Battle Cry: She Speaks | Album Booklet

BATTLE CRY SHE SPEAKS

HELEN CHARLSTON TOBY CARR

BATTLE CRY SHE SPEAKS HELEN CHARLSTON

mezzo-soprano

TOBY CARR

1 Henry Purcell (1659–1695)

theorbo

Barbara Strozzi (1619–1677)

L’Eraclito amoroso, Op. 2 No. 14

[5:55]

3

Robert de Visée (1650–1732)

Prélude (MS Vaudry de Saizenay)

[1:25]

John Eccles (1688–1735)

Restless in thought [4:24] (from She Ventures, and He Wins)

Henry Purcell arr. Toby Carr

Dido’s Lament (from Dido and Aeneas, z 626) Thy hand, Belinda [0:50] When I am laid in earth [3:07]

5 6

Owain Park (b. 1993) 7 8 9 10 11 Giovanni Girolamo Kapsberger (c.1580–1651)

Recorded on 29-30 October and 1 November 2021 in Crichton Collegiate Church, Midlothian Producer/Engineer: Paul Baxter 24-bit digital editing: Jack Davis 24-bit digital mastering: Paul Baxter Theorbo: Klaus Jacobsen, 2015

Design: Drew Padrutt Booklet editor: Henry Howard Cover & session photography: foxbrushfilms.com Delphian Records Ltd – Edinburgh – UK www.delphianrecords.com

@ delphianrecords @ delphianrecords @ delphian_records

[2:58]

2

4

The artists and Delphian Records gratefully acknowledge the support of Angel Early Music, William Newsom and Rogers Covey-Crump in sponsoring the production of this recording. Acknowledgement is also due to City Music Foundation for originally commissioning Battle Cry by Owain Park.

O lead me to some peaceful gloom (from Bonduca, z 574)

Battle Cry * I. Boudicca [3:05] II. Philomela in the forest [2:18] III. A singer’s ode to Sappho [2:19] IV. Marietta [9:07] Preludio V (Libro quarto d'intavolatura di chitarone)

[1:04]

12

Barbara Strozzi

La travagliata, Op. 2 No. 11 [4:42]

13

Claudio Monteverdi (1567–1643)

Lamento d’Arianna [9:03]

14

Robert de Visée

Sarabande (MS Vaudry de Saizenay)

15

Henry Purcell

An Evening Hymn, z 193 [4:42]

Total playing time * premiere recording

[2:12]

[57:20]

Notes on the music The theorbo was a common enough musical instrument in the seventeenth century, emerging as it did in Florence in the 1580s.

By the mid eighteenth century its use had dwindled, and it played no part in the music of the emerging Classical style. It is a plucked instrument like a lute, but with additional low strings – hence the distinctive long neck.

Brighter-toned than the lute, the theorbo has a transparency and clarity to its sound that makes it a delicate, rich and sensitive accompaniment to the voice.

The Baroque era in music made a virtue of pigeon-holing styles and approaches to musical composition and performance. A French, German or Italian style, for instance, might be promoted in church, chamber or theatre.

Emotions were rationalised in terms of musical presentation. However, all of the music on this recording makes a virtue of mixing emotions and ideas; and at its heart, the programme contains a twenty-firstcentury musical and poetic response to the antique combination of mezzo-soprano and theorbo. On a personal level, this project has allowed theorbist Toby Carr to focus on his own interpretation of the songs rather than being simply part of a larger continuo line; while for singer Helen Charlston, who loves the Baroque soundworld within which she so often works, it has given the opportunity to commission music for voice and theorbo by a living composer.

Having heard Helen Charlston and Toby Carr perform seventeenth-century music (and Henry Purcell’s song ‘O solitude’ in particular), Owain Park was drawn to the combination of voice and theorbo. The wordsmith Georgia Way had made music with Owain and Helen as an undergraduate student and was inspired to write poetry that Owain could set to music. The first product was ‘Marietta’, which ultimately became the final movement of the song cycle Battle Cry, commissioned by London’s City Music Foundation. The preceding three movements were written later, once everyone involved realised that one contemporary song (albeit a substantial one) would sit uneasily within an otherwise entirely seventeenth-century programme. Perhaps because the composer knew how the cycle would finish while writing the earlier movements, there is an unusually subtle musical unity to Battle Cry. Georgia Way recalls: It’s been a privilege for me to watch and support Helen and Owain’s careers and it’s been wonderful to feel that I’ve been a small part of that. As a writer discovering my own style, it has really underlined for me the importance of existing in communities.

Artistic communities are hugely important, because it’s hard to craft work in isolation. As a writer you often exist in a vacuum and it has been nice not to have to do that. Added to which, when I wrote ‘Marietta’ I’d had a recent bereavement and writing became a really healing process.

The music on this recording features ancient and mythological female characters: Boudicca, Dido and Ariadne amongst them. Joining them are Sappho, the earliest known female poet, and Barbara Strozzi, in her lifetime the most-published composer of secular music out of all her contemporaries. The programme on this recording is designed as a journey – a fascinatingly complicated, female-led voyage – but the intention is not to bludgeon the listener into travelling in a particular direction. On the contrary, the delicacy of the medium of voice and theorbo means that any colourful drama or polemic is tempered by an unusual sense that each listener’s response to both text and music is as unique as the presentation of ideas by the poets, composers and performers. The narrative is partly led by what remains unsung and unheard. And so, the middle movements of Battle Cry are central to the whole recording project itself: ‘Philomela in the forest’ is a commemoration of a woman whose ability to communicate was severely compromised by having her tongue cut out; and in ‘Sappho’ the theorbo remains silent while the voice sings alone.

At three points elsewhere in the programme it is the theorbo that takes the solo spot. As Toby Carr says: I like the idea of between-course palate-cleansers in any concert, and the preludes that here introduce the John Eccles song and Strozzi’s ‘La travagliata’ allow the listener to warm up into the acoustics and the

sound of the theorbo. These gesturing, meandering preludes resonate in the modern world. The Sarabande is here also used as a prelude to Purcell’s ‘An Evening Hymn’, with which it shares a key and certain harmonic functions. These palate-cleansers allow a change of focus into the material that is to come.

Of the opening piece on this recording, Purcell’s song O lead me to some peaceful gloom (from his music for an adaptation of Fletcher’s play Bonduca), Toby Carr says: ‘This is the quintessential single song; even though it’s from a larger piece. It’s amazing how much Purcell puts into what is essentially two parts – melody and a bass line.’ Helen Charlston adds: ‘One of the things I was keen to avoid in the music that we programmed was that it should all be about hopelessness in lament. Boudicca is very strong in this song, even though the consequences are dire.

At the outset you think this is going to be a standard lament, but it does fly off the page in a stronger way that you might expect.’ Of the next song, L’Eraclito amoroso (‘Heraclitus in Love’), Helen comments that ‘this is a good example of Strozzi’s style – a medium-length song that uses both stile rappresentativo [‘representative’ or ‘theatrical’ style] as well as aria-type music. Structurally, Owain Park’s “Marietta” feels so like this piece of music, but also harmonically too, not least because of the false relations.’ Of Restless in thought

by John Eccles, Helen suggests that it is almost a ‘mad song’, a genre that these days we might re-brand as ‘bipolar’ – a particular

Notes on the music fascination of the English Restoration. Toby says that this Eccles song represents things that he and Helen were trying to do with the whole programme: ‘It’s finding a way of fitting as much of the drama as possible into this combination of voice and theorbo, which could be thought of as being low in energy.’

The famous Dido’s Lament by Purcell fits perfectly into this programme in thematic terms, but the idea of performing it with just theorbo rather than with strings made Toby nervous, given how beautifully composed the string parts are. But, he says, ‘then I sat down and tried to fit as much of Purcell’s string writing as possible onto the theorbo, and found that it worked.’ In turn, Helen says that she didn’t miss the strings as much as she thought she would, and enjoyed portraying the lament on its own terms as a song rather than as the climax of the opera, Dido and Aeneas.

As much as possible, this project has been conceived as a whole. Owain Park says of his own four-movement composition, Battle Cry: The first two movements run on together, the third is meant to feel almost uncomfortably different, and then the fourth movement (as the original composition) has informed everything that you’ve just heard, and acts as a musical summary not only of the material that I wrote, but also of hints and fragments of other pieces on the programme.

Hopefully, that makes it feel connected to everything else around it.

The aesthetic shock of the unaccompanied third movement, ‘A singer’s ode to Sappho’, is devastating. It is shocking because the singer is left without instrumental support.

The composer says of this ode: ‘Musically – it being a tone row (it’s something I haven’t done before) – and structurally it works because it feels trapped within itself and it also links in with a Chaconne idea, a repeating pattern.’ The lack of the theorbo’s involvement in the third movement astonished Toby: I was surprised at how strange I found it in the moment; it’s not normally what happens in a recital like this. In a voice and theorbo recital, we mostly play and sing together, I have a few solo pieces and that’s it. And while I was expecting not to play in the third movement of Owain’s composition, in performance you listen differently to the way you do in rehearsal, and I was aware that the audience might be expecting me to join the voice at any moment, and that creates a very interesting atmosphere. And then the way is prepared for the fourth movement, where everything is tied in together.

Few people will look back at the year 2020 with fondness, but many musicians, in particular, used their enforced isolation during lockdown to develop ideas and projects. For Helen Charlston this included an investigation of the music of Barbara Strozzi. These days we might describe Strozzi as a singer-songwriter, since she used to accompany herself on the theorbo; indeed her inspiration as a composer resulted directly from her considerable abilities as a performer.

As Helen says of La travagliata (‘The Troubled

Woman’): ‘I’ve always been drawn to Strozzi’s style of writing for the voice; she wrote for somebody with an extraordinary vocal range.

It’s emotional music and Strozzi sets text so that it’s exciting and dramatic to sing.’ The same can also be said of Monteverdi’s Lamento d’Arianna. Arianna (Ariadne) was Monteverdi’s second opera, following hard on the heels of Orfeo, but all of the music has been lost apart from ‘Ariadne’s Lament.’ Helen says of it that it’s a piece that Toby and I have been working on since we started making music together. It’s the perfect example of how effective monologue can be. It’s a nine-minute monologue and no one can reply – Ariadne is literally on a desert island on her own.

So what we’ve tried to do is to explore the intimacy of performing the piece using just two people, rather than augmenting the continuo line with a gamba, harpsichord, and what have you, and thereby to let the words of the story have its own clarity: it’s a really direct way of story-telling.

Toby enhances this by saying that what he’s always looking for is clarity, ‘so that whatever you play, whether it’s big or it’s small, there’s clarity of thought. Particularly in the field of continuo playing, every gesture should be laser-focused on what it is determined to do.’

And as Toby points out, the sound activity of Monteverdi’s early monodies is such that the involvement of the continuo line is minimal. The voice leads everything, and the continuo line has to support the singer in the most effective way possible, and that is often a case of ‘less is more’.

The last piece in the programme is Purcell’s An Evening Hymn. As Helen says, ‘it’s not about a specific person, but I hope the effect that it has is almost like a prayer, putting all of these stories to rest, to find solace or joy. The closing Hallelujah could be heard in so many different ways, but mainly it’s trying to find an answer to all of the questions that we’ve asked throughout the recording.’ Toby also points out that, aside from all the themes and questions around which the project has been based, ‘An Evening Hymn’ is also a fine piece of wellknown music. ‘It’s intense, emotional music, in the same way that Owain Park’s Battle Cry is an intense, emotional piece. You’ve got to find a way of ending a programme like this, and I can’t think of a better way of doing it than this.’ © 2022 Jeremy Summerly Jeremy Summerly is a conductor and broadcaster. He is Visiting Professor of Music History at Gresham College, Director of the Mayfield Festival, and he teaches at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge.

Texts and translations 1

O lead me to some peaceful gloom O lead me to some peaceful gloom, Where none but sighing lovers come, Where the shrill trumpets never sound, But one eternal hush goes round.

There let me soothe my pleasing pain, And never think of war again.

What glory can a lover have, To conquer, yet be still a slave?

John Fletcher (1579–1625)

2

L’Eraclito amoroso Udite amanti la cagione, oh Dio, Ch’a lagrimar mi porta: Nell’adorato e bello idolo mio, Che si fido credei, la fede è morta.

Listen you lovers, to the cause, oh God, of my weeping: in my handsome and adored idol, whom I believed to be faithful, faith is dead.

Vaghezza ho sol di piangere, Mi pasco sol di lagrime, Il duolo è mia delizia, E son miei gioie i gemiti.

Ogni martie aggradami, Ogni dolor dilettami, I singulti mi sanano, I sospir mi consolano.

Nell’adorato e bello …

I have pleasure only in weeping, I nourish myself only with tears.

Grief is my delight and moans are my joys.

Every anguish gives me pleasure, every pain delights me, sobs heal me, sighs console me.

Ma, se la fede negami Quell’incostante e perfido, Almen fede serbatemi, Fino alla morte, o lagrime.

Ogni tristezza assalgami,

But if that inconstant traitor denies me constancy, at least let my devotion serve me until death, o tears.

Every sadness soothes me,

Texts and translations Ogni cordoglio eternisi, Tanto ogni male affliggami Che m’uccida e sotterrimi.

Anon.

4

Restless in thought Restless in thought, disturbed in mind, Short sleeps, deep sighs, Ah! much, I fear Th’ inevitable time assigned

By Fate to Love’s approaching near.

When the dear object present is My fluttering soul is all on fire: His sight’s a heaven of happiness, And if he stays, I can’t (no, I can’t) retire.

Tell me, someone in Love well read, If these be symptoms of that pain.

Alas, I fear my heart is fled, Enslaved to Love, and Love in vain.

5

every sorrow sustains itself, every ill afflicts me so much that it slays and buries me.

Lost names seep away into stolen lands.

Her life is in shards. The Iceni Queen knows a woman cannot speak out and live.

Translation © Richard Kolb barbarastrozzi.com/Cor Donato editions, with permission

As for me, I cannot even utter her name: Boudicca, Boadicea? Two fragments of her passed down to me,

Dido's Lament Recitative Thy hand, Belinda; darkness shades me, On thy bosom let me rest, More I would, but Death invades me; Death is now a welcome guest.

Air When I am laid in earth, may my wrongs create No trouble in thy breast; Remember me, but ah! forget my fate.

Nahum Tate (1652–1715)

Song from She Ventures, and He Wins by ’Ariadne’(1695)

Battle Cry 6

I. Boudicca Among the foundations near here a story of fire and battle has escaped like fragrance.

Her teeth are fired in the ashes of London.

Romans displace her. Fine oils and wines bathe her fragile neck. The Thames delivers her.

as if she were never whole. Empty halves, cradling versions of history she never chose.

7

II. Philomela in the forest The falcon sings to me all day.

His feathers are limp and brown.

Turn tail, little falcon, fly far away, and leave me on my own.

You’ll be hooded, silenced!

In this place I was wounded, like bark drained for its sap, then bound in poison ivy.

Unspeakable! I cannot even cry out for my mother.

There in the canopy: are those her hands enfolding me?

The falcon sings to me all day.

His feathers are limp and brown.

Turn tail, little falcon, fly far away, and leave me on my own.

8

III. A singer’s ode to Sappho Oh Sappho! My voice is hoarse tonight, like torn papyrus.

It maims the words gathering in the temple to your name.

Are you there, Sappho?

Hear my voice when I call.

I pray, dwell in me: Make my voice your lyre, take my cries.

In the honeyed night, your face, Lady, will I seek: singing until, in gilded sandals, the dawn steps into birdsong.

9

Texts and translations IV. Marietta Glück, das mir verblieb, Rück zu mir, mein treues Lieb.

Your eye catches beyond me, betraying bliss seared, charred with lament.

A dried flower joyed in the summer, and now the seasons, resenting, succeed: the wild fires sorrow, follow the same snow again.

How frightened you are!

You drift away as your fingers float to my neck, feeling smooth skin, the memento of another.

Understand that resemblance is nothing.

I resemble her only as a woman resembles a woman; when we are irrevocable, as unalike as tears.

But this is only a song to you.

A heightened story that means more than it is.

I am a woman – of course I know this song.

Women do not reside in the world.

Death’s whorl is her dwelling place.

To descend is her debt, the song the net, capturing warm grief to settle on your cold flesh and prove what you feel is true.

11

In the world we inhabit the true love is not doomed to die.

How unkind and how final this mournful melody which makes no promise of the future for either the dead or the living.

The dead breathe stale air to sing.

Jealous? Why would I be jealous of the dead?

Georgia Way (b. 1992)

12

La travagliata Soccorrete, luci avare, un che muore di dolore; con un vostro sguardo almeno!

Si può fare del guardare carità che costi meno?

Help, you greedy eyes, one who is dying of grief, with just one glance of yours!

Is there any act of charity which costs less?

Proferite, labra care, sole sole due parole a chi muor cortesi almeno!

Si può fare del parlare cortesia che importi meno?

Utter, dear lips, just two little courteous words to one who is dying!

Is there any token of caring that costs less than two words?

Sodisfate, se vi pare, un costante fido amante con un vostro bacio almeno!

Si può dare del baciare guiderdon che vaglia meno?

Satisfy, if you would be so kind, a constant and faithful lover with just one kiss!

Is there any recompense which costs less?

Anon.

Translation © Candace A. Magner barbarastrozzi.com/Cor Donato editions, with permission

Lamento d’Arianna Lasciatemi morire.

E chi volete voi che mi conforte in così dura sorte, in così gran martire?

Lasciatemi morire.

Let me die; and who do you think could console me in so hard a fate, in so great a torment?

Let me die.

O Teseo, o Teseo mio, si che mio ti vo’ dir che mio pur sei, benchè t’involi, ahi crudo, a gl’occhi miei.

O Theseus, o my Theseus, yes, I will call you mine, who are mine, even if you fly, o cruel one, from my sight.

Turn back, Theseus mine, turn back Theseus, o God,

Texts and translations Volgiti Teseo mio, volgiti Teseo, o Dio, volgiti indietro a rimirar colei che lasciato ha per te la Patria e ’l regno, e in queste arene ancora, cibo di fere dispietate e crude lascierà l’ossa ignude.

O Teseo, o Teseo mio, se tu sapessi, o Dio, se tu sapessi, oimè, come s’affanna la povera Arianna; Forse, forse pentito rivolgeresti ancor la prora al lito.

Ma con l’aure serene tu te ne vai felice, ed io qui piango.

A te prepara Atene liete pompe superbe, ed io rimango, cibo di fere in solitarie arene.

Te l’uno e l’altro tuo vecchio parente stringeran lieti, ed io più non vedrovvi, o Madre, o Padre mio.

Dove, dov’è la fede che tanto mi giuravi?

Così nell’alta fede tu mi ripon degl’Avi? Son queste le corone onde m’adorn’il crine?

Questi gli scettri sono, queste le gemme e gl’ori?

Lasciarmi in abbandono a fera che mi strazi e mi divori?

Ah Teseo, ah Teseo mio,

turn back to look once more upon her who for your sake left home and kingdom, and now on these sandy shores, the prey of pitiless and cruel wild beasts, will leave but fleshless bones behind.

O Theseus, o my Theseus, if you but knew, o god, if you but knew, alas, the anguish of poor Ariadne, perchance, perchance, repenting you would turn back your prow towards the shore.

But before serene breezes you sail happily away, and I weep here; for you Athens prepares joyful, proud parades, and I languish, the prey of wild beasts on lonely strands; your aged parents one by one will happily embrace you, and I will never see you again, o mother, o father.

Where, where is the faith that you so often swore me?

Is this how you raise me to the high throne of my forefathers?

Are these the crowns with which you adorn my tresses?

Are these the sceptres, these the jewels, and the gold: leaving me abandoned for the wild beasts to rend to pieces and devour?

Ah, Theseus, ah my Theseus, will you leave to die,

lascierai tu morire invan piangendo, invan gridando aita la misera Arianna ch’a te fidossi e ti diè gloria e vita?

weeping in vain, crying in vain for help, unhappy Ariadne, who entrusted herself to you and gave you fame and life?

Ahi, che non pur rispondi, ahi, che più d’aspe è sordo a miei lamenti!

O nembi, o turbi, o venti sommergetelo voi dentr’a quell’onde!

Correte orche e balene, e delle membra immonde empiete le voragini profonde!

Che parlo, ahi, che vaneggio?

Misera, oimè, che chieggio?

O Teseo, o Teseo mio, non son, non son quell’io, non son quell’io che i feri detti sciolse; parlò l’affanno mio, parlò il dolore, parlò la lingua si ma non già il core.

Alas, he does not even answer!

Alas, he is deafer than an asp to my laments!

O clouds, o whirlwinds, o gales, submerge him beneath the waves, hurry sea ogres and whales, and with your foul bodies fill the deep abyss!

What am I saying, alas, what raving!

Unhappy one, ah me, what am I asking for?

O Theseus, o my Theseus, it is not I who spoke those wild words; it was my anguish that spoke, my torment, it was the tongue that spoke, yes, but not the heart.

Misera, ancor dò loco a la tradita speme, e non si spegne fra tanto scherno ancor d’amor il foco.

Spegni tu morte omai le fiamme indegne.

O Madre, o Padre, o de l’antico Regno superbi alberghi, ov’ebbi d’or la cuna.

O servi, o fidi amici – ahi fato indegno! – mirate ove m’ha scort’empia fortuna, mirate di che duol m’ha fatto herede l’amor mio, la mia fede

Unhappy me, do I still give room to betrayed hopes, and not even amidst so much scorn will the fire of love be extinguished?

Death, put out at last the unworthy flames.

O mother, o father, o proud palaces of my former kingdom, where stood my golden cradle, o servants, o faithful friends (alas, undeserved fate!) behold to what pass my pitiless fate has brought me!

Behold to what woe my love, my faith

Texts and translations

14

Biographies

e l’altrui inganno.

Così va chi tropp’ama e troppo crede.

and another’s deceitfulness have made me heir.

Such is the fate of him who loves and trusts too much.

Ottavio Rinuccini (1562–1621)

Translation: Harmonia Mundi, with permission

An Evening Hymn Now that the sun hath veiled his light And bid the world goodnight; To the soft bed my body I dispose, But where shall my soul repose?

Dear God, even in thy arms, and can there be Any so sweet security!

Then to thy rest, O my soul! and singing, praise The mercy that prolongs thy days.

Hallelujah!

William Fuller (1608–1675)

Since winning the London Handel Singing Competition in 2018, Helen Charlston has crafted a place for herself at the forefront of the classical music scene in the UK and abroad. She was a founder participant of the Rising Star of the Enlightenment programme, working alongside the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment for two years, most notably appearing in their film version of ‘Dido’s Lament’ inspired by Coldplay’s iconic video of ‘The Scientist’. She was a 2021–2 laureate of Les Arts Florissants Young Artist Programme: Jardin des Voix, touring Handel Partenope (Rosmira) across Europe.

Helen is a BBC New Generation Artist (2021–3), and an avid recitalist, performing regularly at Wigmore Hall and Holywell Music Room.

She won the Loveday Song Prize at the 2021 Kathleen Ferrier Awards. She is an advocate for new music, particularly that performed on period instruments, and regularly commissions composers as she has done with the support of City Music Foundation for this recording. At the height of the 2020 Covid lockdown, she commissioned 15 composers to create the Isolation Songbook with her partner, the baritone Michael Craddock, also released on Delphian (DCD34253).

Helen began singing as chorister and head chorister of St Albans Abbey Girls Choir, and

went on to take up a choral scholarship at Trinity College, Cambridge where she studied music.

Lutenist and guitarist Toby Carr is known as a versatile and innovative artist, performing with some of the finest musicians in the business. Toby was introduced to the lute while studying classical guitar at Trinity Laban, and developed this interest during a masters degree at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, where he has since been welcomed back as a professor.

He has developed a busy performing career on a variety of plucked instruments, as a soloist, continuo player, accompanist and chamber musician.

The challenge of presenting old music to new audiences in exciting and engaging ways takes up most of his professional life, and as such Toby has performed with most of the principal period instrument groups in the UK, as well as many modern orchestras and opera companies.

Toby’s interests outside of music include reading, cooking and travelling, though when not working he generally tries to do as little as possible.

Isolation Songbook Helen Charlston, Michael Craddock, Alexander Soares DCD34253

PRESTO Editor’s Choice

The feeling of life gone into standstill which so many of us experienced in spring 2020 was especially acute for singers Helen Charlston and Michael Craddock, deprived not only of live concert opportunities but forced to put their April marriage plans on hold. Seeking ways to redirect her creative energies, Helen wrote a poem for Michael to mark their postponed wedding date, and the composer Owain Park, a friend of the couple, set it to music.

Helen began to contact other composers and poets, and unexpectedly but quickly a recording project took shape that would both fill the empty time and bear witness to it, with music proving its ability to build connections across physical distance.

‘A recital that’s hard to resist, at once fresh and profoundly familiar’ — Gramophone, March 2021

Phrases Héloïse Werner soprano; Colin Alexander cello, Amy Harman bassoon, Calum Huggan percussion, Lawrence Power violin/viola, Daniel Shao flute, Laura Snowden guitar DCD34169

Luminous and daring, this celebration of Héloïse Werner’s multifaceted gifts is nourished by rich dualities. Phrases reveals Werner as both singer and composer, as an artist shaped by both her native France and her adopted UK, and as a soloist of captivating individuality who is also an intrepid collaborator. The solos and duos that make up the album comprise five of Werner’s own compositions, four of Georges Aperghis’s avant-garde classic Récitations, and six newly commissioned works, by composers ranging from Cheryl Frances-Hoad and Nico Muhly to Oliver Leith. The calibre of Héloïse’s instrumental partners in the duos reflects the degree to which this extraordinary young performer is already valued and cherished by her peers.

New in June 2022

SONG The Hermes Experiment

PRESTO Recordings of the Year 2021 – Finalist

DCD34274

Calen-o: Songs from the North of Ireland Carolyn Dobbin, Iain Burnside

Hot on the heels of their acclaimed debut HERE WE ARE, The Hermes Experiment’s second Delphian album is an equally bold statement. Songs commissioned specially for the ensemble – by Philip Venables, Ayanna WitterJohnson and others – are interleaved with new arrangements (of composers including Barbara Strozzi, Clara Schumann and Lili Boulanger) for the group’s distinctive line-up of voice, clarinet, harp and double bass. Moving and original, SONG reinvents a genre: here every instrument is a voice in its own right, and all four performers carry the drama.

A passionate advocate for the art music of her native Northern Ireland, mezzosoprano Carolyn Dobbin has put together this programme that attests to a rich yet little-known tradition. Who knew that doyen of Anglican church music Charles Wood was in fact an Ulsterman, and a fine composer of art song? Premiere recordings of Wood and of the forward-looking Hamilton Harty are interleaved with songs by Joan Trimble and Howard Ferguson in a journey of delightful discovery.

‘Britain’s music scene offers numerous dynamic small-sized groups, but The Hermes Experiment, so spellbinding, so imaginative, continue to stand alone’ — The Times, October 2021

‘With her rich palette of tone and colour, Dobbin knows how to communicate text and music, while Iain Burnside’s accompaniments are beautifully managed.

Both voice and piano are finely captured and well balanced’ — BBC Music Magazine, May 2018

DCD34187

DCD34283