Album: Mark Padmore, Britten/Finzi (Harmonia Mundi)

Mark Padmore's talents are diversely challenged here on two Benjamin Britten song-cycles, requiring him to capture the voices of poets from different eras.

He's not found wanting in the “Nocturne for tenor, seven obbligato instruments & strings”, in which he ably negotiates Shelley's reverie, Wordsworth's melodrama and Tennyson's “thunders of the upper deep”; the “Serenade for tenor, horn & strings” is equally impressive. Gerald Finzi's setting of Thomas Traherne's celebration of childish wonder in “Dies Natalis”, however, offers too stark a contrast to the otherwise elegaic tone.

Download: Serenade for tenor, horn & strings; Nocturne for tenor, seven obbligato instruments & strings