Ernest John MOERAN (1894-1950)
A Feature Review – Chandos and Moeran - Complete Solo Songs and a survey of Moeran on Chandos Classics
Ernest John MOERAN (1894-1950)
Complete Solo Songs (58)
Full listing at end of review
Geraldine McGreevy (soprano); Adrian Thompson (tenor); Roderick Williams (baritone); John Talbot (piano)
rec. Menuhin Hall, Yehudi Menuhin School, Stoke d’Abernon, Cobham, Surrey, 8-9, 11 September 2008, 20, 22 January 2009, 8, 14, 16 April 2009. DDD
Sixteen recording premieres
CHANDOS CHAN 10596 (2) [50:07 + 68:30]
Moeran and song? Well yes to an extent but I tend to associate him more with orchestral works. If this is also your position then this set comes as a necessary corrective. More to the point it is a delight to which lovers of English song will return time and again for renewal and discovery. It’s one of those projects crying out to be done if only we had known there was a lacuna to be filled. I should have known - having over the years heard and taped a number of broadcasts of the songs and encountered some commercial recordings.
Ian and Jennifer Partridge were on BBC Radio 3 in the 1970s with the Housman cycle plus And Wilt Thou Leave Me Thus, Take O Take and The Contented Lover. This Brown Land featured in a 1983 recital by Jane Manning and John McCabe (who was soloist on Lyrita’s Rhapsody No. 3). In the 1950s Bushby and Lee broadcast Far in a Western Brookland and Farewell to Barn with Masefield’s Twilight and When June is Come. Norma Burrowes and Keith Swallow gave a memorable reading of The Four Shakespeare Songs in 1978 and the year previously so did Philip Langridge. These were supplemented with occasional broadcasts of vintage recordings of Heddle Nash and Gerald Moore in Diaphenia and Sweet of the Year and Pears – sometimes with Britten and at others with Viola Tunnard - in The Merry Month of May and In An Arbour Green. The Seven Poems of James Joyce were broadcast by Ann Murray and Michael Pearce. Most intriguingly we got to hear Joyce’s Tilly from Peter and Meriel Dickinson as part of a superb Joyce Book documentary in 1983.
This piecemeal picture coupled with Dunelm and Divine Art’s many Moeran recordings across various CDs can now be seen in a wider context.
CD 1
Roderick Williams is his usual magnificent self. In colour and apposite evangelical fervour he takes some trumping. He tackles the first nine songs on CD 1. Spring goeth is irradiated with the sun's contentment yet is not Delian. When June is come is blithely belled and spun by both singer and pianist. Mantle of Blue may also be known as O Men from the fields (also set by Bax). Its stilly magic is conjured in the Medtnerian slow tolling of the piano and in Williams’ inward intoned singing as if tracing a line of magic – neither under- nor over- stated. The atmospheric Masefield setting, Twilight is very Housman-like with its references to dead ‘friends’ and ‘beautiful eyes that the dust has defiled’. Then comes the fine Ludlow Town cycle. When smoke stood up is another delight in which Moeran combines the dynamic with sappy summer's ooze. The fine setting of Farewell to Barn is set a peppy pace by Williams and Talbot – far faster than C.W. Orr’s equivalent and utterly masterful song – the latter a virtual operatic scena. The glower in Williams’ voice is undeniably vivid in conveying the sense of doom amid the harvest stooks. In Say Lad, Moeran comes close to the Stanfordian heroic swashbuckling ballad – not something he consciously essayed unlike say Ireland (Great Things) or Finzi (Budmouth Dears or Lyonnesse).
The soprano Geraldine McGreevy sings the brief The Bean Flower and Impromptu in March. She has none of the matron in her voice. Her tone is splendidly springy and while enunciation of words is often a problem with sopranos she handles the high notes with limpid clarity. Adrian Thompson, like Williams, is a stalwart of British vocal works. His In Youth Is Pleasure is most beautifully sung. The song provides a contrasting and slower, more caressed, version of Warlock's setting of same words – the latter once recorded by Unicorn with Ian Partridge. What a delight to hear The Merry Month of May from Thompson liberated from the precious, squirmy and mincing tone adopted in Pears’ classic version. Williams returns then for A Dream of Death, a strong and rounded song with a slowly emerging drama. It has surprising but very pleasing echoes of Medtner in the piano part. Moeran’s Come away death is a more sing-song setting than the better known one by Finzi.
Tracks 15-18 are what you might term Moeran’s Songs in the Snug or Boozer ballads. They’re a world away from the other songs but reflect another side of Moeran’s character and one which was to cast an alcoholic curse over his later years. A similar dichotomy can be found in the life and songs of Peter Warlock. Troll the Bowl is a drinking song that begins amid some very dark storm-clouds. The shadow of Lord Berners and his music-hall whimsicalities hangs over the ‘shanty’ Can’t You Dance the Polka with its chorus of “O you New York girls can't you dance the polka!” It’s performed with gusto and the occasional squeaky American accent. It’s delivered without a blush or an excuse - just as it should be. Much the same can be said - without the transatlantic element - of Mrs dyer the baby farmer. The tankard-brandishing Maltworms – a cooperative effort between Warlock and Moeran - is a veteran of that old Unicorn Warlock Merry-Go-Down LP (UNS249) freshly recorded here. The Weybridge Male Voice Choir hold nothing back. Brace yourself!
The Seven Joyce Songs are drawn from the two volumes Chamber Music and Pomes Penyeach. The music moves within and between worlds of dreamy and strange tonalities. In the Delian last song, Now, O Now, in this Brown Land with its slow incantatory tolling, the piano line looks to Warlock’s Corpus Christi. Contrast this with the rushing and chirpy bird flight and ring-a-ding effervescence of Bright Cap and the joyous Eynsford spring-song of Merry green wood. Williams is superb in Pleasant valley with its sunny-bowered Delian summer garden and in the slow and soft delights of Rain has fallen. In Donnycarney there’s a concession to Irish sentimentality. In that vein, how long, I wonder, before we get to hear Anthony Burgess’s splendid Joyce-opera-musical, The Blooms of Dublin.
CD 2
Williams opens the second disc with a clutch of Housman songs from 1916. When I came last to Ludlow is full of sangfroid. All of them are less nuanced and more generalised than the mature songs but they are still wonderful and steer clear of the Brahms-Stanford idiom. Much the same can be said of three versions of Oh Fair enough are sky and plain. I rather like the hesitant last setting with a minimal piano line which gradually evolves into something more elaborate; reticent yet still beneficent. I am so pleased to have these lovely songs including Far in a Western Brookland – also Bax’s only Housman song.
Adrian Thompson returns for Weep you no more - an iconic setting linking with Dowland. The long-breathed lines test Thompson's vibrato as does The Sweet o' The Year. By comparison The Day of Palms represents Thompson on good form and attractive voice in a song to which he is well suited. This is the same poem set by John Ireland under the title Santa Chiara. It’s a warmly placid and reflective setting. Blue-Eyed Spring is bright and with a quick youthful pulse which fits Thompson to a tee; a triumphant if breathlessly breathy success. The Four English Lyrics, skipping along in confidence, play to Thompson’s strengths. The two central songs are cut-glass and slow.
McGreevy sings Rosefrail warmly and the lyrical line conveys a calming stilly perfection. A chill enters for a return to James Joyce and Tilly. This is reminiscent of the Padraic Colum setting from CD 1 - Mantle of Blue. McGreevy here sounds remarkably like Janet Baker. A very fine song indeed; so is Rahoon, another ‘Joycerie’ written as Moeran’s sole entry for The Joyce Book in 1931. The Book (Sylvan Press, 1933, designed by Hubert Foss and with a Joyce portrait by Augustus John) also included Watching the Needleboats at San Sabba (Arnold Bax); A Flower given to my Daughter (Roussel); She Weeps Over Rahoon (Herbert Hughes); Tutto e Sciolto (John Ireland); On the Beach at Fontana (Roger Sessions); Simples (Arthur Bliss); Flood (Herbert Howells); Nightpiece (George Antheil); Alone (Edgardo Carducci); A Memory of Players in a Mirror at Midnight (Eugene Goossens); Bahnhofstrasse (C.W. Orr) and A Prayer (Bernard van Dieren). Sadly this exclusive luxurious limited edition seems to have made these songs less accessible to performers rather than more.
The Shakespeare Songs were well done indeed thirty or so years ago by Norma Burrowes. However McGreevy is again magnificent and John Talbot likewise. The Cuckoo goes with the flow of lightning gold and liquid honey. She gives the cuckoo-call a real masculine pitch, colouring the call differently each time. There are similar strengths in the Icicles song where she gives the “tu whit to whoo” a really tasty howl.
Diaphenia is a work of contrived antiquery much as loved by peter pears. Here Thompson is best and he conjures a lovely long lyrical line. Sweet Rosaline is a lovingly rounded setting. Then come two atmospheric and lilting Seumas O'Sullivan settings: Invitation in autumn and If there be any Gods - the latter for McGreevy though the high lines tend to blunt her enunciation of the words. The Six O'Sullivan songs are fairly well known if only from broadcasts. They are subtle, Delian and gaelic-ecstatic and here all sung by McGreevy. Many of these songs are quite dramatic. The spoken words “Held in his Hand” in The Poplars draws a similar yet less desolate shiver to that extracted by the tenor in the famous spoken-whispered section in Warlock’s The Curlew. A Cottager has an arpeggiated piano twist similar to an effect also drawn out by Finzi in several of his Hardy songs. Several of these songs feature an obsessive little chime figure. The final song rises to a bell rung delight similar to the dazzling panicked bells at the apex of O noisy bells be dumb but finishes in an evocation of the endless blue of the horizon.
It is the curse of these projects - especially with songs - that while they honestly lay claim to completeness further examples sporadically turn up. Songs are so easily given to friends, lovers, and singers here and there. Such is the case here. The notes tell us quite candidly that an unpublished setting of The North Sea Ground to a poem (1915) by Cicely Fox Smith has now turned up. Sadly it could not be included in this collection. Who knows: there may yet be other examples.
The music is complemented by soundly informed and straight-talking notes by John Talbot. All sung texts are printed apart from the Joyce songs - no translation of the texts into other languages but the notes are there in French and German as well.
This is an essential for all lovers of English song. There are very few trifling songs here. Even the early ones yield a strong emotional charge and evince concentration and a lyric talent out of the ordinary run. We can only hope that the folksong settings will also be recorded in the fullness of time and that perhaps any stragglers amongst the Moeran songs can be added at that time.
With this project completed in such splendour we can hope surely that Chandos will give us the complete songs by C.W. Orr and look at recording a series of disc of songs by Michael Head (why is his Causley-based Cornish Song-Cycle overlooked?), Mary Plumstead and the complete Housman songs by John Williamson.
Rob Barnett
A unique collection performed with apposite sensitivity. Essential ... see Full Review
… and now -- Moeran on Chandos Classics
I have taken the Chandos complete songs set as a cue for surveying a swathe of Moeran works on Chandos. These were issued in the 1980s largely with Handley as conductor though the Cello Concerto is in the hands of Norman Del Mar with Raphael Wallfisch and the presumably augmented Bournemouth Sinfonietta.
Originally issued differently coupled these Chandos Classics discs are each available separately and have been recompiled to achieve a logical genre symmetry and a more generous playing time.
The chamber music disc groups an LP from the very early days of the label and the pianist in the Violin Sonata, John Talbot is the constant and finely informed pianist in the new songs set.
The Ulster Orchestra proved themselves beyond question in the early 1980s with several Bax tone poem discs from Bryden Thomson. Chandos moved Thomson to the LPO for the rest of the Bax series after the Fourth Symphony with very mixed results. However not a foot was put wrong in embracing the Ulster Orchestra for the Moeran project.
Although not a company tempted by the stack ’em high and sell ’em cheap philosophy they do offer exceptional bargains in tirelessly good sound.
Ernest John MOERAN (1894-1950)
Violin Concerto (dedicated to Arthur Catterall) [33:18]; Lonely Waters (dedicated to Ralph Vaughan Williams) [9:19]; Whythorne's Shadow (dedicated to Anthony Bernard) [6:30]; Cello Concerto [28:41]
Lydia Mordkovitch (violin) Ulster Orchestra/Vernon Handley; Raphael Wallfisch (cello) Bournemouth Sinfonietta/Norman Del Mar
rec. Christchurch Priory, Dorset, 17 May 1985 (Cello Concerto) Ulster Hall, Belfast 9 September 1987 and 20-21 August 1989 (other works)
CHANDOS CHAN 10168 X [78:03]
The Violin Concerto is succulently and ripely done by the orchestra and with passionate full-throated playing from Mordkovitch. If we leave historical recordings (Symposium and Divine Art) to one side the only real competition here is the older analogue 1978 recording by John Georgiadis - also with Handley - on Lyrita. I keep expecting Tasmin Little and Lorraine McAslan to enter the lists but nothing so far. Either Mordkovitch of Georgiadis is delightful but if you want fine digital sound then go for this Chandos. Lonely Waters is suitably mournful in its chilly and sighing Delian beauty chill. It is in the same mood territory as Bridge’s There is a willow and Goossens’ The Lonely Tarn. Whythorne's Shadow looks towards Warlock's Capriol and indeed his own Serenade. Wallfisch is set back in the sound-stage more than Mordkovitch. This was the work’s first fully consummated recording. Though affectionate and soused in historical atmosphere the Lyrita version by Moeran's widow Peers Coetmore has its roughnesses and lacks the passionate flow that Wallfisch and Del Mar bring. The middle movement sounds decidedly Sibelian (Fourth Symphony) and bleakly so. The finale brings us to close quarters with Moeran's Irish sympathies in eagerness, skipped dancing and passionately dug-in tone.
For an alternative review of the Concertos CD: Lance Nixon http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2004/May04/Moeran_VC.htm
Ernest John MOERAN (1894-1950)
Symphony in G minor [46:29]; Overture for a Masque [14:27]; Rhapsody for Piano and Orchestra in F sharp major [17:40]
Margaret Fingerhut (piano)*; Ulster Orchestra/Vernon Handley
rec. Ulster Hall, Belfast 7-9 September 1987 (Symphony and Overture), 8-11 March 1988 (Rhapsody)
CHANDOS CHAN 10169 X [74:03]
The stirring recording quality we have come to expect from Chandos adds to the musical attractions of this disc. The Symphony is given a fast tempo by Handley yet without the last element of goading we experienced last year when Sinaisky sensationally gave the symphony a Golovanov-style outing with the BBC Phil at the Proms and later in Manchester (February 2010); surely a candidate for a BBC Music Magazine cover-mount. Still this is magical stuff with Handley at the long-sustained peak of his powers. He is delicate and tense in the enchanted and silvery-slender Vivace. The finale picks up on that tight and tense bounce and on the mood of barely suppressed excitement. While the Chandos technical team do superbly the Decca-Lyrita people in the 1975 analogue recording by Boult and the NPO still have the edge. The derided Dilkes version also has plenty going for it (EMI) and the Naxos from the Bournemouth SO and David Lloyd-Jones is excellent. There's no bad G minor only good versions that appeal more to some than to others. My first choice remains the Boult not least for its whoopingly aureate horns as lucidly caught in the final pages of the first movement. The Handley Chandos is not far behind and champing at its heels. Now if only Chandos would record Sinaisky and the BBCPO ... By the way, another Moeran conductor to be prized is John Longstaff who a couple of years ago conducted the Symphony with the Sheffield Symphony Orchestra and made a glorious success of it. To think … how the Moeran symphony was condemned not so very long ago.
The remaining works include a lovingly done Overture for a Masque - it is perhaps done a mite breathlessly but even so it has an unstoppable life of its own. This reminds me of the version of the Overture I heard Handley do in concert in Liverpool with the RLPO about eight years ago. It's an exuberant romp - and that half-halloo-half-warble from the bank of horns at the end is magnificent. The Rhapsody No. 3 (for piano and orchestra) is a ‘pocket’ piano concerto - being Moeran's take on the faintly Rachmaninovian style so popular during the 1940s. It combines Irish romping, with the pastel subtlety of the John Ireland concerto and adds a super-romantic Addinsell element - just so much better. A placid central pool suggests some inland lough on a soft blue day. Margaret Fingerhut holds the tension very nicely and caringly engages with the orchestra as in the fairy chiming at 8.00 onwards. It's a great piece in which to revel. Such a pity that no recordings of the work survive from its early champions Harriet Cohen and later Iris Loveridge. There are two fine modern alternatives in the catalogue but these enjoy less interesting couplings - these are Una Hunt on ASV and John McCabe on Lyrita.
As with all these Chandos Classics revivals the packaging is exemplary and design decisions down to slender font choices for the CD are resoundingly successful. These are their third outing on Chandos: the original issue and two Chandos Enchant discs of the big orchestral works now deleted. Chandos have pulled off a similar renaissance for their magnificent Bax orchestral catalogue.
Ernest John MOERAN (1894-1950)
String Quartet No. 1* in A minor [22:04]; Fantasy Quartet for Oboe and Strings† in one movement [12:31]; Sonata for Violin and Piano in E minor [17:55]
Donald Scotts (violin); John Talbot (piano); Sarah Francis oboe†; English String Quartet (Diana Cummings (violin); Luciano Iorio (viola) Geoffrey Thomas (cello)); Melbourne String Quartet (Mary Nemet, Donald Scotts (violins); Marco van Pagee (viola); Henry Wenig (cello))
rec. St George the Martyr, London, 30 August 1984 (Fantasy Quartet). Other works recorded by the Australian Broadcasting Commission in association with the Friends of the Victorian College of the Arts
CHANDOS CHAN 10170 X [52:48]
Nowadays the Moeran chamber music - built around the two string quartets - is catered for in princely fashion. There are CDs of the quartets and other chamber works from Naxos (Maggini) and ASV - the latter increasingly difficult to track down.
Chandos’s chamber disc is shorter value than the other three. Such a pity that they did not have the Piano Trio in their catalogue. As it is, we get the wonderfully sumptuous Melbourne String Quartet playing the Quartet for all its worth. It's boisterous exuberant bouncing music with a lyrically singing velocity and an outdoors Ravel- and Kodaly-style bustle. The quartet and the sonata were written during Moeran's time with Ireland as teacher. These were also the years at Eynsford with Warlock as drinking companion and reprobate soul-mate. The masterly single movement Fantasy Quartet is treated to a much more luxurious recording and one that delivers on transparency and impact. It matches the effervescence of the music and performance. Dancingly done Moeran does not turn his back on Curlew-like echoes of his friendship from some two decades ago. It's a succinct jewel - no longer than a concert overture. Sarah Francis gives a magical account. The Violin Sonata is also an Australian product. The violinist is Donald Scotts, the then leader of the Melbourne quartet. This Sonata has parallels with those by Ireland, Rootham and early Howells. Scotts and Talbot deliver a passionate performance while at times (I, 2:48) reminding me of Rozsa's manner; how close he comes to Kodaly's Symphony and Summer Evening. There are remarkable resonances in Kodaly with Moeran. The Lento is the vehicle for a very potent and high-surging lyricism. A stomping jig is unleashed in the finale. The spirited performance and recording on EMI Classics is rather undermined by a less than vivid recording. By contrast the ABC analogue tape is nothing less than virile.
Ernest John MOERAN (1894-1950)
Serenade in G; [23:40]; In the Mountain Country - Symphonic impression [7:06]; Rhapsodies for Orchestra Nos. 1 in F major [11:54], 2 in E major [12:56]; Nocturne for baritone, chorus and orchestra [13:26]*; Hugh Mackey (baritone)*; Renaissance Singers; Ulster Orchestra/Vernon Handley.
rec. Ulster Hall, Belfast, 8-11 March 1988 (Rhapsodies, Serenade); 19-23 February 1989 (In the Mountain Country, Intermezzo and Forlana movements of Serenade)
CHANDOS CHAN 10235 X [69:22]
This selection of the smaller-scale Moeran is in his characteristic voice. The Serenade catches Moeran in a gallimaufry of moods. There's Moeran capering (Prologue or Galop) or soliloquising (Air) Capriol style or Moeran the robust or abstracted pastoral pilgrim (Minuet) or Moeran the Warlockian antiquarian (Rigadoon). Conductor and orchestra in their glory days are completely at home. In the Serenade they sound so much better than the old Revolution LP recorded by the young Handley and the Guildford Philharmonic with a scorching Bax Tale the Pine Trees Knew.
The earliest work here is the Harty-dedicated In the Mountain Country with its moods of earnest reflection and countryman's ecstasy. Those subtle drum-rolls recall Ireland's Forgotten Rite. This is the only recording of Rhapsody No. 1 - as also with the previous item. It is the first of three Rhapsodies - the last a virtual concerto for piano and orchestra - heard on Chandos in the hands of Margaret Fingerhut and on Lyrita with John McCabe. The First Rhapsody is dedicated to John Ireland whose Mai-Dun is recalled in the mood of catastrophe at 4.37. This is self-evidently the work of the composer of the G Minor symphony – a work still heard at its creative peak on Lyrita but also superbly done by Handley on Chandos. The Second Rhapsody has been long familiar from the Boult recording on Lyrita. Some of us cannot get out of our heads that it belongs with the Overture for a Masque simply because it shared an LP side with that work on Boult's Lyrita LP. It has an expansively romantic theme which first appears at 1:55 but also is not short of vigour. If the Serenade is sometimes queasily redolent of Warlock's Capriol, the Nocturne takes us to the world of Delius. It is a setting of words by Robert Nichols (one of whose poems Moeran also set as a song) exploring loveliness, transience and melancholy in a vein similar to that espoused by Ernest Dowson. Summer's somnolence, satiation and languor pulse slowly through this music. Hugh Mackey shapes the notes with a caress as do the sighing Renaissance Singers.
Rob Barnett
Four mid-price discs representing with vivid power the core of Moeran’s achievement in both orchestral and chamber theatres ... see Full Review
Detailed Contents listing for songs
Ernest John MOERAN (1894-1950)
Complete Solo Songs
CHANDOS CHAN 10596 (2)
CD 1 [50:07]
1 Spring goeth all in white† (Robert Seymour Bridges) 1:21
2 When June is come† (Robert Seymour Bridges) 1:11
3 Mantle of Blue† (Padraic Colum) 1:56
4 Twilight† (John Edward Masefield) 1:48
Ludlow Town† (Alfred Edward Housman)
5 1 When smoke stood up from Ludlow* 3:42
6 2 Farewell to barn and stack and tree 2:37
7 3 Say, lad, have you things to do? 1:28
8 4 The lads in their hundreds 1:51
Two Songs‡ 00:00
9 1 The Bean Flower (Dorothy Leigh Sayers) 2:03
10 2 Impromptu in March (Doreen A.E. Wallace) 1:10
11 In Youth Is Pleasure§ (Robert Wever) 2:20
12 The Merry Month of May§ (Thomas Dekker) 2:01
13 A Dream of Death† (William Butler Yeats) 3:06
14 Come Away, Death† (William Shakespeare) 2:17
15 Troll the Bowl† (Thomas Dekker)
1:23
16 Can’t You Dance the Polka!† (Sea shanty, author anonymous) 1:23
Members of Weybridge Male Voice Choir
17 Mrs Dyer, the Baby Farmer† (Victorian crime ballad, author anonymous) 4:01
Members of Weybridge Male Voice Choir
18 Maltworms† (Attributed to William Stevenson) 2:19
Members of Weybridge Male Voice Choir
Seven Poems by James Joyce† 00:00
19 1 Strings in the earth and air 1:39
20 2 The Merry Green Wood 1:11
21 3 Bright cap 0:46
22 4 The Pleasant Valley 1:25
23 5 Donnycarney 1:23
24 6 Rain has fallen 1:47
25 7 Now, O now, in this brown land 3:59
CD 2 [68:30]
1 When I came last to Ludlow*† 1:17
2 ’Tis time, I think, by Wenlock town† 1:31
3 Far in a western brookland*† 2:30
4 Loveliest of trees*† 1:41
5 Oh fair enough are sky and plain (first version)*† 2:22
6 Oh fair enough are sky and plain (second version)† 2:25
7 Oh fair enough are sky and plain (third version)† 2:46
(Alfred Edward Housman)
8 Weep you no more§ (Sixteenth century, author anonymous) 2:15
9 The Sweet o’ the Year*§ (William Shakespeare) 0:58
10 The Day of Palms§ (Arthur William Symons) 3:18
11 Blue-eyed Spring§ (Robert Nichols) 1:13
12 Rosefrail*‡ 1:18
13 Tilly‡ 2:26
14 Rahoon*‡ (James Joyce) 3:04
Four English Lyrics§
15 1 Cherry Ripe (Thomas Campion) 1:54
16 2 Willow Song (Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher) 1:30
17 3 The Constant Lover (William Browne) 1:32
18 4 The Passionate Shepherd (Christopher Marlowe) 3:15
Four Shakespeare Songs‡
19 1 The Lover and his Lass 1:37
20 2 Where the bee sucks 1:28
21 3 When daisies pied 1:16
22 4 When icicles hang by the wall 1:12
23 Diaphenia*§ (Henry Chettle or Henry Constable) 2:11
24 Rosaline§ (Thomas Lodge) 3:25
25 The Monk’s Fancy§ (Henry .J. Hope) 2:14
26 Invitation in Autumn§ (Seumas O’Sullivan) 4:10
27 If There Be Any Gods‡ (Seumas O’Sullivan) 1:19
Six Poems of Seumas O’Sullivan*‡
28 1 Evening 1:59
29 2 The Poplars 2:13
30 3 A Cottager 2:02
31 4 The Dustman 1:04
32 5 Lullaby 2:29
33 6 The Herdsman 2:36
Geraldine McGreevy soprano‡
Adrian Thompson tenor§
Roderick Williams baritone†
John Talbot piano
24-bit / 96 kHz band
premiere recordings (except*)