On Wenlock Edge / Ten Blake Songs
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VAUGHAN WILLIAMS
On Wenlock Edge / Ten Blake Songs
Mark Padmore (tenor) / Britten Sinfonia (members), Jacqueline Shave
[ Harmonia Mundi SACD / Hybrid SACD ]
Release Date: Sunday 10 November 2013
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Fresh from his triumph in the Glyndebourne 'Billy Budd', star tenor Mark Padmore is joined by members of Britten Sinfonia in 3 quintessentially British song-cycles: Ralph Vaughan Williams' 'On Wenlock Edge', with pianist Huw Watkins; 'Ten Blake Songs' with oboist Nicholas Daniel; and Peter Warlock's best-known work, 'The Curlew'. 'The End' by Jonathan Dove (a co-commission by Britten Sinfonia and Wigmore Hall) receives its world première recording here.
British composer Jonathan Dove (b. 1959) made the following remarks on the genesis of his new work, 'The End' (2012), with support from the 'Tenner for a Tenor' campaign.
"When I heard Mark Strand read his poem 'The End' to a small gathering of artists in Italy a few years ago, I was moved - and also felt immediately that it was a poem that could be sung. I hoped that one day I might have the chance to set it to music. I did not know exactly what the music would sound like, but I imagined a solo voice with several instruments.
Britten Sinfonia gave me the opportunity to make this wish come true, by inviting me to write something for Mark Padmore to sing, with instrumentation to match Warlock's 'The Curlew'. String quartet with two solo wind instruments seemed the perfect combination to suggest the gentle rocking motion of the ship slipping into darkness, and perhaps hear birds suspended in flight."
GRAMOPHONE MAGAZINE AWARD NOMINATION 2014
"This is a reflective, beautifully delivered recital of English song much concerned with death, its nature well suited to this tenor's mellifluously lyrical, emotionally intense music-making."
(Sunday Times)
"This is an extremely fine disc. Mark Padmore's singing is technically beyond reproach and his eloquence is telling in all four works on the programme. At every turn he finds superb partners in the members of Britten Sinfonia. The recording, which I listened to as a conventional CD, sounds well-nigh perfect to me, giving clarity and atmosphere. Harmonia Mundi's booklet is immaculately produced." (Recording of the Month MusicWeb Oct 2013)
"Dove's musical nightscape shifts slowly and slightly...The same vocal simplicity and white timbre that chafes so tellingly at the smugness of Blake's Innocence poems (aided there by exquisite solo oboe) also works well here for Padmore, never blurring the clarity of the composer's melodic architecture." (Gramophone)
Tracks:
Dove:
The End
Vaughan Williams:
On Wenlock Edge
Ten Blake Songs
Warlock:
The Curlew
