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See Terms & Conditions for p&p rates. | |  | Finzi - Earth and Air and RainFive song cycles to words by Thomas Hardy
2 CDs for the price of 1. ‘There are so many really subtle and distinguished performances in this set, and so much sheerly beautiful singing, that I shall be listening to it often over the years’ (Gramophone) “The welcome return of what now seem rather special archive recordings of Finzi's great Hardy settings. Direct, unselfconscious and ever-sentient performances.” BBC Music Magazine, September 2009 **** | | | In stock - usually despatched within 1 working day. |
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| |  | The English Song Series Volume 12 - Finzi 1
“You would have to look hard for a better introduction to Finzi… The songs are the core of his achievement… Roderick Williams's elegant and delicate performances reveal the heart of this music without forcing anything - and mercifully without that coyness that often mars Finzi performances. And Iain Burnside is an excellent partner…” BBC Music Magazine, June 2005 *****  BBC Music Magazine
Choral & Song Choice - June 2005 |
| | | (also available to download from $6.00) | In stock - usually despatched within 1 working day. |
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| |  | English Love Songs
Barlow, S: | If thou would’st ease thine heart | Bridge: | Come to Me in my Dreams Love went a-riding | Britten: | Down by the Salley Gardens Wild with passion (Beddoes) | Butterworth, G: | With rue my heart is laden When I was one-and-twenty | Dowland: | Awake, sweet love Come again, sweet love doth now invite | Finzi: | To Lizbie Browne I Said to Love, Op. 19b | Handel: | Silent Worship (based on an aria from Tolomeo) Semele: Where'er you walk | Haydn: | Piercing Eyes, Hob. XXVIa:35 Pleasing Pain, Hob. XXVIa:29 | Ireland: | If we must part Love is a sickness full of woes | Purcell: | I attempt from love's sickness to fly in vain (from The Indian Queen) If music be the food of love, Z379 | Quilter: | Go, lovely Rose, Op. 24 No. 3 (Edmund Wailer) Love's Philosophy, Op. 3 No. 1 (Shelley) | Vaughan Williams: | Silent Noon Love bade me welcome | Warlock: | Take, O take those lips away Thou gav'st me leave to kiss |
This excellent release is a unique collection of English love songs by some of the great English composers of the 20th century including Vaughan-Williams, Purcell, Britten, Dowland, Finzi and Warlock. All of the songs are firm favourites; amongst the most well known are Silent worship, Where’er you walk, If music be the food of love and The salley gardens. Mark Stone has sung at Covent Garden most recently in “Don Giovanni” and is a regular guest at ENO, WNO, Glyndebourne and Opera North. He and Stephen Barlow regularly perform together as a recital duo and often appear on Radio 3 and in concert in the UK and abroad. “..this is not a recital restricted to one vocal hue. Each song is looked at and receives relevant response from both singer and pianist. ….he (Mark Stone) introduces so much by way of nuance and colour to make this a very interesting and fulfilling programme, one which is well recorded.” International Record Review, March 2009 “Stone has made an estimable career as a lyric baritone at Opera North and English National Opera, but he is less familiar as a recitalist. His light, airy baritone is well suited to the more easy-going English love songs, but takes on a nasal, pinched quality when a sense of drama is required, as in Frank Bridge’s galloping Love went a-riding. This attractive miscellaneous programme might have made a stronger impression if the order of songs were not so haphazard: Vaughan Williams (Silent Noon and Love bade me welcome) segues uncomfortably into Dowland’s Awake, sweet love, and Purcell, Handel and Haydn are interspersed pell-mell between Quilter and Ireland, Butterworth and Warlock, Finzu and Britten. Stone’s theme and sequence are too loose to be compelling and his diction, mostly clear, rarely achieves the eloquence of a born song interpreter.” Sunday Times, 15th February 2009 *** | | | (also available to download from $10.50) | Usually despatched in 2 - 3 working days. (Available now to download.) |
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| |  | Gerald Finzi - Songs
"I do hate the bilge and bunkum about composers trying to 'add' to a poem - that a fine poem is complete in itself, and to set it is only to gild the lily, and so on ... I rather expected it [over the setting of two Milton Sonnets] and expect it still more when the Intimations [of Immortality] is finished . . . Obviously a poem may be unsatisfactory in itself for setting, but that is a purely musical consideration - that it has no architectural possibilities - no broad vowels where climaxes should be, and so on. But the first and last thing is that a composer is (presumably) moved by a poem and wishes to identify himself with it and share it." Gerald Finzi | | | Usually despatched in 4 - 5 working days. |
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