Roderick Williams - Colourise - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Although John Ireland is best remembered for his orchestral works, his 91 songs convey a peculiarly English quality of emotion expressed through reserve. Album Tracks 1. 1. Summer Schemes 2. 2. Her Song 3. 3. Weathers 4. 1. Youth's Spring-Tribute 5. 2. Penumbra 6. 3. Spleen 7. 1. We'll to the Woods 8. 2. in Boyhood 9. 3. Spring Will Not Wait 10. 1. Beckon to Me 11. 2. in My Sage Moments 12. 3. It Was What You Bore with You 13. 4. the Tragedy of That Moment 14. 5. Dear, Think Not 15. The Cost 16. 4. the Salley Gardens

Album Tracks 1. On Painswick Beacon 2. Cotswold Choice

These works by Robert Saxton were written between 2013 and 2019 and represent his continuing journey of exploration in modal and harmonic structures; complex in structure but creating no jarring modernist difficulty for the listener. A mix of orchestral, chamber and vocal works, it features top performers including world-renowned baritone Roderick Williams and equally famous (and now film star) Clare Hammond. Robert Saxton received early guidance from Benjamin Britten and studied with Elisabeth Lutyens, Robin Holloway and Luciano Berio among others. He has received commissions from the BBC (TV, radio and Proms) and many prominent ensembles. Until retiring in 2021 Robert was Professor of Composition at Oxford University and is a Research Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music. Time and the Seasons, for baritone and piano, commissioned by the Oxford Lieder Festival for Roderick Williams and Andrew West, is a song cycle to Saxton's own texts and is both cyclic and progressive. Suite for violin and piano, first performed at the 2019 Three Choirs Festival by Madeleine Mitchell and Clare Hammond, the performers here, charts a voyage across it's five movements leading to a tentatively positive conclusion. Fantasy Pieces, commissioned by the Fidelio Trio, is inspired by Schumann's Op. 88 as character pieces, regarding both genre and variety of manner. A Hymn to the Thames for solo oboe and chamber orchestra was commissioned by James Turnbull, the St Paul's Sinfonia and it's Music Director Andrew Morley and, during the course of it's four linked movements, sets the soloist as both wanderer and river spirit in conjunction with the 'river' of the orchestra from source to sea. Album Tracks 1. A Hymn to the Thames (2020) 2. Fantasy Pieces (2020) 3. Time and the Seasons (2013) 4. Suite (2019)