It's hard to know which to be more struck by in this magnificent recent disc - the splendors of "Winter Words," Britten's far too rarely heard 1953 song cycle, or tenor Nicholas Phan's tenderly muscular performance. The songs, eight settings of poems by Thomas Hardy, find Britten at his most ingenious and accessible. The music is intricate and unpredictable but unfailingly beautiful - there's nothing here to daunt a first-time listener - and it's shot through with a mood of expressive melancholy that is by turns rueful and heartbreakingly direct. Phan's singing, backed by the sinewy, crystalline accompaniment of pianist Myra Huang, digs deep into the fervor of Britten's writing and reflects it back in a performance that boasts the fierce clarity of Peter Pears' style without its ethereal qualities - this is singing that is deeply rooted in the body. In a bit of ingenious programming, Phan also offers the more arcane pleasures of Britten's "Seven Sonnets of Michelangelo" and several of his plainspoken folksong settings, leaving "Winter Words" at the just-right center of difficulty.

RATING: WILD APPLAUSE