My Soul, What Fear You?

Recital discs like this don’t come around very often. When they do, they deserve to be applauded. Purves, now 61, started as a boy treble in the Choir of King’s College, Cambridge, went on to graduate from King’s as a choral scholar, and has enjoyed a distinguished international career as a concert and operatic bass baritone. This is his first recorded lieder collection, and it’s a gem. The literary thread is German, the recital’s theme “songs of war and refuge.” The musical thread runs from Bach’s “Ich habe genug” to Weill’s Berliner Requiem by way of Schubert, Schumann, Richard Strauss, and Hanns Eisler, with thoughtful touchpoints on individual songs by Mahler and Pfitzner. Purves’s burnished tone bears more than a passing resemblance to that of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, which in this repertoire is no drawback. While he can hollow out the voice for effect, he also has the resonance to deliver a very respectable low D flat at the end of Strauss’ “Im Spätboot.” Particularly noteworthy are the superb arrangements of the Bach, the Weill, and three numbers from Eisler’s Hollywood Songbook for an ensemble that includes flute, sax, accordion, guitar, and string bass. The sound is as good as it gets.