Mark Padmore

Alec Roth - Songs in Time of War

words by Vikram Seth after the Chinese poet Du Fu [712-770]

Born in England, of German/Irish descent,Alec Roth has been Founder and Artistic Director of the Royal Festival Hall Gamelan Programme; Music Director of the Baylis Programme, English National Opera; Composer in Association, Opera North; and Lecturer in Music, University of Edinburgh. His collaborations with the Indian writer Vikram Seth include the song cycles Romantic Residues (Bury St Edmunds Festival commission 2003) and Earth and Sky for children's chorus, a BBC commission for the Proms 2000 season. Songs in Time of War is the first in a series of four major works commissioned jointly by the Salisbury, Chelsea and Lichfield Festivals, 2006- 2009. The two pieces for solo guitar are part of an ongoing series of works by Alec Roth dedicated to the Mexican guitarist Morgan Szymanski: Canción de la Luna (Song of the Moon) was first performed at a Wigmore Hall recital in 2005; its companion piece, Danza de la Luna was completed in 2006 and is heard for the first time on this recording. Chinese Gardens is a setting of poems, again by Vikram Seth, which were inspired by visits to four of the famous Ming Dynasty gardens in the Chinese city of Suzhou.

Britten Abroad

Britten's settings of Italian, Russian, French and German, performed here by Susan Gritton, Mark Padmore and Iain Burnside are certainly amongst the most distinctive and very finest examples of his art, each fashioned specifically for a much-loved and favoured artist. The Seven Sonnets of Michelangelo were completed in America in October 1940 and were the first songs written specifically for Britten's life-long partner and principle interpreter, the tenor Peter Pears, to whom they are dedicated and unquestionably addressed. Britten and Pears premiered the Michelangelo Sonnets at the Wigmore Hall on 23 September 1942, the first of many memorable appearances they were to make in London's premiere recital hall over the next three decades. The Poet's Echo was written during a holiday that Britten and Pears spent in the Soviet Union with Galina Vishnevskaya and Mstislav Rostropovich in August 1965.The cycle is dedicated to 'Galya and Slava' and was first performed by the dedicatees in the Small Hall of the Moscow Conservatoire, on 2 December 1965; they gave the UK premiere on 2 July the following year, in London's Royal Festival Hall. Um Mitternacht was written around 1960. It was first performed by the soprano Lucy Shelton and pianist Ian Brown at the 1992 Aldeburgh Festival and only entered the repertory with the publication of The Red Cockatoo & Other Songs by Faber Music in 1994. It is unique in that it's Britten's only setting of Goethe, an anthology of whose verse he received around this time from his friend Prince Ludwig of Hesse and the Rhine, the dedicatee of the final song-cycle on the present disc, the Sechs Hölderlin-Fragmente. Britten and Pears recorded them for the BBC Third programme on 20 October 1958.

Vaughan Williams - On Wenlock Edge

On Wenlock Edge is a song cycle for tenor, piano and string quartet, published in 1909, setting six poems from A.E. Housman’s A Shropshire Lad. Although there have been a number of recordings of this song cycle recently, this disc features the remarkable voice of Mark Padmore and uniquely adds the early Piano Quintet in C minor, recently released for performance by the composer’s widow and published in 2002, and also the Romance and Pastorale, two similarly early, brief lyric pieces for violin and piano published in 1923. The Quintet was written for piano, violin, viola, cello and double-bass – as was Schubert’s ‘Trout’ Quintet. It is a wonderful early work, full of passion and melodic invention. This recording marks the Schubert Ensemble’s debut on Chandos and also its 25th anniversary. The Ensemble has always been at the forefront of British chamber music performance and is now firmly established as one of the world’s leading exponents of music for piano and strings.

Haydn: The Creation

Sung in English

Schubert: Mass No. 6 in E flat major, D950

Schubert’s final mass and most ambitious setting was composed during the summer of 1828, only months before his death. It was premiered posthumously, on October 4, 1829, under the direction of his brother, Ferdinand. Much more than his previous efforts in the genre, it is a choral mass, relegating the vocal soloists to three brief episodes to allow for large chorus passages, and provides an extremely active role for the orchestra. Today, the Mass in E Flat is increasingly acknowledged as an individual masterpiece; powerful and disquieting, more monumental than the fifth, but likewise seeking to reconcile liturgical grandeur with Schubert’s own subjective romantic feeling, whilst still influenced by Haydn, Beethoven and Bach. Its concern for splendour is most obvious in the huge set-piece fugues at the end of the Gloria and Credo but all the time liturgical tradition is coloured by an individual and sometimes unsettling chromaticism, possibly evoking the personal pain he was suffering, not only physically but also the anguish of questioning his faith. The result is some of the most violent anguish encountered in a setting of the text. The recording is dedicated to the memory of Francesca McManus, the manager of CM90 who sadly died at the end of November.

Britten & Dowland - Lute Songs

Handel: Messiah

For a limited period all copies of the 2SACD set will include a bonus DVD featuring highlights from the performances and an interview with Sir Colin Davis. English only (no subtitles). A co-production by the BBC and LSO.

Dyson: Nebuchadnezzar

Dyson took the text for Nebuchadnezzar from the Book of Daniel, incorporating the ‘Song of the Three Holy Children’ from the Apocrypha. Emulating Walton’s Belshazzar’s Feast, Dyson set the story in four parts. In the first three the music tells the well-known biblical story of the Jews Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego and the burning fiery furnace, while the fourth is a more conventional hymn of praise, ‘All the works of the Lord, Bless Ye the Lord’ – the Benedicite. The tenor Mark Padmore sings the Herald, and Nebuchadnezzar is sung by the bass-baritone Neal Davies.

As Steals the Morn

Handel - Arias & scenes for tenor

Haydn - The Complete Mass Edition

Period instrument performances