Schoenberg’s seminal vocal work Das Buch der hängenden Gärten, often just referred to as Opus 15, was composed in 1908-1909 – years in which he had taken dissonance to new limits, and turned completely to atonality. This cycle is often regarded as the first major modernist vocal work. It is a setting of poems by Stefan George which tell of a love affair taking place in an exotic oriental garden – full of emotional pictures, never naturalistic ones – foreboding, sensual imagery, repressed longings and intense passion.

A Girl is a cycle of 22 settings by Seóirse Bodley of poems by Brendan Kennelly and was commissioned by Raidió Teilifís Éireann and first performed in 1978. It tells of a pregnant girl unable to cope with the humiliation she suffers in a conservative and repressive society. Highly varied, the songs bring to the fore numbers of different emotions. The composer, at age 83, is amongst the most senior and foremost of Irish composers with 5 full symphonies (2 recorded by Naxos) and dozens of other works.

Aylish Kerrigan is one of the foremost interpreters of contemporary Irish vocal music, and of Brecht, and her one-woman Broadway-style shows won acclaim when given in New York, Paris, Berlin and Dublin. Her accompanist Dearbhla Collins has performed worldwide especially in German lieder, contemporary art song and theatre music.