Performer: James Newby, Joseph Middleton
Format: FLAC (tracks)
Label: BIS
Catalogue: BIS2595
Release: 2023
Size: 253 MB
Recovery: +3%
Scan: cover
01. Dove: All You Who Sleep Tonight
02. Butterworth: Requiescat
03. Clarke: The Seal Man
04. Finzi: The Clock of the Years
Finzi: Let Us Garlands Bring, Op. 18
05. I. Come away, come away, death
06. II. Who Is Silvia?
07. III. Fear no more the heat o’ the sun
08. IV. O Mistress Mine
09. V. It was a lover and his lass
10. trad.: The Three Ravens
11. Gurney: By a bierside
12. Elgar: Pleading, Op. 48 No. 1
13. Vaughan Williams: The Sky above the Roof
Somervell: A Shropshire Lad
14. I. Loveliest of Trees, the Cherry now
15. II. When I was one-and-twenty
16. III. There pass the careless people
17. IV. In summer-time on Bredon
18. V. The Street sounds to the Soldiers’ tread
19. VI. On the idle hill of Summer
20. VII. White in the moon the long road lies
21. VIII. Think no more, Lad, laugh, be jolly
22. IX. Into my Heart an Air That kills
23. X. The Lads in their hundreds
24. Dibdin: Tom Bowling
25. Gurney: Dearest when I am dead
26. Lehmann: Henry King
27. Wallen: About here
28. Charles: Green Eyed Dragon
“James Newby wished to dedicate his second disc on BIS to his sister Laura who passed away in 2015, her daughter and his mother. After singing Gerald Finzi’s ‘Fear no more the heat o’ the sun’ at her funeral, he felt it fitting that the cycle from which it is taken, Let us Garlands Bring , would form the centrepiece of the programme. Alongside this cycle, pianist Joseph Middleton and Newby have designed a programme of English songs that reflect on themes of loss, grief and death but also joy, love and healing with varying styles, sound worlds and atmospheres. George Butterworth, Rebecca Clarke, Edward Elgar, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Benjamin Britten, Liza Lehmann and Errollyn Wallen are just some of the composers who complete the programme, including Arthur Somervell with his cycle ‘A Shropshire Lad’. Like Heinrich Heine’s poems that Schumann used for his famous cycle Dichterliebe, these poems by Alfred Edward Housman deal withunrequited love in first person lyrics. This disc ends on a lighter note with the whimsical song, ‘The Green eyed Dragon’ by Wolseley Charles, which often concludes live performances as an encore.”