Composer: Ivor Gurney
Performer: Paul Agnew, Julius Drake
Format: FLAC (tracks)
Label: Hyperion
Catalogue: CDA67243
Release: 2001
Size: 199 MB
Recovery: +3%
Scan: yes
01. Epitaph in Old Mode
02. You are my sky
30. All night under the moon
04. The Folly of Being Comforted
05. By a bierside
06. Severn Meadows
07. In Flanders
08. Even such is time
09. Ha’nacker Mill
10. Bread and Cherries
11. Most Holy Night
12. Desire in Spring
13. Nine of the clock
14. A cradle song
Five Elizabethan Songs
15. I. Orpheus
16. II. Tears
17. III. Under the greenwood tree
18. IV. Sleep
19. V. Spring
20. An Epitaph
21. The Fields are Full
22. Down by the Salley Gardens
23. The cloths of heaven
24. The singer
25. I will go with my father a-ploughing
The life of Ivor Gurney was one of the most tragic in English musical history. A chorister in Gloucester Cathedral Choir at the turn of the century (along with Herbert Howells and Ivor Novello) he was later conscripted into The Great War where he was gassed in the trenches. This experience unhinged his mind and the last few years of his life were spent in an asylum. Gurney was a prolific poet and the composer of some of the most beautiful songs in the English language, many of which are included on this disc. Some are comparatively well-known (I will go with my father a-ploughing; In Flanders; Down by the Salley Gardens and the five ‘Elizas’); many are not. The moving ‘Severn Meadows’, which gives the disc its title, sets his own nostalgic poem written in the trenches. This is tenor Paul Agnew’s first solo CD and Julius Drake’s debut on Hyperion.