Composer: Stephen Dodgson
Performer: Ailish Tynan, Katie Bray, James Gilchrist, Roderick Williams, Christopher Glynn, Mark Eden, Ian Wilson
Format: FLAC (tracks)
Label: Somm
Catalogue: SOMMCD0659
Release: 2022
Size: 1.05 GB
Recovery: +3%
Scan: yes
4 Poems of John Clare
01. No. 1, Trotty Wagtail
02. No. 2, The Peasant Poet
03. No. 3, Turkeys
04. No. 4, The Fox
05. Mrs. Hen
06. Heaven-Haven
07. Five Eyes
08. The Monk and His Cat
Bush Ballads (Second Series)
09. No. 1, Meet Me in Botany Bay
10. No. 2, The Sick Stockrider
11. No. 3, Holy Dan
12. No. 4, The Style in Which It’s Done
13. No. 5, Old Harry
14. No. 6, The Parson and the Prelate
8 Fanciful Pieces
15. No. 1, A Leaf in the River
16. No. 2, Shrovetide Procession
Irishry
17. No. 1, Tinkers
18. No. 2, The Midwife
19. No. 3, The Mill Girl
20. No. 4, Rags and Bones
Tideways
21. No. 1, Psyche
22. No. 2, The Needle
23. No. 3, The Gypsy
24. No. 4, Doria
25. Inversnaid
26. Slow, Slow Fresh Fount
SOMM Recordings announces the launch of a major three-volume series devoted to the rich and varied songs of Stephen Dodgson on the eve of the 10th anniversary of his death in 2013, aged 89. Son of the Symbolist painter John Arthur Dodgson and a distant cousin of Lewis Carroll, Stephen Dodgson was a prolific composer with a notable focus on works for guitar, harpsichord and recorder. Although neglected, his more than 100 songs are a substantial and defining part of his output.
Composed in 1961, The Peasant Poet from Four Poems of John Clare, settings of the troubled and travailed poet, gives this first volume its title. Contrastingly, 1950’s Tideways sets four poems by the idiosyncratic Ezra Pound. The six songs from Dodgson’s 1998 second series of Australian Bush Ballads “makes use of his own melodic style, graceful, elegant or sharply original and witty… with expressive accompaniments, sometimes simple, sometimes richly chromatic”, as John Warrack comments in his booklet notes, supplemented by Robert Matthew-Walker’s informative note on Dodgson’s style.
Writing in his native Gaelige, Irish playwright and political activist Joseph Campbell prompted 1949’s Irishry, the late The Monk and His Cat from 2004 returning to Ireland to animatedly set a playful ninth-century text. Seven other songs, drawn from a variety of sources and voiced with appropriate individuality, complete a recital that eloquently argues for Dodgson’s place amongst the best of modern British art-song composers.