"TO A POET".(Review)

Brett Polegato

[] "TO A POET" Songs of Finzi, Britten, Chanler, Butterworth, Ireland. Burnside, piano. English texts. CBC Records/Les disques SRC MVCD 1134

Baritone Brett Polegato sings like someone who cares deeply about poetry. Indeed, his debut recital disc is built more around its poets than around its composers. His program includes settings of Walter de la Mare by Benjamin Britten and Theodore Chanler; settings of A. E. Houseman by George Butterworth and John Ireland; and settings of Thomas Hardy by Gerald Finzi. (The disc also opens with a Finzi song, a single poem by James Elroy Flecker called "To a Poet a Thousand Years Hence.") One gets the impression that Polegato knew and internalized these poems long before he ever heard them set to music.

He deploys his exemplary musicianship with a wide, eloquent range of characterization and timbre that is probably best encapsulated in Butterworth's setting of Houseman's sly "Is my team ploughing?" from A Shropshire Lad. In the poem, a dead man quizzes one of his still-living friends about the state of the world since his demise -- they speak to each other in alternate stanzas. From the friend's ...