Quilter: Love's Philosophy, Op. 3 No. 1 (Shelley)

Some say love's a little boy,

And some say it's a bird,

Some say it makes the world go around,

Some say that's absurd…

W.H. AUDEN

Charting the course of a love affair – in song – through the eyes of a young woman who begins by asking the universal question, Tell me the truth about love presents a programme of 19th and 20th century song.

The album takes its title from Benjamin Britten’s 1938 seductive setting of W.H. Auden’s amusing poem and tries to pin down and define the most elusive of human emotions.

The story takes us from love at first sight with Schumann’s Seit ich ihn gesehen, breathless with wonder and fervent reverance and Chausson’s Le charme which describes the quiver of excitement and the tender veneration the girl feels when the boy’s smile catches her unawares to Loewe’s Ich kann’s nicht fassen, nicht gluben to describe the lovers first encounter.

As the love story unfolds and the couple become closer, it is illustrated with music such as Strauss’s Nachtgang, Rachmaninov’s Midsummer nights and Bridge’s Adoration. However the magic is soon broken and Sunday brings deception and betrayal. The girl finds out that the young man does not love her and she bitterly awakes from her dream. The feeling of love lost is brought to life through Brahm’s Am Sonntag Morgen, Schubert’s Du liebst mich nicht and Kurt Weill’s Je ne t’aime pas.

As a postlude, Britten’s arrangement of Early one morning perfectly sums up the story of the young girl and the final message of ‘how could you use a poor maiden so?’ lingers in the ear.

Amanda Roocroft has secured an international reputation as one of Britain’s most exciting singers, in opera, concert and recital and Joseph Middleton enjoys a busy and varied career as a chamber musician and song accompanist.

Dame Felicity Lott, revered British soprano, says of this CD:

“ Summertime also has many of my favourite songs in English, French and German. We made the CD at a friend`s house, and the sessions were so relaxed, with no London traffic to cause endless retakes! It`s a real mix of beautiful songs of all kinds, on a summer theme. I chose songs I loved, from Gershwin to Christopher Robin….

Three centuries of song are represented here, and, as BBC Music Magazine's Hilary Finch put it “such is the skill of Johnson's programming that the entire recital seems to be a single, sustained exhalation of rapture and reflection”

She went on to say:

The upper reaches of Lott's still gleaming soprano inhabit Barber's 'Shining Night' and Fauré's Clair de lune'. And her robust English version of Schubert's 'Who is Sylvia?' finds an irresistible companion in Arne's 'Where the Bee Sucks', with its veritable midsummer night's dream of an accompaniment from Johnson. The artists' palpable sense of joy and well-being gathers momentum as they visit Berlioz's 'L'île inconnue' and as they sing on the water with Schubert. . . . And Lott and Johnson know well that the only way to face sentiment is to acknowledge its own integrity, as they do when they listen to Haydn Wood's 'Little Brown Bird' and eavesdrop with Fraser-Simson on Christopher Robin saying his prayers.

This CD features songs from a great variety of composers - Gershwin, Barber, Cole Porter, Bernstein, Brahms, Schubert, Arne, Schumann, Berlioz, and many more. A full 29 tracks of summer-themed songs!

This CD features songs by Vaughan Williams and Quilter, and is the premiere recording of The Bliss of Solitude by Andrew Wright. He was a member of the Tallis Scholars and has been director of music at Brentwood Cathedral for many years. Initially, Wright set a couple of Wordsworth’s texts and then worked them into a song cycle and the result is stunning. The work reflects his knowledge of the voice and love of nature. This CD was recorded in Brentwood Cathedral.

Alice Coote, one of the most distinctive mezzo-sopranos of today, makes her recital debut on Hyperion with pianist Graham Johnson, a stalwart of the label and tireless explorer of vocal repertoire. The Power of Love creates what Johnson describes as a ‘pageant of English song and poetry’. It’s a journey through half a century of song, surveying not just human love but love of nature and even of money. Some of the most touching pieces here involve the loss of love through death, not least Ivor Gurney’s Lights Out and Gustav Holst’s Betelgeuse. There’s serenity, too, in mellifluous settings by Roger Quilter, while high spirits are supplied by Maude Valérie White’s The Spring has come and Warlock’s sardonic Queen Anne, which includes the immortal lines ‘I am Queen Anne, of whom ’tis said / I’m chiefly fam’d for being dead’.

Felicity Lott brings her delicacy and rich understanding to a collection of English song inspired by the idyllic Sussex countryside.

“A lovingly planned programme by Graham Johnson, beautifully sung by Dame Felicity” Gramophone

The Englishness typified here is not derived from one unique musical style; rather from each composerʼs response to the texts. Graham Johnson groups together songs under headings Country Courtship. . . To Music. . . . Loveʼs Philosophy. . . . Country Scenes. . . . Night & Dawn. . . .Childrenʼs Cornerʼ. . . and Envoys on this charming - and occasionally surprising - disc.

It includes songs by Quilter, Elgar, Parry, Ireland, Bax and Holst. The Elgar songs Speak Music and In Moonlight (included under the heading ʻTo Musicʼ) remind us that the paradigm of Englishness Elgar cultivated was more to do with his association with ʻPomp and Circumstanceʼ than necessarily musical matters. As part of ʻCountry Scenesʼ, Bridgeʼs jolly Go Not, Happy Day gives nothing away about its year of publication, 1916, and the scars which led to later music of a more sombre tone.

Also included are a selection of Harold Fraser-Simpsonʼs songs based on verses from A.A. Milneʼs The Hums of Pooh, and settings by Liza Lehmann - the Edwardian English operatic soprano - including Matilda from ʻFour Cautionary Talesʼ by Hillaire Belloc, a duet with both parts taken by Felicity Lott. The CD takes its title from Peter Warlockʼs setting of another Belloc text - My Own Country.

Dame Felicity Lott lives in Sussex and was the very first artist to perform in the Music Room at Champs Hill. In 2005 she and Graham Johnson returned there to mark the 30th anniversary of her Wigmore debut with this programme (previously release on the ASV label). Champs Hill Records will also be releasing new recordings of further Elgar songs with Dame Felicity in October 2011.

This ‘songbook’ is unique to the Schola Cantorum choristers of Tewkesbury Abbey. “Essentially, it’s a showcase for the Abbey trebles,” their Director of Music Benjamin Nicholas explains. “We’ve been assembling our own 'Songbook' for quite a while now – the songs the trebles sing, from time to time, in boys-only concerts, and which they are taught in individual singing lessons. I’ve always been keen to build each boy up as a soloist, not necessarily with the express idea of them singing lots of solos, but so that they can learn to sing in a soloistic way.”

This is evident most of all in the distinctive singing of 11-year-old Laurence Kilsby, whose gifts won him the BBC Chorister of the Year competition in 2009. On this recording, he features as soloist in two Shelley settings by Roger Quilter, the Bach/Gounod Ave Maria and in John Ireland’s beautiful, sincerely-felt Passiontide motet Ex Ore Innocentium from 1944.

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.

The intenisty and passion of this painting by Frederic, Lord Leighton, is matched in superb performances of early twentieth-century English art songs and music including 'June' by Quilter and works by Delius, Howells and others.