Composer: Benjamin Britten, W Denis Browne, Ruth Gipps, Elgan Llŷr Thomas, Michael Kemp Tippett
Performer: Elgan Llŷr Thomas, Iain Burnside, Craig Ogden
Format: FLAC (tracks)
Label: Delphian
Catalogue: DCD34293
Release: 2023
Size: 1.03 GB
Recovery: +3%
Scan: cover
Britten: Seven Sonnets of Michelangelo, Op. 22
01. No. 1, Sonetto XVI
02. No. 2, Sonetto XXXI
03. No. 3, Sonetto XXX
04. No. 4, Sonnetto LV
05. No. 5, Sonnetto XXXVIII
06. No. 6, Sonnetto XXXII
07. No. 7, Sonnetto XXIV
Gipps: Four Songs of Youth
08. No. 1, Failure
09. No. 2, Unfortunate
10. No. 3, The Dance
11. No. 4, Peace 1914
12. Browne: To Gratiana dancing and singing
Tippett: Songs for Achilles
13. No. 1, In the Tent
14. No. 2, Across the Plain
15. No. 3, By the Sea
Llŷr Thomas: Swan
16. I. the lake is calm tonight
17. II. my first time in water
18. III. then the year everything was swan
19. IV. the black swan of debt
20. IV. then the year everything was darkness
21. V. ‘sing a swan of sixpence’
22. VI. [queen]. mother don’t eat me
23. VII. I plucked each feather from myself
In Jeremy Sams’ new English – language singing version of Britten’s Seven Sonnets of Michelangelo, the passionate sentiments are liberated from the safe historical distance of the Italian Renaissance and unveiled in a way that was not possible in 1940, when Britten wrote t he cycle – his first for his partner Peter Pears. Tenor Elgan Llŷr Thomas presents it alongside Michael Tippett’s equally ardent Songs for Achilles and a short item by W. Denis Browne, a close friend of the poet Rupert Brooke, as well as premiere recording s of four Brooke settings by Ruth Gipps and a new song – cycle by Thomas himself, to poems by Andrew McMillan. Tackling themes of love, shame, acceptance, war and death, the programme traverses a history of male homosexuality from necessary discretion to the (relatively) liberated present.