Song composition has been a constant in British music since the lute and consort works of the early seventeenth century. By 1900, it had developed into a sophisticated genre embraced by almost all serious composers. The music on this amply-filled disc illustrates the diversity of British song-writing and it's transformation over a century: from Vaughan Williams's Orpheus and his Lute (ca 1901) to Huw Watkins's Five Larkin Songs, composed in 2010 for Carolyn Sampson, who performs them here. Together with Joseph Middleton, her partner on several acclaimed recital discs, she has devised a highly contrasting programme bookended by two groups of songs by William Walton - A Song for the Lord Mayor's Table from 1962, celebrating the diversity of London, and three songs from FaÃ§ade, the 'entertainment' with which the young composer gained both fame and notoriety in 1923. These frame settings by Ralph Vaughan Williams, Roger Quilter and Frank Bridge of poetry by writers from Shakespeare and Shelley to Keats and Yeats. In comparison, the anti-romantic poems by Philip Larkin have been described as marked by 'a very English, glum accuracy'. Huw Watkins (b. 1976) has selected texts from across Larkin's output, catching the various moods - ranging from a certain unsentimental nostalgia to the poet's seemingly habitual pessimism - in settings that often carry a bittersweet sting in the tail.

Tracklist:

A Song For The Lord Mayor's Table (Version For Soprano & Piano): No. 1, The Lord Mayor's Table
A Song For The Lord Mayor's Table (Version For Soprano & Piano): No. 2, Glide Gently
A Song For The Lord Mayor's Table (Version For Soprano & Piano): No. 3, Wapping Old Stairs
A Song For The Lord Mayor's Table (Version For Soprano & Piano): No. 4, Holy Thursday
A Song For The Lord Mayor's Table (Version For Soprano & Piano): No. 5, The Contrast
A Song For The Lord Mayor's Table (Version For Soprano & Piano): No. 6, Rhyme
3 Songs From Shakespeare: No. 3, Orpheus With His Lute
The Sky Above The Roof
The House Of Life: No. 2, Silent Noon
Go Not, Happy Day, H. 34
When Most I Wink, H. 5
Adoration, H. 57
Come To Me In My Dreams, H. 71
When You Are Old, H. 142
Mantle Of Blue, H. 131
Love Went A-Riding, H. 114
5 Larkin Songs: No. 1, Who Called Love Conquering
5 Larkin Songs: No. 2, Wants
5 Larkin Songs: No. 3, Love Songs In Age
5 Larkin Songs: No. 4, Money
5 Larkin Songs: No. 5, Dawn
Dream Valley, Op. 20 No. 1
7 Elizabethan Lyrics, Op. 12 (Excerpts): No. 7, Fair House Of Joy
7 Elizabethan Lyrics, Op. 12 (Excerpts): No. 6, By A Fountainside
Arab Love Song, Op. 25 No. 4
Autumn Evening, Op. 14 No. 1
7 Elizabethan Lyrics, Op. 12 (Excerpts): No. 2, My Life's Delight
3 Songs To Poems (After "Façade"): No. 1, Daphne
3 Songs To Poems (After "Façade"): No. 2, Through Gilded Trellises
3 Songs To Poems (After "Façade"): No. 3, Old Sir Faulk

UPC: 7318599924137
Label: Bis
Release Date: 2.7.20
Format: CD

Contrast / Various Hybr - Contrast (CD)