Grace Williams’s lifelong interest in vocal writing no doubt owed something to her upbringing in Wales. The original works heard here in their premiere recordings span the entirety of her career, ranging from her earliest surviving composition in any genre to 1967’s Fear no more the heat o’ the sun. Williams’s folk song arrangements were often commissions for BBC children’s programmes, and while her craftsmanship is evident irrespective of the song’s country of origin, her stylistic fingerprints are most firmly placed on her understated setting of the beautiful Welsh love song, Cariad Cyntaf.

Grace Williams is widely considered to be Wales’s foremost female composer. Our previous release of Grace Williams’s chamber music (8571380) received a great deal of attention in the music press, being considered ‘an exciting release’ in Limelight, and Gramophone stating that Williams is ‘a powerful musical personality, well served by some gripping interpretations. More, please.’

Welsh baritone Jeremy Huw Williams’s albums include William Mathias’s A Vision of Time and Eternity (8574053) summed up as ‘a sheer delight’ in the American Record Guide, and also in works by William Alwyn (8570201) in which ‘Jeremy Huw Williams brings conspicuous ardour and intelligence to the task in hand’ (Gramophone).

Wendy Hiscocks is an Australian-born composer-pianist whose music reflects her love of melody, dance, narrative and film. She has appeared on recordings with Naxos with British Violin Conversations (8574560), as well as the songs of Arthur Benjamin and Edgar Bainton (8571377) in which Fanfare noted that ‘The accompaniments from Australian composer-pianist Wendy Hiscocks… are never less than superb.’