The Contrast - English Poetry In Song

$21.99
Label
BIS
Release Date
February 7, 2020
Format
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    Featuring ⌄
    • COMPOSER
      VARIOUS
    • PERFORMER
      Sampson, Middleton
    Product Details ⌄
    • RELEASE DATE
      February 07, 2020
    • UPC
      7318599924137
    • CATALOG NUMBER
      BIS-2413
    • LABEL
      BIS
    • NUMBER OF DISCS
      1
    • GENRE
      Classical
    Works ⌄

    1. No. 1. The Lord Mayor's Table

      Composer: William Walton

      Performer: Carolyn Sampson, Joseph Middleton

    2. No. 2. Glide Gently

      Composer: William Walton

      Performer: Carolyn Sampson, Joseph Middleton

    3. No. 3. Wapping Old Stairs

      Composer: William Walton

      Performer: Carolyn Sampson, Joseph Middleton

    4. No. 4. Holy Thursday

      Composer: William Walton

      Performer: Carolyn Sampson, Joseph Middleton

    5. No. 5. The Contrast

      Composer: William Walton

      Performer: Carolyn Sampson, Joseph Middleton

    6. No. 6. Rhyme

      Composer: William Walton

      Performer: Carolyn Sampson, Joseph Middleton

    7. Orpheus with his Lute

      Composer: Ralph Vaughan Williams

      Performer: Carolyn Sampson, Joseph Middleton

    8. The sky above the roof

      Composer: Ralph Vaughan Williams

      Performer: Carolyn Sampson, Joseph Middleton

    9. The House of Life: No. 2. Silent Noon

      Composer: Ralph Vaughan Williams

      Performer: Carolyn Sampson, Joseph Middleton

    10. Go not, happy day

      Composer: Frank Bridge

      Performer: Carolyn Sampson, Joseph Middleton

    11. When most I wink

      Composer: Frank Bridge

      Performer: Carolyn Sampson, Joseph Middleton

    12. Adoration

      Composer: Frank Bridge

      Performer: Carolyn Sampson, Joseph Middleton

    13. Come to me in my dreams

      Composer: Frank Bridge

      Performer: Carolyn Sampson, Joseph Middleton

    14. When you are old

      Composer: Frank Bridge

      Performer: Carolyn Sampson, Joseph Middleton

    15. Mantle of blue

      Composer: Frank Bridge

      Performer: Carolyn Sampson, Joseph Middleton

    16. Love went a-riding

      Composer: Frank Bridge

      Performer: Carolyn Sampson, Joseph Middleton

    17. No. 1. Who called love conquering

      Composer: Huw Watkins

      Performer: Carolyn Sampson, Joseph Middleton

    18. No. 2. Wants

      Composer: Huw Watkins

      Performer: Carolyn Sampson, Joseph Middleton

    19. No. 3. Love Songs in Age

      Composer: Huw Watkins

      Performer: Carolyn Sampson, Joseph Middleton

    20. No. 4. Money

      Composer: Huw Watkins

      Performer: Carolyn Sampson, Joseph Middleton

    21. No. 5. Dawn

      Composer: Huw Watkins

      Performer: Carolyn Sampson, Joseph Middleton

    22. 3 Songs of William Blake, Op. 20: No. 1. Dream Valley

      Composer: Roger Quilter

      Performer: Carolyn Sampson, Joseph Middleton

    23. No. 7. Fair House of Joy

      Composer: Roger Quilter

      Performer: Carolyn Sampson, Joseph Middleton

    24. No. 6. By a Fountainside

      Composer: Roger Quilter

      Performer: Carolyn Sampson, Joseph Middleton

    25. 6 Songs, Op. 25: No. 4. Arab Love Song

      Composer: Roger Quilter

      Performer: Carolyn Sampson, Joseph Middleton

    26. 4 Songs, Op. 14: No. 1. Autumn Evening

      Composer: Roger Quilter

      Performer: Carolyn Sampson, Joseph Middleton

    27. No. 2. My Life's Delight

      Composer: Roger Quilter

      Performer: Carolyn Sampson, Joseph Middleton

    28. No. 1. Daphne

      Composer: William Walton

      Performer: Carolyn Sampson, Joseph Middleton

    29. No. 2. Through Gilded Trellises

      Composer: William Walton

      Performer: Carolyn Sampson, Joseph Middleton

    30. No. 3. Old Sir Faulk

      Composer: William Walton

      Performer: Carolyn Sampson, Joseph Middleton


Song composition has been a constant in British music since the lute and consort works of the early seventeenth century. By 1900, it had developed into a sophisticated genre embraced by almost all serious composers. The music on this amply-filled disc illustrates the diversity of British song-writing and it's transformation over a century: from Vaughan Williams's Orpheus and his Lute (ca 1901) to Huw Watkins's Five Larkin Songs, composed in 2010 for Carolyn Sampson, who performs them here. Together with Joseph Middleton, her partner on several acclaimed recital discs, she has devised a highly contrasting programme bookended by two groups of songs by William Walton - A Song for the Lord Mayor's Table from 1962, celebrating the diversity of London, and three songs from Fa�ade, the 'entertainment' with which the young composer gained both fame and notoriety in 1923. These frame settings by Ralph Vaughan Williams, Roger Quilter and Frank Bridge of poetry by writers from Shakespeare and Shelley to Keats and Yeats. In comparison, the anti-romantic poems by Philip Larkin have been described as marked by 'a very English, glum accuracy'. Huw Watkins (b. 1976) has selected texts from across Larkin's output, catching the various moods - ranging from a certain unsentimental nostalgia to the poet's seemingly habitual pessimism - in settings that often carry a bittersweet sting in the tail.