A collection of English songs reflecting on loss and grief, but also on love and healing
James Newby wished to dedicate his second disc on BIS to his sister Laura who passed away in 2015, her daughter and his mother. After singing Gerald Finzi’s ‘Fear no more the heat o’ the sun’ at her funeral, he felt it fitting that the cycle from which it is taken, Let us Garlands Bring, would form the centrepiece of the programme. Alongside this cycle, &&&pianist Joseph Middleton and Newby have designed a programme of English songs that reflect on themes of loss, grief and death – but also joy, love and healing with varying styles, sound worlds and atmospheres.
George Butterworth, Rebecca Clarke, Edward Elgar, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Benjamin Britten, Liza Lehmann and Errollyn Wallen are just some of the composers who complete the programme, including Arthur Somervell with his cycle ‘A Shropshire Lad’. Like Heinrich Heine’s poems that Schumann used for his famous cycle Dichterliebe, these poems by Alfred Edward Housman deal with unrequited love in first person lyrics. This disc ends on a lighter note with the whimsical song, ‘The Green-eyed Dragon’ by Wolseley Charles, which often concludes live performances as an encore.
