Beautifully wrought & intensely serious: Kitty Whately & Julius Drake explore the songs of Madeleine Dring

Through the Centuries: Songs by Madeleine Dring; Kitty Whately, Julius Drake; Chandos
Reviewed 15 April 2026

If you thought Madeleine Dring's songs were confined to camp nightclubs then think again. Here Kitty Whately and Julius Drake mine the composer's intensely serious side, revealing a woefully neglected and wilfully misunderstood composer.

Despite training at the Royal College of Music in the years before the Second World War alongside women such as Elizabeth Lutyens, Elizabeth Maconchy, Grace Williams, and Ruth Gipps, Madeleine Dring's reputation is much more that of an accidental composer: her songs simply happenings around her career in the theatre. And her reputation not helped that perhaps her best known song is her setting of Betjeman's Song of the Nightclub Proprietress where the rather camp, musical hall atmosphere is to the fore.

On this new disc on Chandos from mezzo-soprano Kitty Whately and pianist Julius Drake, Through the centuries: songs of Madeleine Dring, they take an entirely serious and focused view of Dring the songwriter. We are treated to 20 songs from across Dring's career, though many are in fact of uncertain date. Apart from the last song, an arrangement of Cole Porter's In the still of the night, Dring the music theatre composer is entirely absent. Her 'day job' was as an actress and entertainer, writing some two dozen scores for the BBC and music for West End shows and reviews. As Lewis Foreman's excellent booklet note points out, because she often wrote songs at short notice, she did not deal with them systematically. As a result, we have to take each song on its merits rather than assigning early, middle or late.

Dring came from a theatrical family (her father was a ventrioquist) and was studying at the Royal College of Music junior department at the age of ten. She studied with Herbert Howells as well as having lessons from Gordon Jacob and Ralph Vaughan Williams. In style, her music is by no means cutting edge, and certainly she lacks the harmonic adventurousness of those female contemporaries mentioned above. What she creates, however, is a well-made song that is fearless in its intentions towards the words. These are songs that are about words and music, rather than simply being delightful melodic felicities. She does have an ear for a tune, but never lets herself get carried away.

We open with a group of songs all of which set period words, 17th and 18th century. Some texts are familiar from other composers but Dring takes her own way. Love is a sickness is a striking piece of dramatic declaration, Echoes combines a slow swing with a tender melancholy in its seductive line, Encouragements to a lover is perkily delightful, and The Enchantment is melodically memorable

Melisande sets words by a friend, Daniel Ferguson Aiken, a New Zealand-born poet who also wrote the text for Dring's opera Cupboard Love. Melisande is touching with a strong whiff of wistful melancholy along with melodically memorable motifs. We return to older texts for a setting of Philip Sidney, My true love hath my heart which can be securely dated to 1944. It is a powerful, serious setting of familiar words that manages to render them something new.

Love and Time is a set of four songs composed in the 1970s. Each song seems to take us through a different phase of life, the texts being 17th century. The most striking thing is the way Dring gives each song a thematically related piano prelude, often contrasting this with nearly unaccompanied voice. The first begins in a Debussy-ish style, but the rather free vocal line moves intriguingly away from this. The second begins in the same style before launching unexpectedly into a more formal structure. The third is rather Kurt Weill-ish and the last ends up in a region of calm intent that Whately makes meaningful and moving.

Weep you no more sad fountains takes words set by Dowland but creates in them a little gem, lyrical and touching. We hear three of Dring's Seven Shakespeare Songs which were published in the 1990s (no word on when they were written). The Cuckoo is melodically memorably yet harmonically spicy, as Dring takes a determinedly different route. Take O take those lips away has a gentle, and surprising, lilt to it but never fails in its emotional message. It was a lover is, of course, insouciant but the piano has a distinct whiff of the theatre song to it. A complete delight. The Faithless Lover has words set both by Byrd and Roger Quilter, so no pressure there! The piano part is rhythmic and intense, contributing to the anxious feeling of the vocal line. Jazzy, perhaps, but distinctly edgy and dramatically apposite.

Four Night Songs date from the 1976, and again set words by a friend, this time Michael Armstrong, a painter and a poet who sent Dring verses, and she chose these four. Dring seems to be exploring a rather darker, edgier world. Holding the Night begins with a terrific piece of night music in the piano, followed by the voice alone, a device Dring seems to light. The song has an intensity and a complex darkness that is absent from some of the other songs. Whilst some of her other songs retain an element of crowd pleasing about them, there is nothing here. Frosty Night is urgent and intent with a dazzling piano evocation of the frosty night, yet there is a dark intent feeling here to as the poet likens the dark to his heart. Through the Centuries is quiet and intent, focused and considered with the words brought to the fore. There is less darkness here and the piece is melodically ingratiating though Whately and Drake give us moments of powerful intensity. Separation was left incomplete at Dring's death and completed by her husband. It is a piece of focused quiet, beautifully wrought.

We end with Dring in more jeu d'esprit mode with her Cole Porter arrangement, except there is something intent and serious here too!

Clearly there is a lot more to Madeleine Dring than we have realised and whilst others have explored some of this territory (I remember a fine disc from Robert Tear), Whately and Drake manage to make us look at this anew. I think there is room for exploration of this side to Dring alongside her camper, music-theatre inspired pieces but what Whately and Drake do is focus our attention on Dring's beautifully wrought songs and the intensely serious side to her art.

Through the centuries: Songs of Madeleine Dring
Kitty Whately (mezzo-soprano)
Julius Drake (piano)
Recorded 31 March – 2 April 2025, Potton Hall, Dunwich, Suffolk 
CHANDOS CHAN 20390 1CD [63:24]

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