Helen Charlston: A Poet’s Love album review – original and absorbing

Helen Charlston is a strikingly original talent on stage, so it should come as no surprise that her latest recital on disc pushes into unexpected territory. At its heart is Dichterliebe, Robert Schumann’s classic cycle on poems by Heinrich Heine, and still relatively unusual terrain for the female voice. She complements these with other Heine settings by early-19th-century German contemporaries, including both Felix and Fanny Mendelssohn, and presents the first recording of Knight’s Dream, commissioned as a companion piece for the Schumann from composer Héloïse Werner.

The artwork for A Poet’s Love. Photograph: BIS Records

The latter tells of a gallant lover blundering about in an enchanted fever dream. Charlston relishes Werner’s haunting, folk-inflected vocal lines, her wine-dark mezzo-soprano savouring every drop. Pianist Sholto Kynoch, who embellishes the narrative by speaking, humming and even knocking on the piano, is an absolute rock. A similar resourcefulness breathes life into Loewe’s Die Lotosblume and Fanny Mendelssohn’s Schwanenlied, Charlston’s voice flowing like molten lava, every word crystal clear.

As for Dichterliebe, it’s a decidedly individual interpretation, with both artists taking time to land their points. Im wunderschönen Monat Mai gets things off to a trancelike start, voice and piano stretching certain phrases to the limit. It’s a mood they return to frequently, surprising the listener with the final elongated measure of Die Rose, die Lilie and delivering an uncommonly elastic Ich grolle nicht. Charlston’s honeyed middle register draws the ear throughout, as does Kynoch, whose perceptive way with Schumann’s mighty postludes is thoroughly absorbing.

Stream it on Apple Music (above) or on Spotify