Hats off to Brian Mulligan for reviving this repertory with heart and soul and a voice of burnished authority. The legends whose voices I associate with this music were Robert Radford (British), John McCormack (Irish), and Paul Robeson (America), whose way with the words and music touched the heartstrings and made you cry. Brian Mulligan has been paying attention if not to those models to others who possessed the same kind of power. Today he has it, too.
Pundicity
“They don’t write songs like this anymore, and if they did, who would sing them? Hats off to Brian Mulligan for reviving this repertory with heart and soul and a voice of burnished authority. The legends whose voices I associate with this music (from childhood spelunking the basement apartment of my grandparents’ summer house, where they kept a Smithsonian-worthy wind-up Victrola) were Robert Radford (British), John McCormack (Irish), and Paul Robeson (America), whose way with the words and music touched the heartstrings and made you cry. Brian Mulligan has been paying attention if not to those models to others who possessed the same kind of power. Today he has it, too.”
Matthew Gurewitsch, Pundicity
“The CD presents a fine selection of the kind of concert song that has long since vanished from the active repertory, with a style floating somewhere between popular and semi-classical. These numbers predate the universal use of microphones and require good, solid technique.
Modern audiences have heard a few of these numbers in concerts by Thomas Hampson or Nathan Gunn, but Mulligan offers a more oaken and substantial timbre, recalling American singers such as Richard Bonelli and Robert Weede…Mulligan’s baritone is generally firm and up to the challenges of dynamics and range this repertory demands.
The sentimental “Roses of Picardy” (1916) stands out for effective intimacy, as does the familiar stanzaic Romberg chestnut.
Mulligan delivers the words with admirable clarity; the texts are available on his website. Ironically, his nostalgic project should prove a welcome novelty for many listeners.”
David Shengold, Opera News