My Heart’s in the Highlands: the debut recital from tenor Glen Cunningham mixes Stuart MacRae’s new songs with other composers with ‘Scotland in Mind’

My Heart’s in the Highlands: traditional, Schumann, Stuart MacRae, Liza Lehmann, Hahn; Glen Cunningham, Anna Tilbrook; DELPHIAN
Reviewed 5 February 2025

For his debut recital, the young Scottish tenor takes us back to the Highlands of the imagination with music that moves from Stuart MacRae’s new songs to Schumann setting Burns, Lehmann and Hahn setting Stevenson in an engaging and imaginative recital.

The recent disc from tenor Glen Cunningham and pianist Anna Tilbrook, My Heart’s in the Highlands on Delphian explores not so much Scottish music as the idea Scotland, what Roger Fiske in his book Scotland in Music refers to as ‘Scotland in Mind’. So we have the premiere of Five Stevenson Song by Scottish composer Stuart MacRae (also from the Highlands, evidently), alongside art-song arrangements of Scottish songs, Robert Schumann’s Robert Burns settings from Myrthen and songs by Liza Lehmann and Reynaldo Hahn. Lehmann, Hahn and MacRae all set words by Robert Louis Stevenson which adds another thread running through the disc.

The Scottish songs are spread throughout the disc so we start with Ca’ the yowes to the knowes arranged by Claire Liddell who also provides the arrangements of Ye banks and braes and Wee Willie Gray, with Ae fond kiss arranged by Alfred Moffatt and My heart’s in the Highlands in a version transcribed a 1962 Kenneth McKellar recording! Cunningham and Tilbrook make these art song, not folk song, but Cunningham (who was born in the Highlands) does not shy away from the language, thankfully.

Cunningham studied at the Royal College of Music’s Opera Studio and at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. He was a member of the Opera Studio of Opera national du Rhin and was a Scottish opera Emerging Artist and performed the title role in Britten’s Albert Herring with Scottish Opera earlier this season.

Anna Tilbrook & Glen Cunningham recording Delphian’s My Heart’s in the Highlands in St Mary’s Church, Haddington

It comes as something of a surprise to find that Robert Schumann wrote some 20 settings of Robert Burns, in translation of course but something in Burns’ directness must have appealed to him. Here we hear the eight Burns settings from Myrthen which form an interesting group, all about love and loss (including love lost), and lamenting in tone. As Lucy Walker points out in her fine booklet article, the political overtones of Burns’ writing will have passed over Schumann’s head, but we can enjoy his engagement with the subject.

 Jemand is warmly passionate, Cunningham’s lyric tenor is finely vibrant. He and Tilbrook bring out the contrasts between the Schumann songs, so the Highland widow is vivid and intense, whilst the Highlander’s farewell is vigorously robust and the lullaby is suitably gentle with Cunningham’s phrasing here, as elsewhere, beautifully done. Hauptmanns Weib is characterful, the words and the story counting, whilst the gentle lyricism of Weit, Weit gets remarkably intense. There is a vivid swagger to Niemand, and a gentle lyricism to Im Western. As a postlude to this group we get Schumann’s version of My luve’s like a red, red rose, in a beautifully touching version, followed of course by Thomas Swift Gleadhill’s arrangement of the original.

Liza Lehmann’s The Daisy Chain is a set of songs for mixed voices of which Cunningham and Tilbrook perform four of the five Robert Louis Stevenson settings. These are children’s songs, in theory, but they are still complex art songs. Keepsake Mill is vivid and urgent, whilst Stars, the most substantial of the group, is ardent lyrical outpouring. The Swing is clearly depicted in the sway of the music, here in a vibrant, engaging performance and this engaging quality continues with The Moon.

Stuart MacRae was evidently drawn to the vivid surface imagery of Robert Louis Stevenson’s poems before consideration of what they might mean. The songs all treat the voice with lyrical care, these sound as if they are effective and grateful to sing, yet the composer’s contemporary chops are never in question. There is also a constant feel of Scottish melody and psalmody in a way that imbues the songs but never veers towards pastiche. The result is an engaging, imaginative and at times magical grouping.

Evidently, MacRae wrote the vocal line first, and in the first two songs his use of a high piano accompaniment with no piano bass is noticeable. ENVOY is quite intimate, the high piano creating a magical atmosphere over Cunningham’s finely crafted vocal line, the result highly seductive. This atmosphere carries over into For age an’ youth and here there is a Scots inflection to the melody. Perhaps significant that the first poem is in English whilst the second is in Scots. The piano flickers above Cunningham’s tenor. Bright is the ring of words (familiar from RVW’s setting) is vividly vigorous, the complex piano gestures complemented Cunningham’s finely proclaimed tenor line. KATHARINE is rather haunting and eerie in the piano, contrasting with the vibrant vocal line, whilst EVENSONG (from Songs of Travel) has a distinct Scots feel to it, with echoes of the pipes in both the lamenting tenor and the piano, the pibroch perhaps not far away.

I have always been fascinated by Reynaldo Hahn’s Five Little Songs, setting verses from Robert Louis Stevenson’s A Child’s Garden of Verses, written whilst the composer was seeing action in the First World War. They were written in French translations but here are sung in the original English. The composer’s imagination and gift for song is apparent throughout, yet if I heard these cold would I immediately say they were by Hahn? Whilst his style did not develop according to the norms of contemporary music in the 1910s and 1920s, it is clear that Hahn’s style was developing.

  The Swing (also set by Lehmann) is fresh and engaging whilst Windy Nights (familiar from John Rutter’s choral setting) is vivid and remarkably complex, children’s songs are a long way away. There is, perhaps, a certain Scots swagger to the vocal line in the tunefully appealing My Ship and I. The Stars (also set by Lehmann) is a rather ardent art-song, whilst A Good Boy is lyrically engaging.

The performers end with a final pair of Scots songs, bringing to an end a disc that combines imagination with a wonderful feel of imaginative engagement. There is a sense of the two performers bringing these different ideas of the Highlands alive. There is definitely no sense of light music to the performances of the Hahn and the Lehmann. Throughout we are intrigued and engaged. 

I would love to hear the two exploring Scotland in music further, the idea of Ronald Stevenson’s Border Boyhood (setting Hugh McDiarmid and written for Peter Pears) or some of Francis George Scott’s songs would be highly appealing!