DAVID HOBSON AND TEDDY TAHU RHODES
YOU'LL NEVER WALK ALONE

Their one-off performance of the duet from Bizet's The Pearl Fishers became one of the most-played tracks in Australian recording history, topping the Classic 100 Opera survey and featuring in countless CD compilations. Now, for the first time, opera superstars David Hobson and Teddy Tahu Rhodes have joined forces to record an entire album of glorious duets for tenor and bass-baritone.

In an atmosphere of high emotion at the end of 2008, the two friends assembled at the Eugene Goossens Hall in Sydney to record much-loved songs of hope, faith and glory, as if in defiance of the glum mood of the times brought on by the world economic crisis.

'The sessions were intense and we were very, very inspired,' says David Hobson, whose most recent albums The Promise and A Little Closer have topped the ARIA charts. 'This is the album Teddy and I have always wanted to make, but because of our busy concert and operatic schedules, it's taken us literally years to find the time.'

Right from the first rehearsal, it was clear that something special was going on. 'We started the session with David and Teddy singing Amazing Grace but we didn't realise that the studio doors had been left open,' says ABC Classics' Martin Buzacott, the album's Executive Producer. 'When I went out to shut them, I found a passing tradesman standing in the airlock, spellbound, with tears streaming down his face. We knew from that moment that this was going to be no ordinary album.'

Both artists brought with them their wish-lists of favourite songs, and the result is an album of music that uplifts the spirit and showcases the uncanny beauty of these two magnificent voices united as one.

'It's an album of great tunes,' says Hobson, whose own suggestions for duets included the Welsh classic All Through the Night and Albert Malotte's immortal setting of The Lord's Prayer. Rhodes nominated the stirring anthem Battle Hymn of the Republic and an unusual version of Little Drummer Boy – as popularised in a duet featuring the implausible combination of Bing Crosby and David Bowie.

'In most cases we were faithful to the originals, but on a couple of tracks we went for these kinds of more modern versions,' says Hobson. 'For instance, we ended up recording Go Tell It On the Mountain in an arrangement inspired by James Taylor!'

Hobson's choices of solo repertoire included several pieces that featured in his headlining concerts at the Sydney Opera House, which occurred in between the album sessions . 'People often ask me to sing The Holy City and Gounod's Ave Maria,' he says, 'so I couldn't leave them out.'

One of the stand-out tracks is Hobson's haunting take on the American spiritual (I Am a) Poor Wayfaring Stranger, which Buzacott remembers encountering on a Dusty Springfield television show. 'I was a child at the time, and it was the only time I ever heard it, but the beauty of that version never left me.' Hobson tracked down that performance on YouTube, and arranger Jessica Wells set about recreating it especially for him to sing on the album.

'David recorded it late at night, and our producer Virginia Read, vocal coach Sharolyn Kimmorley, and I just sat there silently in the Control Room with the tape rolling, as time stood still,' Buzacott says.

Rhodes too wanted to stretch himself vocally, taking on repertoire that is normally associated with very different types of singers. His version of Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah, accompanied by harp and strings, might be the debut-recording of this most popular song of modern times in a performance by a bass-baritone, while its chorus captures Rhodes' falsetto head-voice for the first time on disc.

But the emotion of the sessions was captured most poignantly on the title track, the great Richard Rodgers classic You'll Never Walk Alone, which was recorded just an hour after Rhodes learned of the death of his friend and colleague, the conductor Richard Hickox, with whom he'd been working just days earlier.

'Teddy decided to deal with his grief in song, so he put on the headphones and began the opening verse,' recalls Buzacott. 'Those first words, "When you walk through a storm, hold your head up high, and don't be afraid of the dark", had us all in tears. We knew immediately that they had to become the very first thing that we hear on the album.'

Throughout the recording process, conductor Guy Noble proved a sympathetic accompanist in charge of Sinfonia Australis. With arranger Wells also in attendance, the sessions proceeded with a sense of discovery and constant musical evolution, ideas being traded back and forth with each new take.

'We were so "in the moment" and I think that spontaneity and freshness and sheer joy of singing has been captured on the album,' says Hobson, who now sets out with Rhodes on a national tour in March, performing some of the same repertoire alongside opera classics.

'None of us who was involved in it will ever forget the experience of recording this album, and we hope that audiences around the country will be as inspired by these great songs as we were.'