Landscape and Time

The King's Singers

David Hurley
Robin Tyson
Paul Phoenix
Philip Lawson
Christopher Gabbitas
Stephen Connolly

with Andrew Swait (Treble)

BBC Music Magazine, December 2006

Take One - Meeting the Artists as they record

Recorded at St Andrew's Church, Toddington, Gloucestershire

Why did you chose this church?
Robin Tyson (alto): Principally because it's quiet. Only when the Hercules planes come over from the nearby airbase is the peace disturbed - and that's only about once a day. And acoustically, it allows the sound to bloom without being too dominant.

How much editing of the acoustic needs to be done by the producer?
There's no tinkering at all, really. And because it's so good, only five microphones are needed. It's a very natural recording.

Do you always position yourselves in a semi-circle, with altos on the right, bass on the left?
Mostly. There are occasions when the bass needs to sing unfeasibly low notes, and in those cases it makes a difference for him to stand forward closer to the microphone. Or, if there's a solo part, we might put the soloist on the end of the sound spectrum. But basically, what you see in our concerts is how we record as well.

What is the theme of the disc?
All of the pieces have got something to do with either landscape or time. The idea is that as human beings we are shaped by the landscape in which we live. There's a brilliant book by Simon Schama called Landscape and Memory which sohws how people develop traits, such as speaking in the way they do, because of their surroundings, wether its hills, darkness, water or whatever. The combination of works on our disc aims to show this concept through different poets and composers.

So, you're singing in a range of languages?
On this disc we've got some Finnish, some Hungarian and some Estonian, plus Japanese in Jackson Hill's Remembered Love. We are used to singing in a number of different languages, because when we are on tour, we always end up singing a folk song in the local language. But that said, when it comes to recording we always make sure we have a language coach with us.

Does having a language coach take up a lot of time?
Yes, it has added quite a lot of time. For example, Richard Rodney Bennett's The Seasons of His Mercies took very little time to record at all because it was in English. But when one gets to the Estonian music, it takes a long, long time because you're getting to the real nuts and bolts of how each word needs to sound.

How do you record each work?
We do one or two full takes which provide the base to work on the smaller details. We try to do things in as big a section as we can, but there are times when quite tiny bits need doing - that's partly because there are only six of us, and any slip is going to stick out a mile. It's a case of finding a balance between getting everything as perfect as we can, yet producing a performance that sounds as live as possible.