[ BIS SACD / Hybrid SACD ]
Release Date: Friday 4 November 2022
Huw Watkins's song cycle Echo, composed for soprano Ruby Hughes and premiered in 2017 at Carnegie Hall, is at the centre of this artfully crafted recital. Setting texts by five different poets, the cycle is a work centred on melancholy - on transience, remembrance, and in the final song a numbed cry of inconceivable loss. As such it permeates the entire programme, adding a new and unexpected depth to that which precedes as well as follows.
Another strand of the recital is the idea of how composers across the ages have addressed and echoed one another lovingly in their music - often in the most nuanced and unconscious way. Bach's solo keyboard works capture something of a sense of timelessness, or more accurately, inspire an emotional connection that transcends time. A similar affinity seems to inform Britten's folksong arrangements and his realisations of Bach's Geistliche Lieder as well as the Purcell realisations by Thomas Adès and Tippett. A different kind of echo is created by the inclusion of Britten's version of Dafydd y Garreg Wen (David of the White Rock) - a nod to the performers' shared Welsh heritage. Closing the disc, three songs by contemporary British composers admired by both Watkins and Hughes also resonate with the previous works, bringing the programme full circle.
"Watkins's cycle shares Britten's ability to meld text and musical gesture with an acuity seemingly effortless, almost plucked ready-formed out of the air...An exquisite release touched with poignant pleasures and depth-plumbing reflections that echo, re-echo, linger and endure." Five Stars BBC Music Recording of the Month Feb 2025
"With the composer at the piano and Hughes effectively navigating the words, the cycle is a perfectly beguiling experience." Gramophone
"the title song cycle [is] a brilliantly effective meditation on different shades of grief and loss...Hughes's vibrato-light voice is extremely expressive even when her volume's turned low, as it is, you may feel, for slightly too much of the time. But, whispered or not, this is still a most thoughtful and tender album." Times
Bach, J S: Partita No. 4 in D major, BWV828: V. Sarabande
Bach, J S: Gedenke doch, mein Geist, BWV509
Bach, J S: French Suite No. 3 in B Minor, BWV814: III Sarabande
Bach, J S: Komm süsser Tod, BWV478
Bach, J S: Partita No. 6 in E minor, BWV830: III. Corrente
Bach, J S: Liebster Herr Jesu! wo bleibest du so lange?, BWV484
Watkins, H: Echo
Purcell: By beauteous softness (from Now does the glorious day appear, Z332)
Purcell: Music for a while, Z583
Trad.: I wonder as I wander
Trad.: Dafydd y Garreg Wen
Trad.: Folksong Arrangements, Vol. 4: How Sweet the Answer (The Wren)
Pritchard, Deborah: The World
Frances-Hoad: Lament
Wallen: Peace on earth