs,odes and all his roles as performer and leader of The Deller Consort will be released in six multiple CD boxed sets,comprising in total 35 discs, and restoring to the worldwide marketplace these ground-breaking and invaluable early music recordings.
The first set, Folk Songs and Ballads, will combine many of Deller’s most popular solo albums as well as excellent Deller Consort recordings. The 10 original LPs of recorded material have been re-mastered and reconfigured to create 7 CDs. These feature Deller’s vocal personality and virtuosity as in perhaps no other repertoire. Humor, romance and emotion are all showcased in these three minute operas. Deller shows himself more than just an expert in scholarly performance technique; he shows timing and individual interpretive skill that brands him a supreme vocalist, not merely a counter-tenor.
Beyond his focus as a counter-tenor, Alfred Deller was a remarkable pioneer in the early music field as the leader of The Deller Consort. Though the Consort is featured far more significantly in later sets than they are in the Folk Songs and Ballads collection, this set spotlights the unique skills and range of the group. The bawdy and often downright salacious Tavern Songs that lead off this collection show off the male voices; the lush, stunningly lovely Folk Songs Album arranged by Ralph Vaughan Williams offers angelic performances by the females. The long out of print “Cries of London” again offers a chance for the Consort to step out of the academic early music world and into the back streets of Elizabethan London. In the United States and Far East, most of Deller’s recordings have been out of print for more than a decade. Of the 50 LPs released by Vanguard, 20 were not previously included in any local CD release. Although all of the Vanguard Deller material was released on CD at one time or another exclusively for the European market, these titles were only intermittently available and have also been out of print since 2000.
From this first set, the LPs “Tavern Songs”, “Tavern Songs, Volume 2”, “Cries of London” and “English Lute Songs” have never been released on CD outside Europe. Some material from “English Lute Songs” was used as material to extend some Deller recital CDs to acceptable CD length, but this is the first complete CD appearance of all of the lute songs.
Further titles in “Alfred Deller – The Complete Vanguard Recordings” will be:
Volume 2 - Music of Henry Purcell
Volume 3 - Bach, Handel and The English Renaissance
Volume 4 - Christmas Carols and Motets
Volume 5 - Music of the Italian and French Renaissance
Volume 6 - English, French and Italian Madrigals
