Carolyn Sampson & Joseph Middleton - Fleurs (2015) CD Rip

Nearly everyone who has listened to Baroque vocal music in the 21st century knows the name and voice of British soprano Carolyn Sampson, so many will be surprised to learn that this is her debut solo recital album. Replicating a concert program Sampson has often performed with pianist Joseph Middleton, it is here recorded in sublimely accurate SACD sound at Suffolk's Potton Hall. Song aficionados may enjoy trying to deduce the structure of the program from the plain track listing on the CD's back cover: clearly the theme is flowers, but how are the 24 tracks subdivided after the initial group that's all about roses? After this is a group of Richard Strauss songs titled "Strauss's Flowermaidens," and then a highly original grouping of Schumann and Schubert songs on the theme "When blooms speak." Finally there's "Un bouquet francaise," a diverse collection of French songs from the 19th and early 20th centuries. As it happens, Sampson is as effective in this Romantic and early modern repertory as she is in Handel and Bach. She inhabits all three languages effectively, and the program hangs together very well: most of the material is on the sadder side and doesn't go much beyond medium tempo (there is no Heidenroslein or anything like it). The music is affecting, the singer confident, the accompanist (who had a big hand in devising the program) sensitive, and the engineering superb. A highly recommended recital. -- James Manheim