There's a touch of genius about Bryn Terfel.
To those who've known most of these songs since childhood and heard them well performed innumerable times, it will come not quite as a revelation but more as the fulfilment of a deeply felt wish, instinctive rather than consciously formed. As in all the best Lieder singing, everything is specific: 'Fly away, breath' we recite, thinking nothing of it, but with this singer it's visual – we see it in flight, just as in Sea Fever we know in the very tiniest of gaps that in that second he has heard 'the seagulls crying'. As in all the best singing of songs, whatever the nationality, there's strong, vivid communication: he'll sometimes sing so softly that if he'd secured anything less than total involvement he'd lose us. There's breadth of phrase, variety of tone, alertness of rhythm.
All the musical virtues are there; and yet that seems to go only a little way towards accounting for what's special.One after another, these songs are brought to full life. There's a boldness about Terfel's art that could be perilous, but which, as exercised here, is marvellously well guided by musicianship, intelligence and the genuine flash of inspiration. Malcolm Martineau's playing is also a delight: his touch is as sure and illuminating as the singer's.