Berners: Songs / Piano Music

Wit and humour abounds in this collection of songs, sung by Ian Partridge with intelligence and lack of affectation, and piano music, most sensitively done by Len Vorster. Berners has been very thoroughly and stylishly documented at the orchestral level by Marco Polo. Now they offer a complement to those four discs from among his songs and piano music. Berners, the eccentric, is very evident here. His links were not at all with British pastoralism or Celtic adventures or Oriental pictorialism. His world encompassed Stravinsky, Casella and Diaghilev. Rather than dwell in detail on this anthology let me say that the disc is well recorded and is the stronger for Michael Hurd's intelligent notes. I wish he could have been allowed more space to expand his comments. All the texts are present in the insert. The variety of approach (excluding the British-linked styles mentioned above) is quite wide. Berners had the ability to breathe in and creatively reflect and modestly extend various s