Barber, S: Sure on this shining night, Op. 13 No. 3 (Nocturne)

Samuel Barber’s lyrical melodies and unabashed romanticism have earned him a cherished place in the pantheon of 20th-century composers. Recorded here are some of Barber’s finest works for choir (including the beloved 'Agnus Dei') alongside 2 world premières: a new version for chamber chorus and orchestra of Barber’s anguished work 'The Lovers' on poetry by Pablo Neruda, and a new version of 'Easter Chorale', which were both made by Robert Kyr for Craig Hella Johnson and Conspirare.

From its 1991 origins as a summer classical music festival in Austin, Texas, Conspirare has evolved into an internationally recognised, professional choral organisation known for outstanding vocal artistry and innovative programming. Led by founder and artistic director Craig Hella Johnson, Conspirare comprises a professional chamber choir, a highly skilled volunteer Symphonic Choir, and an outstanding youth choir.

Conspirare’s critically acclaimed releases on the harmonia mundi label have earned copious praise. 'Threshold of Night' (2008) in particular, featured music by Tarik O’Regan and was nominated for Best Choral Performance and Best Classical Album at the Grammys.

Barbara Hendricks' voice — particularly suited to Mozart, Debussy, Fauré, and the lighter roles of Puccini and Richard Strauss — has a warm, crystalline quality that has kept her in demand on stage and in recording studios. Her performances have embraced everything from contemporary music to popular standards, including songs of Duke Ellington and several world premieres. She has been careful with her choices of repertoire, avoiding roles that would overextend her essentially lyric instrument. Aside from music, she is deeply committed to humanitarian work, with a particular concern for refugees and those in war or poverty zones. She sang a concert in Sarajevo in 1993 while the city was being shelled, in which she had to wear a bulletproof vest and helmet.

Hendricks has appeared on nearly 80 recordings spread over a variety of major labels. Her first of many recordings for EMI was in the small part of the Celestial Voice in Don Carlo in 1978. For nearly twenty years her solo recordings have been made exclusively for EMI Classics.

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!

Although he wrote two large scale operas, two symphonies and a concerto each for violin, cello and piano, the majority of Barber's compositions were on a much smaller scale. This collection of songs and chamber pieces contains some of his earliest work, dating from 1928 to 1940, with two groups of songs from 1968 and 1972 respectively.

The Adagio movement of the String Quartet from 1936 has, in its version for string orchestra, become one of the most popular works by an American composer. Here is an opportunity to hear it as Barber originally intended, and the intimacy brought to it by a smaller ensemble lends it a greater intensity.

Barber was a fine composer for the voice and his output of songs was prolific. Dover Beach, to words by Matthew Arnold, is one of Barber's finest compositions and it is beautifully sung here by Thomas Allen.

Tenor Robert White sings 28 romantic songs spanning the century by both native American and immigrant composers, from Amy Beach in 1899 to Marc Marder's Walt Whitman setting of 1996. There are many favourites (or 'favorites') here from the musical stage, including Friml's Rose Marie and Victor Herbert's Ah! Sweet Mystery of Life. Malotte's famous setting of The Lord's Prayer is also included. The title of the CD is taken from Samuel Barber's beautiful setting of James Agee (the poet of Knoxville, Summer of 1924).

The accompanying booklet is packed with anecdotes from Robert White's personal acquaintance with the majority of the composers represented. Several of the songs were actually written specially for him to sing.

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.

"I was particularly keen to make this CD as I wanted a newer record of my treble voice: it has changed significantly since my previous recordings as a chorister. I also wished to promote items which are not normally associated with the standard treble repertoire. Through my association with Andrew Plant, The Britten-Pears Foundation generously supported the creation of the recording and allowed me the immense privilege of recording unpublished works by Britten, therefore greatly increasing the documental importance of this CD... Mr Bowman's voice had been one of the first I had heard in recordings and live concerts. Later, as a chorister, I was lucky enough to sing with him when he was a soloist in performances of Messiah and the St John Passion.The chance to work with him made the prospect of the disc better than I could have imagined." Andrew Swait