EMR CD054 | DETAILS
  EMR CD054
   
 

SONGS AND SONNETS
Songs in English and German from the reign of Queen Victoria
  Belinda Williams (mezzo-sop.)
Mark Wilde (ten.)
David Owen Norris (pf.)
   
   

For more than a century, vocal music was sung in translation as a matter of routine. Constant Lambert’s ‘Rio Grande’ has a splendid German translation of Sacheverell Sitwell, and Benjamin Britten’s ‘On this island’ an even better French translation of W.H. Auden. Richard Strauss’s songs were published in Germany with English words, while Elgar’s songs were provided with German words. The man who started all this intelligibility was William Sterndale Bennett, who in the 1840s and 1850s published in Leipzig and London twelve songs with English and German words, some of them composed originally in German.

 

Sterndale Bennett’s lyrical gift makes them a delicious addition to the song repertoire. This disc presents all his songs. To these are added Sir Hubert Parry’s unique settings of Shakespeare sonnets, which have two completely different vocal lines for Shakespeare’s words and Bodenstedt’s translation; and four songs by Walter Battison Haynes. English and German words for all the songs are given in the disc booklet, and several of them are performed in both languages.

TRACK LISTING AND AUDIO EXTRACTS
     
Sir William Sterndale Bennett (1816–1875)
SIX SONGS, op.23 (1842) (World Première recording)
1. ‘Musing on the roaring ocean’ / ‘Brütend über Wog’ und Klippe’  
2. ‘Maienthau’ / ‘May-Dew’  
3. ‘Forget-me-not’ / ‘Vergißmeinnicht’  
4. ‘To Chloe (in sickness)’ / ‘An Chloe als sie krank war’  
5. ‘The Past’ / ‘Entflohenes Glück’  
6. ‘Gentle Zephyr’  
7. ‘Holder Zephyr wenn dein Hauch’  
       
SIX SONGS, op.35 (1855) (World Première recording)
8. ‘Indian Love’ / ‘Indische Liebe’  
9. ‘Winter’ gone’ / ‘Winters Macht’  
10. ‘Dawn, gentle Flower’ / ‘Keim’, holde Blum’  
11. ‘Castle Gordon’ / ‘Schloß Gordon’  
12. ‘Waldeinsamkeit’ / ‘As lonesome through the woods’  
13. ‘Sing, maiden, sing’ / ‘Sing’, Mädchen, sing’ ’  
       
FOUR SONGS, op.47 (1875) (World Première recording)
14. ‘Maiden mine’  
15. ‘Sunset’  
16. ‘Dancing lightly’  
17. ‘Stay, my charmer’  
       
Sir Hubert Parry (1848–1918)
FOUR SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE (1887)
18. Sonnet XXIV  
19. Sonnet LXXXVII  
20. Sonnet XVIII  
21. Sonnet XXX  
       
Walter Battison Haynes (1859–1900)
VIER LIEDER, op.8 (1885) (World Première recording)
22. ‘Vorsatz’ / ‘A Vow’  
23. ‘Gute Nacht’ / ‘Good Night’  
24. ‘Das Heidekind’ / ‘The Child of the Heath’  
25. ‘Das Mädchen spricht’ / ‘A maiden’s request’  
       
Sir Hubert Parry
FOUR SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE
26. Sonnet XXIV  
27. Sonnet LXXXVII  
28. Sonnet XVIII  
29. Sonnet XXX  

 

REVIEWS
Beautifully shaped by Benjamin Frith... Beguiling sounds, graced by the tawny richness and unexaggerated line of Richard Jenkinson’s cello playing... The sense of purpose and sureness of line of Ian Venables’ music is pure oxygen.
EMR CD31 | BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE
Exquisitely rewarding... Ravishing accounts.
EMR CD029 | CHOIR AND ORGAN
This is music of great beauty and integrity and the performances fully do it justice. It would be criminal to let it pass you by.

EMR CD028 | INTERNATIONAL
RECORD REVIEW

The Bridge Quartet approach these pieces with a sympathetic and insightful warmth, and confirm their ambassadorial credentials for British chamber music. A lovely, radiant disc.
EMR CD025 | Gramophone
Duncan Honeybourne’s playing is astonishingly affectionate, yet never saccharine... Honeybourne plays with suave confidence.
EMR CD024 | INTERNATIONAL PIANO
Rupert Marshall-Luck is an ideal interpreter: generously but not effusively lyrical; agile and athletic... The warm, folk-song like slow movement is at times almost painfully beautiful, with a shimmering pastoral central section... Marshall-Luck is, again, indefatigable and keenly picks up on the work’s melancholic strain.  Finely recorded and with comprehensive booklet notes, this is a must for fans of 20th-century English repertoire.
EMR CD023 | THE STRAD