Enoch Arden

Strauss • Schumann
Enoch Arden, Songs of Dawn
Simon Tedeschi p, John Bell speaker
ABC Classics 481558

Alfred, Lord Tennyson wrote his melodramatic narrative poem Enoch Arden during his tenure as England’s Poet Laureate. It’s a Homeric tale about the driven seaman Enoch – a devoted husband to Annie and their children – who spends 10 years shipwrecked on an island before being rescued, only to find that Annie, finally convinced by a vision that he is dead, has married his prosperous childhood friend Philip. We see the situation from all three perspectives and Richard Strauss’s piano interludes, immaculately performed here by Simon Tedeschi, knit the action together superbly.