Mark Padmore

British tenor Mark Padmore brings together a collection of English and Italian arias from Handel oratorios and operas. Padmore, who performs works of many eras in a wide range of styles, has primarily settled into the kind of repertoire Peter Pears comfortably inhabited, but with a stronger emphasis on Baroque opera and oratorio. Padmore's voice resembles Pears' in some ways; it's a light instrument, and is capable of great agility. It has some of Pears' limitations, particularly a tendency toward tonal blandness and lack of variety in its colors, as well as a slight edge when pushed. Most importantly, though, Padmore does not have Pears' reedy quality or breathiness – his voice is pure and more mellow than Pears'.

Mark Padmore and fortepianist Kristian Bezuidenhout combine here to perform two of Schumann’s major cycles to words by Heine. They also throw in a selection of five Heine settings by the largely forgotten Franz Lachner (1803-90) from his Sängerfahrt (Singer’s Journey), which include the same text – ‘Im wunderschönen Monat Mai’ – with which Schumann’s Dichterliebe begins.

Two masterful Schubert interpreters, tenor Mark Padmore & pianist Mitsuko Uchida record Schubert’s Schwanengesang and Beethoven’s An Die Ferne Geliebte for the first time. On a new Decca Classics album, Uchida and Padmore appear on record for the first time in this live recording from London’s Wigmore Hall. They perform Schubert’s Schwanengesang (his “Swansong”, first published weeks after the composer’s premature death in 1828) and Beethoven’s only major song cycle An die ferne Geliebte. With a lifetime of experience with this music, Uchida and Padmore are the perfect duo to interpret this magnificent repertoire.

Ivor Bolton has been principal conductor of the Basel Symphony Orchestra since the beginning of the 2016 / 17 season and has always had a special affinity with British music. The present album with rather unknown music by Benjamin Britten was therefore a very special concern for him from the beginning. The program consists of the early cycle Our Hunting Fathers (with the tenor Mark Padmore), the Quatre Chansons francaises (a stroke of genius by the only 14-year-old) and the suite from the unfortunately rarely performed opera Gloriana, which, by the way, was written for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II.

Martin Outram (Viola) and Julian Rolton (piano) play all of the works of Ralph Vaughan Williams for viola and piano. Mark Padmore (tenor) joins them to record Four Hymns for Tenor, Viola and Piano.

The darkly lit cover photo may convey some of the desolation of Franz Schubert's Schwanengesang, but to appreciate the full range of emotions of this posthumous song cycle – which shift from the hopeful passion of Liebesbotschaft and the giddiness of Frühlingssehnsucht to the heartbreak of Ihr Bild and the horror of Der Doppelgänger – listen to this exceptional Harmonia Mundi release by tenor Mark Padmore and his accompanist, pianist Paul Lewis.

Following their exceptional Winterreise and now this equally fine Die schone Mullerin, tenor Mark Padmore and pianist Paul Lewis may be on their way to cornering the Schubert Lieder franchise for the foreseeable future. Besides being the most lyrically beautiful modern rendition of this oft-recorded cycle, the recording is a model of clear, natural presentation of voice and piano in a very complementary acoustic.