Gerald English
Gerald English (1925–2019) enjoyed a long career as a tenor in operatic and concert repertoire, as a recording artist and as an academic. He gave premiere performances of major twentieth-century works, often under the composers’ own direction, and forged close ties with Stravinsky, Henze, Britten, Tippett and Ford.
A founding member of the Deller Consort, Gerald brought long experience of Elizabethan music to a career that also took in Glyndebourne, the Royal Opera at Covent Garden, La Scala, and stages in Sydney, Adelaide, Manchester, Edinburgh, Florence, Rome, Paris and Buenos Aires. Premiere performances include Britten’s Nocturne with Sir John Barbirolli and the Hallé Orchestra, Henze’s We Come to the River directed by the composer at Covent Garden, Dallapiccola’s Ulisse conducted by the composer in Rome, and Berio’s Opera for the Florence Festival. He also premiered all of Andrew Ford’s works for tenor.
In 1978 he settled in Australia. For his first decade here he directed opera studies at the Victorian College of the Arts in Melbourne and supervised postgraduate work in baroque music and movement.
Later highlights include Janáček’s The Diary of One Who Disappeared at the 1992 Melbourne International Festival, the premiere of Andrew Ford’s Harbour with the Australian Chamber Orchestra in the same year, the storyteller in Peter Tahourdin’s Héloïse and Abelard for West Australian Opera, Ravel’s Chansons madécasses with the Australia Ensemble, Peggy Glanville-Hicks’ Letters from Morocco with the Hunter Orchestra and the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, and scenes from Ligeti’s Le Grand Macabre with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra.
In 1993 he received an Australian Creative Artists’ Fellowship. His many recordings include the complete works of Monteverdi for HMV. In 1994 came his first solo disc since the 1970s — and the first classical recital he had ever recorded — Schumann Lieder (TP023). Further projects include Andrew Ford’s Whispers (TP053) and songs of Peggy Glanville-Hicks (TP074). With Il Pastor Fido he recorded cantatas by Telemann, Handel and Bach (Music, Love and Passion, MD 3152 — unreleased).
On What if a Day or a Month or a Year he is accompanied by Sharyn and Jonathan Rubin. Both were born in Sydney and have performed widely since meeting at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis in 1976. As continuo players they have been associated with leading historical performances of baroque opera; Sharyn has worked with William Christie, Michael Corboz and Helmut Müller-Bräuth, and Jonathan appears on some twenty discs with Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Jean-Claude Malgoire, Michael Corboz and William Christie. They have taught in Australia, Hong Kong, Israel, Switzerland, France and Germany, and Jonathan has been lute teacher at the Geneva Conservatorium of Music since 1979.
Gerald English is featured on the following titles
Sweeter than Roses
Some of Purcell's most famous songs are included in this collection, among them If Music be the Food of Love and Incassum Lesbia. John O'Donnell accompanies the renowned tenor Gerald English.
Peggy Glanville-Hicks: The Songs
World premiere recordings of songs by Australian composer Peggy Glanville-Hicks, including the cycle Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird, sung by tenor Gerald English.
John Cage: Works for Prepared Piano
Nigel Butterley is well known as one of Australia’s finest composers. He was also an accomplished pianist, and by this 1993 release had been performing these Cage works for more than twenty years. Critics have long praised the style and colour he draws from the prepared piano.
Schumann: Lieder
Gerald English, then in his seventies, was still singing magnificently. Here he joins Perth-based pianist and composer Roger Smalley, whose work as an accompanist is little known. This is the first of several Tall Poppies projects featuring English.
Gerald English also appears on
Le Tango Perpetuel
Ian Munro, superb pianist and imaginative composer, turns piano masterworks into chamber colour for the Australia Ensemble. The disc also preserves a rare late performance by tenor Gerald English in Satie’s Sports et Divertissements.
There Came a Wind like a Bugle: Chamber Music by Nigel Butterley
Chamber works spanning some thirty years by Nigel Butterley, one of Australia’s finest composers, for soloists, song and choir.
Harbour
This CD features the remarkable voice of the septuagenarian tenor Gerald English in works written especially for him by Andrew Ford. A star-studded gathering of musicians accompanies him and also plays three solo works.
Andrew Ford: Whispers
The highlights of this disc are the works written for tenor Gerald English. Its success led to a further project in 1998 gathering all the works Ford had composed for him.
