Heloise Werner: close-ups

HÉL OÏSE close-ups

Héloïse Werner soprano, cello^

Max Baillie violin, viola* , Hardanger fiddle**

Julian Azkoul violin

Ruth Gibson viola

Colin Alexander cello

Kit Downes cello

Marianne Schofield double bass

I am extremely grateful to Lieselotte Charliaguet and the PRS Foundation’s Women Make Music Fund for generously supporting this album. I would also like to thank the following people for their beautiful artistic contributions to the album: Emma Werner, Colin Alexander, Raphaël Neal, Errollyn Wallen, Marianne Schofield, Max Baillie, Kit Downes, Richard Birchall, Julian Azkoul, Ruth Gibson, Paul Baxter, Will Coates-Gibson and Jack Davis. Many thanks also to Toks Dada and the Southbank Centre for hosting the album launch; SJE Arts for providing the recording space; Wigmore Hall, the Marchus Trust, Hinrichsen Foundation and Vaughan Williams Foundation for co-commissioning Les Leçons du mardi; Radio France for commissioning close-ups; Laurence Osborn for commissioning the Hildegard of Bingen arrangement; and finally my amazing manager Megan Steller for her tireless work, support and brilliant liner notes.

— Héloïse Werner

Recorded on 18-20 September 2023 at SJE Arts, Oxford

Producer/Engineer: Paul Baxter

24-bit digital editing: Jack Davis

24-bit digital mixing & mastering: Paul Baxter

Cover photograph: Raphaël Neal

Session photography: foxbrush.co.uk

Booklet & traycard design: Eliot Garcia

Booklet editor: Henry Howard

Delphian Records Ltd – Edinburgh – UK www.delphianrecords.com

1 Barbara Strozzi (1619–1677)

arr. Richard Birchall (b. 1981) Che si può fare, Op. 8 No. 6 HW MB JA RG CA MS [5:15]

2 Alexander/Baillie/Downes/Schofield/Werner Echo I HW^ MB** CA KD MS [4:13]

3 Héloïse Werner (b. 1991) Les Leçons du mardi HW MB JA RG CA [9:10]

4 Julie Pinel (fl. 1710–37)

arr. Marianne Schofield (b. 1991) Sombres lieux (from Nouveau recueil d’airs sérieux et à boire) HW MB* CA MS

5 Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179)

arr. Colin Alexander (b. 1986) & Héloïse Werner O vis eternitatis

6 Alexander/Baillie/Downes/Schofield/Werner Echo II

MB** CA KD MS

Héloïse Werner close-ups

8 Errollyn Wallen (b. 1958) arr. Errollyn Wallen Tree HW MB JA RG CA [4:51] 9 Alexander/Baillie/Downes/Schofield/Werner Echo III

MB** CA KD MS

10 Héloïse Werner arr. Colin Alexander & Héloïse Werner Unspecified Intentions HW MB JA RG CA MS [2:38]

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Tracks 1, 5, 8 and 10 are premiere recordings in these arrangements; all other tracks are premiere recordings Lullaby for a sister is dedicated to Jean-Pierre & Lieselotte Charliaguet

During the pandemic, when our living rooms shape-shifted into whole worlds, we became – whether we liked it or not – anthropologists of our own movements. Our senses, once blunted by the near constant hustle of everydayness, became sharper; small parts of our lives suddenly arranged themselves into soap operas, things that would have previously elicited no more than a roll of the eyes became the gold dust which held the power to change a bad day to a good one. The rare opportunities to venture outside opened up a whole new opportunity for peoplewatching: there goes the angry dog walker, the chatty mother, the moody teenager, all players in the Shakespearean drama we wrote ourselves into. Héloïse Werner, not one to let good characters walk away, turned her observations into this recording’s title track, close-ups, a satirical composition that explores four stereotypical people we might encounter as we bustle about. There is the posh voice and the annoying voice; the stern, boring voice and the calm voice. Inside of each of us lies all these characters – the funny, witty self chafing against the desperate, noisy version: not something to be judged, but something useful (and sometimes hilarious) to observe as we make our way through our days. We are complex beings, Werner’s music points out, at odds with ourselves sometimes, and at others blissfully

unaware of our patterns of behaviour. It is at this latter point when we become most fascinating for musical ethnographers.

Héloïse was on a train to Birmingham when the idea for this album struck, and, like in many instances of creative inspiration, it was a (literal) light that did the trick. ‘It was evening, and the light was that very particular orange,’ a kind of softness in the glow that conjured an immediate sound world, ‘and I thought of creating something for voice and strings.’ After the critical acclaim for her debut Phrases, the right concept for a sophomore album took a little while to settle. Phrases was a compilation of pieces – some self-composed, others commissioned – for a line-up of guest artists. To follow it Héloïse wanted to create something cohesive that you could listen to from beginning to end in a kind of narrative arc – not a prescribed one, but a journey to take in your own time, with plenty of stops at which you could get out and take a look around.

To realise this vision of a series of interconnected tracks, she needed to put together a group of musicians who would invest in that concept, but also add their own light to Héloïse’s in a significant way. ‘I wanted to do something new where I

could have a core group of amazing people, who would be involved very collaboratively, not just as session musicians,’ she said, and those threads from each artist – Max Baillie (violin/viola/Hardanger fiddle), Julian Azkoul (violin), Ruth Gibson (viola), Colin Alexander (cello), Kit Downes (cello), Marianne Schofield (bass) – are stitched into close-ups in colours just as vibrant as Héloïse’s own distinctive voice. Marianne and Colin both feature as arrangers, alongside Héloïse herself, both adding their own shades to the works by Pinel and Hildegard of Bingen respectively. close-ups has become, in many ways, not just a journey for the listener, but a thrilling culmination of the things that makes Héloïse the artist that she instinctually is.

Here you will find a work from the twelfth century alongside brand-new writing, interspersed with improvisation, and running through it, a spirit of conversation and collaboration. ‘I surrounded myself with artists who are incredible, and multitalented,’ she said. That is an art in and of itself, finding people who bring the same sense of freshness to a piece written yesterday as one written hundreds of years ago.

The art of making music that can speak to a contemporary audience has a lot to do with reflection: why write, why sing, why play?

Why choose the instruments that we choose, why put this piece in front of this other one?

‘The lyrics [of the Barbara Strozzi song Che si può fare, which opens the album] have made me reflect a lot about what I can do as an artist, as a singer. And something I’ve hit on is that we can all look closer. [This record] is about people, and about being able to witness one another.’

‘What can you do? / The stars, intractable, / have no pity. / Since the gods don’t give / a measure of peace in my suffering, / what can I do? / What can you say? From the heavens disasters / keep raining down on me; / Since that treacherous Cupid / denies respite to my torture, / what can I say?’

The title track, close-ups, a piece for soprano and violin, with words by Héloïse’s sister, the multi-faceted creative Emma Werner, ‘uses both French and English language, and one of the lines is “you don’t need many words to make people come alive”. You can make people come alive just with sounds, with facial expressions, you can see people in more than one way.’ Pressed to sum up the album in its entirety – perhaps an unreasonable request – Werner does not hesitate: ‘it is all about that line about making people come alive; it’s about the voice and giving voice, and intimacy and colour.’ She

wanted, above all, to make a record that people would find beauty in, that they’d be moved by. Of course, you can’t guess how people might respond to different artistic offerings, but that’s no matter: ‘I hope it brings something – maybe a sense of play, or fun, or calm, or peace, or all of those things depending on what they need,’ she says. ‘I just want to improve people’s lives a little bit, in whatever way that may be.’ It does feel like a particularly important time to consider the use of the arts in a world constantly fractious, constantly full of hurt. ‘The world is awful,’ Werner says, and we both nod sombrely at this; ‘it somehow always is, but this moment feels particularly difficult.’ This record is an offering, a small answer to that seemingly impossible question Strozzi poses about how we can respond: ‘I can’t save the planet, I can’t save lives, but I can give people something meaningful to pin a little hope to.’ Strozzi’s question is an invitation, an open door – and acts here as a point of departure. ‘I like the fact that it is this sort of dark, desperate lament, that it is completely apt for the times in which we live, asking questions that I try and address across the remainder of the record.’

She answers this question, or works towards an answer, in a variety of ways, and across a spectrum of tone. There is the serious, melancholic yearning of Julie

Pinel’s Sombres lieux and Hildegard of Bingen’s O vis eternitatis; and alongside them Les Leçons du mardi. Another collaboration between Werner and her sister Emma, the piece offers a damning ‘take on the infamous “Tuesday Lectures”, once held at the Salpêtrière hospital in nineteenth-century Paris. Led by neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot, the lectures saw “hysterical” women, institutionalised at the Salpêtrière, forced to act out their symptoms before an eager Parisian public.’ The work ‘reinvents the lectures in a new setting: this time, it is the woman’ who gets the close-up, the agency. Where once she was the spectacle, here she is in her power, controlling the presentation, making ‘the string quartet players recite quotes taken from outdated scientific texts on female hysteria as well as twenty-first-century everyday sources.’ There is the beautiful and moving Tree by Errollyn Wallen, ‘an incredible inspiration’ to Héloïse, and her own Lullaby for a sister. We move towards the humorous: Unspecified Intentions, the only cross-over with Héloïse’s Phrases, is here rearranged for quintet and voice, the strings reacting live and improvisatorially to the voice. It is a piece ‘made for live performance’, so by virtue of its structure, insisted upon being ‘a one-take wonder in the studio’, the energy audibly fizzing in the final mix. Then there are the colourful

Echo improvisations – sometimes funny, occasionally absurd, and often linked to pieces heard a few tracks before, hinting at melodies and ideas just experienced, creating opportunities for the musicians to laugh and mock, fully enveloped by the characters they have shrugged on like coats – and of course, close-ups itself, all the pieces working together and separately to create a complex tapestry of answers.

And so, the journey begins. Strozzi’s ‘what can I do, what can you say?’ sets a tone with its lament, its plea, that resonates now as it must have done when it was written in 1664. Then, across our journey into the orange Birmingham light, we come to a new question, which is sometimes even more useful than an answer: ‘can you still hear it too?’ Ah, look, now – there is hope. Do you see it there? Look closer.

There is something cyclical, something reverent about observation. About looking carefully, about paying attention. Héloïse peers closer with each piece on this record, at the way we are – the generous parts, but also the less generous: the petty, the mean-spirited, the annoying. She allows all those parts grace, inviting us to turn up – to life, and to this music – as our most whole selves, messiness intact. Not just inviting: encouraging it.

© 2024 Megan Steller

Megan Steller is a writer and artist manager from Melbourne, Australia.

Che si può fare

Che si può fare?

Le stelle rubelle

Non hanno pietà.

Che s’el cielo non dà

Un influsso di pace al mio penare,

Che si può fare?

Che si può dire?

Da gl’astri disastri

Mi piovano ogn’hor;

Che le perfido amor

Un respiro diniega al mio martire,

Che si può dire?

Gaudenzio Brunacci (1631–1669)

What can you do?

What can you do?

The stars, intractable, have no pity. Since the gods don’t give a measure of peace in my suffering, what can I do?

What can you say?

From the heavens disasters keep raining down on me; Since that treacherous Cupid denies respite to my torture, what can I say?

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

Les Leçons du mardi

In the last decades of the nineteenth century, neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot held public theatrical demonstrations on hysteria, at the Salpêtrière hospital in Paris. These ‘hysteria shows’ became known as ‘Les Leçons du mardi’, or ‘The Tuesday Lectures’. Patients interned at the hospital, almost all of them women, were brought in front of an eager Parisian audience to act out their symptoms.

Places in Man, Hippocratic text, 5th century BC: ‘The womb is the origin of all diseases’

A briefe discourse of a disease called the Suffocation of the Mother, Edward Jorden, 1603: ‘The passive condition of womankind is subject unto more diseases […] than men are especially in regarde of that part from whence this difference which we speak of doth arise […] we do observe that maidens and widowes are most subject thereunto’

A Treatise of the Spleen and Vapours: Or Hypochondriacal and Hysterical Affections, Richard Blackmore, 1726: Women have ‘a more volatile, dissipable, and weak Constitution of the Spirits, and a more soft, tender, and delicate Texture of the Nerves’

Traité des maladies nerveuses ou vapeurs: et particulièrement de l’hystérie et de l’hypocondrie, Jean-Baptiste LouyerVillermay, 1816: ‘A man cannot be hysterical, he has no uterus’

A treatise on the nervous diseases of women; comprising an inquiry into the nature, causes, and treatment of spinal and hysterical disorders, Thomas Laycock, M.D., 1840: ‘women in whom the generative organs are developed or in action, are those most liable to hysterical diseases. […] Indeed the general fact is so universally acknowledged, and so constantly corroborated by daily observation, that anything in the shape of proof is unnecessary’

‘Second Principle: Hysteria is peculiar to Females’

Diseases of woman: their causes and cure familiarly explained, with practical hints for their prevention, and for the preservation of female health, Frederick Hollick, 1849: ‘Hysteria: We now come to the most mysterious, confusing and rebellious of all female diseases. Almost every woman has either experienced or seen what is called hysterics’

‘Women disposed to hysteria are generally capricious in their character, and often whimsical in their conduct’

‘In regard to the starting point, or original seat, of Hysteria, there seems to be no doubt of its being the Uterus […] The Uterus, it must be remembered, is the controlling organ of the female body’

L’hystérie viscérale: nouveaux fragments de clinique médicale, Auguste Fabre, 1883: ‘As a general rule, all women are hysterical and […] every woman carries within her the seeds of hysteria’

‘what constitutes the temperament of a woman is rudimentary hysteria’

On insanity and nervous disorders peculiar to women, in some of their medical and medico-legal aspects, Thomas More Madden, 1884: ‘Amongst the moral pre disposing causes of […] hysteria must be included […] the ill-directed tendencies of female education […] to force woman’s intellect into channel and pursuits which nature has obviously intended for the opposite sex’

Nervous Disorders of Women, Bernard Hollander, 1916: ‘Women suffering from disordered nerves usually show a loss of

control over their emotions […]. When married they are the terror of husbands […] False accusation of sexual nature are common with them. All is caprice with them’

Urban Dictionary - Bitches be crazy (definition), 2011: ‘Not a rude utterance, or misogynistic remark, merely a statement of fact, alluding to the widely accepted and scientifically proven postulate that states women are crazy’

PMSBuddy app, 2010: ‘An app […] for all guys out there suffering the monthly Psychotic Mood Shifts from their better halves’

Fredrick app, 2016: ‘Track her cycle, keep your sanity’

WikiHow Article, 2021: ‘How to Recognize the Potential Crazy Girlfriend’

Dragged from the ward to the stage of insanity – I bow my body to please upright men gathered for the trial of a sanitised witch; I stare into their lens – immortalised in labelled lunacy and silenced pain. They doctor shouts into shrieks and drown the freak in formallin. I am a medical muse for the beautiful time trapped in the male museum of curiosities.

How spectacular the dissection of a damaged mind – how easily words erase the patient.

compiled and written by Emma Werner (b. 1994)

Sombres lieux

trans. Henry Howard 4

Sombres lieux, obscures forêts, Vous paraissez sensibles au tourment que j’endure ; Quand vous abandonnez votre aimable parure

Vous semblez partager tous mes ennuis secrets. Un triste éloignement m’arrache à ce que j’aime. Mais si l’amour couronnant nos soupirs Nous rassemble en ces lieux au gré de nos désirs, Bois charmant, secondez une tendresse extrême De vos ombres, formez s’il se peut la nuit même Pour mieux cacher l’excès de nos plaisirs. anon.

Gloomy places, dark forests, you seem to feel the torment I’m enduring; when you drop your lovely veil it seems you’re sharing all my secret woes. A sad estrangement is tearing me away from what I love:

but if love, crowning our sighs, should bring us together in these places, as our desires please, charming woods, lend a hand to a most tender love with your shadows, make it night itself if you can, the better to hide the excess of our pleasures.

O vis eternitatis

O vis eternitatis que omnia ordinasti in corde tuo, per Verbum tuum omnia creata sunt sicut voluisti, et ipsum Verbum tuum induit carnem in formatione illa que educta est de Adam. Et sic indumenta ipsius a maximo dolore abstersa sunt.

O quam magna est benignitas Salvatoris, qui omnia liberavit per incarnationem suam, quam divinitas exspiravit sine vinculo peccati. Et sic …

Gloria Patri et Filio et Spiritui sancto. Et sic …

Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179)

Strength of eternity, who have ordained all things in your heart, by your Word were all things created according to your will, and your Word itself took on the robe of flesh in that form that has come down from Adam: and so his own robe was destroyed by the greatest pain.

How great is the goodness of our Saviour, who set all things free by his incarnation, which his godhead lived and died without the fetters of sin. And so …

Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit. And so …

trans. Henry Howard

close-ups

Il faut peu de mots, seuls des sons pour faire  vivre des personnages - a voice and no pencil draw  beings into being - écoute - they hang  insubstantial - sans nom sans parole  sans matière - molecules  collide at their outline and bounce  on your eardrum - peu de mots seuls des sons. Ils existent.

Lullaby for a sister

When a dove coos, do you travel to that time too –

we both sat by the pool where I learnt how to swim and at dusk the stone held on the afternoon sun; church bells chimed the hour, always a little late –

I suppose the dove died just like August ended, yet her song followed me, do you still hear it too?

Does the tree own me?

Does the tree own the moon, the impassive moon?

Do the leaves seem to sing in the dark?

Does the tree own my heart?

Do I lie, Do I lie, In the arms of his art, confounding art?

I’m perplexed by the rune I’m perplexed by rooted trees, by rooted trees.

© Errollyn Wallen

Emma Werner

Emma Werner Tree

Biographies

French-born and London-based soprano and composer Héloïse Werner was one of the four shortlisted nominees in the Young Artist category of the Royal Philharmonic Society Music Awards 2017 and one of BBC Radio3’s 31 under 31 Young Stars 2020. From the 2023/4 season, Héloïse joins London’s Wigmore Hall as an Associate Artist, a position she will hold for five years.

As a soprano, Héloïse recently made her debut with the London Chamber Orchestra, BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, CBSO, Nash Ensemble, and at The Grange Festival, and sang the role of Madame DuVal in Sarah Angliss’ new opera Giant, opening the Aldeburgh Festival 2023. She is also a founding member of awardwinning contemporary quartet The Hermes Experiment, with whom she has recorded two albums for Delphian Records (HERE WE ARE, DCD34244 and SONG, DCD34274). As a composer, Héloïse has written for the CBSO, Aurora Orchestra, the Choir of Clare College, Cambridge, Maîtrise de Radio France, London Handel Festival, violist Lawrence Power, bassoonist Amy Harman, violinist Hae-Sun Kang (Festival Présences), pianist Mishka Rushdie Momen (Lucerne Festival), CoMA (CoMA Festival), The Gesualdo Six, The Bach Choir and St Paul’s Cathedral Choir, amongst others.

Her debut album Phrases was released in 2022 on Delphian (DCD34269); one of the Sunday Times 10 Best Classical Records of 2022, it was shortlisted in the Gramophone Classical Music Awards 2023.

Colin Alexander is a cellist and composer working across a range of disciplines and traditions. Whilst collaborating with artists such as Kit Downes, Héloïse Werner, Abel Selaocoe, Max Baillie and Jas Kayser, Colin also performs regularly with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, LSO Ensemble, 12 Ensemble and a variety of world-music and improvisation groups. Alongside his performing schedule, he has written new works for the London Philharmonic Orchestra, London Contemporary Orchestra, Contrechamps, The Mercury Quartet, Hyper Duo and Le Nouvel Ensemble Contemporain.

He has released two albums with Addelam on the Big Ship label, features on both Tre Voci – Auro and I hope this finds you well in these strange times – vol. 2 on Nonclassical and Timelapse on Accidental Records as well as Homework, While Swimming and codi on October House Records. In 2024, Colin published and recorded four new solo cello suites (available on October House Records) and composed and performed the music for Bijan Sheibani’s new play The Cord at the Bush Theatre, London.

Anglo-Lebanese violinist Julian Azkoul is in demand as an ensemble leader and soloist, appearing as guest director of Britten Sinfonia, Camerata Nordica and Archets du Léman, and guest leader of Façade Ensemble, Riot Ensemble, Camerata Venia and Nexus Orchestra. He has performed as first violinist of the Jubilee and Piatti string quartets and co-led UK orchestras such as the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Hallé Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, CBSO and Manchester Collective. He has featured as a soloist with the Lebanese Philharmonic Orchestra and Camerata Nordica. He is the artistic director of United Strings of Europe, curating programmes and arranging music for the ensemble. The group has released four critically acclaimed albums in three years with BIS Records, with more in the pipeline. Almost all the ensemble’s albums feature Julian’s arrangements and transcriptions. His arrangements have also been performed by other groups including Scottish Ensemble, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Kaleidoscope Chamber Orchestra, Ebony Ensemble and Lapland Chamber Orchestra and his transcription of Gareth Farr’s Mondo Rondo has been published by Promethean Editions. Julian has a keen interest in Middle Eastern music. He is grateful to have been loaned a fine violin by Joseph Rocca and is fortunate to play with bows by Nicolas Maline and Christopher Graves.

British-German violinist Max Baillie’s musical life is a colourful one. He has played deep in the Sahara at the Festival du Desert, led Björk’s orchestra in the Royal Albert Hall, and worked with artists including Bobby McFerrin, Stevie Wonder, Oumou Sangare, Zakir Hussain, John Williams, Anoushka Shankar and Jacob Collier. Max is a member of Lodestar Trio with its unique Scandinavian folk versions of Bach and other Baroque music, and also of ZRI — a quintet inspired by the Viennese Red Hedgehog Tavern where Brahms and Schubert heard the Gypsies play. Both groups play all over Europe. He enjoys appearing as guest leader-director for ensembles including CHAARTS in Switzerland, Manchester Collective, Scottish Ensemble, Sinfonia Cymru and Britten Sinfonia, and collaborating at chamber music festivals across Europe. He is a skilled improviser and has appeared as soloist on many film scores including Napoleon and Wonka. Max was mentored by the legendary violinist Ivry Gitlis and since 2022 has run a concert series in his hometown of St Leonards-on-Sea, curating creative programmes for the local community. Max also plays the mandolin, and is a graduate of the Yehudi Menuhin School, and later Christ’s College, Cambridge where he was awarded first class honours in Political Philosophy.

Kit Downes is a BBC Jazz Award-winning, Mercury Music Award-nominated solo recording artist for ECM Records. He has toured the world playing piano, church organ and harmonium with his own bands (ENEMY, Troyka and Elt) as well as with artists such as Squarepusher, Bill Frisell, Empirical, Andrew Cyrille, Sofia Jernberg, Benny Greb, Mica Levi and Sam Amidon.

Kit performs solo pipe organ and solo piano concerts, as well as playing in collaborations with others including saxophonists Tom Challenger and Ben van Gelder, cellist Lucy Railton and composer Shiva Feshareki.

He has written commissions for Cheltenham Music Festival, London Contemporary Orchestra, Biel Organ Festival, Ensemble Klang at ReWire Festival, the Scottish Ensemble, Cologne Philharmonie and the Wellcome Trust, and has performed solo organ concerts at the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, Lausanne Cathedral, Flagey in Brussels and the Royal Albert Hall in London as well as the Southbank Royal Festival Hall, Rochester Jazz Festival (US), St Olafs Minneapolis, Stavanger Konserthus, Aarhus Philharmonic Musikhuset, Darmstadt Organ Festival, Stuttgart Organ Festival, Laurenskerke in Rotterdam, Orgelpark in Amsterdam, Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church at Berlin Jazz Festival and the BBC Proms amongst many others.

Irish violist Ruth Gibson is an expressive artist whose freedom and malleability show themselves in her great range of collaborations. As an internationally recognised chamber musician and soloist she has appeared at the world’s leading concert halls, including Wigmore Hall, Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Centre, Het Concertgebouw, Queen Elizabeth Hall and Berlin Konzerthaus. As soloist, she has performed under Sir John Eliot Gardiner with the Bournemouth Symphony, Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante with Dmitry Sitkovetsky at Clandeboye Festival in Belfast and at the BBC Proms with Manchester Collective. A member of the Castalian Quartet, she is also Principal Violist with Aurora Orchestra, interpreting great orchestral repertoire from memory, from Beethoven to Berlioz.

premieres of many new solo works for double bass, including solo performances at Wigmore Hall, Kings Place, Arctic Arts Festival Norway and MaerzMusik Berlin. She is active as an improviser and arranger and was thrilled to make a contemporary arrangement of ‘Sombres lieux’ by Julie Pinel especially for this album.

Marianne has performed as a chamber musician with the Haffner Wind Ensemble, GBSR duo, the Solem and Navarra quartets, United Strings of Europe and Manchester Collective. She also performs regularly with UK orchestras including Aurora Orchestra, BBC Symphony Orchestra, English National Opera, English Chamber Orchestra and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Marianne studied at the Royal Academy of Music and the University of Cambridge, and is a graduate of the Hallé/RNCM String Leadership Scheme.

Originally from London, Marianne Schofield is a double bass player with a strong commitment to chamber and contemporary music. Alongside Héloïse Werner, she is a founder member of the ground-breaking contemporary quartet The Hermes Experiment, and she is also an artistic board member of the award-winning contemporary collective Riot Ensemble. Marianne is committed to presenting new music in an engaging way and has performed the

Héloïse Werner: Phrases with Colin Alexander cello, Amy Harman bassoon, Calum Huggan percussion, Lawrence Power violin, viola, Laura Snowden guitar DCD34269

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.

‘a soprano of extraordinary range, tone and vocal abilities’ — Gramophone, June 2022, Editor’s ChoiCE

HERE WE ARE

The Hermes Experiment DCD34244

With over sixty commissions to its credit after just six years of existence, The Hermes Experiment has already proved itself a force to be reckoned with in the creation and advocacy of new music. Now, ten of those commissions are brought together on the ensemble’s debut album release, showcasing its idiosyncratic lineup of harp, clarinet, soprano and double bass in a compelling survey of styles and individual voices.

‘A most enticing calling card... [Track 1] immediately shows off the ensemble’s frontline asset: the vivacious soprano voice of Heloise Werner, who pounces on individual notes and words with a tiger’s tenacity and a kitten’s glee. The other musicians are equally crucial in the album’s tapestry of sounds’ — The Times, August 2020

Isolation Songbook

Helen Charlston, Michael Craddock, Alexander Soares DCD34253

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, not only deprived 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

Stef Conner: Riddle Songs

Stef Conner voice & lyre, Hanna Marti voice & harp, Everlasting Voices DCD34227

No songs in Old English have survived from the period in which the language was originally used. And yet everything we know of AngloSaxon culture – as preserved in written texts or rediscovered by archaeologists – presents a compelling, if tantalisingly incomplete, picture of a society in which the creative impulse was central. Riddle Songs is a concept album with a difference: a personal vision of a world just out of reach. Its music and its stories, its seasons and its creatures are addressed or conjured up in hymns, spells, and that most AngloSaxon of poetic forms – the riddle. Conner’s settings draw on English folksong, medieval music scholarship and a range of unlikelier inspirations to make something entirely her own.

‘Mesmerising … springs surprises at every turn' — Presto Classical, October 2020, Editor’s ChoiCE

Shortlisted at the 2023 Gramophone Awards (Contemporary category)

Stone, Salt & Sky: Beamish – Maconchy – Strachan – Clarke

GAIA Duo DCD34263

Violin and cello duo GAIA’s debut album features three works specially written for the duo, and also bears testimony to their championing of overlooked composers from the past. Elements of folk and jazz string-playing styles rub shoulders with traditional chamber-music imperatives in a programme that is full of women’s voices: those of the performers; of composers Sally Beamish, Rebecca Clarke and Elizabeth Maconchy; and of the singers of two Scottish folksongs, taped recordings of which frame Duncan Strachan’s hauntingly evocative Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird

‘fiery confidence … Only a few tracks in and you’re transfixed’

— The Scotsman, April 2023, FivE stars

Martin Suckling: The Tuning

Aurora Orchestra principal players; Marta Fontanals-Simmons

mezzo-soprano, Christopher Glynn piano DCD34235

The everyday is transfigured in this intimate collection of chamber music and songs by leading young Scottish composer Martin Suckling – settings for mezzo-soprano and piano of five magical, moonlit poems by Michael Donaghy and a string quintet written in collabora tion with the poet Frances Leviston. Nocturne for violin and cello bears witness to Suckling’s night vigils at the composing desk, setting down his pen as the stillness starts to ripple with birdsong, while the cello solo Her Lullaby is a nostalgic reflection on the early years of parenthood that also displays Suckling’s characteristically refined harmonic palette.

‘This beautifully played and recorded disc shows [Suckling’s] more intimate side’— BBC Music Magazine, March 2022, FivE stars

Emily Howard: The Anvil

Kate Royal, Claire Booth, Hugh Cutting, Christopher Purves soloists; BBC Singers, Hallé Choirs, BBC Philharmonic / Ben Gernon, Vimbayi Kaziboni DCD34285

The imagined sounds of mass protest run through composer Emily Howard and poet Michael Symmons Roberts’s The Anvil, written to mark the bicentenary of the 1819 Peterloo massacre, in which crowds protesting for universal suffrage in St Peter’s Fields, Manchester, were brutally crushed. To a solo soprano who narrates and remembers and a baritone who seems caught in the action, the work adds the immense forces of four choirs – each given music tailored to its particular capabilities – and the BBC Philharmonic to ask: what future was being forged in the tragic events that took place that day?

‘Howard’s musical style, jangly and adversarial, entirely suits her subject … A fiercely individual composing talent’— The Times, September 2023

Airs from another Planet: chamber music and songs by Judith Weir Ailish Tynan soprano, Hebrides Ensemble DCD34228

This survey of Judith Weir’s often quirky and always engaging music displays some of the concerns that unite her writing for voice and for instruments: storytelling and the gap between truth and fiction; invention and fantasy; the lessons that can be learned from other times and other cultures. Communication between generations, continents and women lies at the heart of Nuits d’Afrique, conceived as a companion piece to Maurice Ravel’s Chansons madécasses. The hymns of the medieval Rhenish saint, poet and composer Hildegard of Bingen underlie two recent chamber pieces, while the early Airs from another Planet imagines how Scottish folk music might sound after several generations of evolution in outer space.

‘one of the most enjoyable song-cycles of recent years … the pieces on this disc are vintage Weir, so economical in their acuity, and sparklingly performed' — Gramophone, November 2019, Editor’s ChoiCE