Echo: Songs Across the Ages | BIS BIS2568

Echo: Songs Across the Ages

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Label: BIS

Cat No: BIS2568

Format: Hybrid SACD

Number of Discs: 1

Genre: Vocal/Choral

Release Date: 25th November 2022

Contents

Artists

Ruby Hughes (soprano)
Huw Watkins (piano)

Works

Bach, Johann Sebastian

French Suites (6), BWV812-817
» no.3 in B minor, BWV814: Sarabande
Partita no.4 in D major, BWV828
» Sarabande
Partita no.6 in E minor, BWV830
» Corrente

Britten, Benjamin

Folksong arrangements (8) for high voice and harp
» no.6 David of the White Rock
Folksong arrangements Vol.4 'Moore's Irish Melodies'
» no.3 How sweet the Answer
I wonder as I wander
Spiritual Songs (5) (JS Bach)
» no.1 Gedenke doch, mein Geist, zurucke
» no.3 Liebster Herr Jesu
» no.4 Komm, susser Tod

Frances-Hoad, Cheryl

Lament

Pritchard, Deborah

The World

Purcell, Henry

Music for a while, Z583 (arr. Michael Tippett, Walter Bergmann)
Now does the glorious day appear, Z332
» By beauteous softness mix'd with majesty (arr. Thomas Ades)

Wallen, Errollyn

Peace on Earth

Watkins, Huw

Echo

Artists

Ruby Hughes (soprano)
Huw Watkins (piano)

About

Huw Watkins’s song cycle Echo, composed for soprano Ruby Hughes and premiered in 2017 at Carnegie Hall, is at the centre of this artfully crafted recital. Setting texts by five different poets, the cycle is a work centred on melancholy – on transience, remembrance, and in the final song a numbed cry of inconceivable loss. As such it permeates the entire programme, adding a new and unexpected depth to that which precedes as well as follows.

Another strand of the recital is the idea of how composers across the ages have addressed and echoed one another lovingly in their music – often in the most nuanced and unconscious way. Bach’s solo keyboard works capture something of a sense of timelessness, or more accurately, inspire an emotional connection that transcends time. A similar affinity seems to inform Britten’s folksong arrangements and his realisations of Bach’s Geistliche Lieder as well as the Purcell realisations by Thomas Adès and Tippett. A different kind of echo is created by the inclusion of Britten’s version of Dafydd y Garreg Wen (David of the White Rock) – a nod to the performers’ shared Welsh heritage. Closing the disc, three songs by contemporary British composers admired by both Watkins and Hughes also resonate with the previous works, bringing the programme full circle.

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