Ian Venables is one of Britain’s foremost composers of art-song, and has a significant catalogue of vocal and chamber music to his credit.
Writing tonal music in a warm lyric vein, he has a rare gift of being able to ‘locate’ himself, believably, in a different period and absorb from it, both musically and poetically, all its fundamental beauty, while also producing works of astonishing freshness, naturalness and originality.
On the Wings of Love are settings by non-English poets, while Love’s Voice sets Venetian poetry by J. A. Symonds.
All his songs are sincere expressions of a love of poetry, combined with a profound understanding of musical and poetic tradition.
“A singer of wide, lustrous tone and striking dramatic prowess” The Times on Andrew Kennedy
December 2010
*****
“[Venables] manages to create worthwhile new artefacts within his conservative idiom. Expertly crafted, the results offer something genuinely personal and at times profound...Andrew Kennedy is the expressive, articulate tenor, and pianist Iain Burnside the outstanding accompanist.”
25th November 2010
***
“Andrew Kennedy sings both cycles with great attention to their musical and verbal detail”
April 2013
“Venables’ music does seem to me to breathe a definite air of Englishness, even when he is not setting texts by English writers...The standard of performance on both discs is uniformly high with Andrew Kennedy in particular proving to be an expressive and committed advocate for Ian Venables’ songs.”
Click on any of the works listed above for alternative recordings.
