Notes from the Asylum

This is a quite remarkable gathering together of songs that evoke so many emotions. Clare McCaldin shows how she is able to shape and control her voice to draw so much from each song, following... — The Classical Reviewer, June 2016 More…

Release Date: 29th Apr 2016
Catalogue No: CHRCD111
Label: Champs Hill Records
Length: 80 minutes

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Purcell: From silent shades ('Bess of Bedlam') Z370

Work length4:36

$1.00

$1.40

Libby Burgess, Clare McCaldin

Abrams, H: Crazy Jane

Work length3:11

$1.00

$1.40

Libby Burgess, Clare McCaldin

Brahms: Ophelia-Lieder (5), WoO posth. 22

Work length5:40

$5.00

$7.00

Libby Burgess, Clare McCaldin

I. Vie erkenn' ich dein Treuließ

Track length0:45

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II. Sein Leichenhemd weiß

Track length0:38

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III. Auf morgen ist Sankt Valentins Tag

Track length1:51

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IV. Sie trugen ihn auf der Bahre bloß

Track length0:58

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V. Und kommt er nicht mehr zurück?

Track length1:28

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Excerpt, Wolf, H: Gedichte von Eduard Mörike

Work length16:00

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Libby Burgess, Clare McCaldin

I. Agnes

Track length3:25

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II. Lied vom Winde

Track length2:42

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III. Seufzer

Track length2:41

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IV. Wo find’ ich Trost

Track length4:27

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V. Gebet

Track length2:45

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Rorem: Ariel

Work length17:08

$5.00

$7.00

Catriona Scott, Libby Burgess, Clare McCaldin

I. Words

Track length2:38

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II. Poppies in July

Track length3:14

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III. The Hanging Man

Track length2:40

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IV. Poppies in October

Track length2:39

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V. Lady Lazarus

Track length5:57

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McNeff: Vivienne

Work length33:33

$6.50

$9.10

Libby Burgess, Clare McCaldin

I. Before Tom

Track length5:58

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II. Eliot erect

Track length5:49

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III. The Land of Lost Content

Track length4:56

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IV. Bertie

Track length4:19

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V. Through the Darkness I Can Hear

Track length4:45

$1.00

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VI. Belladonna

Track length7:46

$1.50

$2.10

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In Notes from The Asylum mezzo-soprano Clare McCaldin explores songs about female madness.

Clare writes “Early in my research I identified two types of song that appealed to me: presentations of madness in fictional characters and in real women whose experience is recorded in poetry or private correspondence.”

She begins with Mad Bess with music by Purcell, which can lay claim to being the first Restoration ‘mad song’, realised here by Benjamin Britten and given an operatic treatment

Crazy Jane is the most sucessful composition by Harriet Abrams (c.1760–1821), a singer and reportedly a pupil of Thomas Arne.

Published posthumously in 1935, the Ophelia Lieder of Johannes Brahms were written in Vienna in November 1873 at the request of the celebrated Viennese actor Josef Lewinsky for his fiancée, the actress Olga Preicheisen, who was about to take the part of Ophelia in a production of Shakespeare’s Hamlet in Prague.

Hugo Wolf, who ended his days in an asylum, set poems by Eduard Mörike in increasing numbers in the 1880s. The five songs featured here are all sung (or, in the case of Gebet, spoken) by the Ophelia-like character of Agnes as she appears in Mörike’s 1832 novel Maler Nolten (The Artist Nolten).

Ariel, Five Poems of Sylvia Plath, for soprano, clarinet and piano, by Ned Rorem, capture, often graphically, that turbulent phase of her life soon to be ended by her suicide at the age of 30.

Vivienne by Stephen McNeff is an opera in six songs, tracing the disastrous marriage of Vivienne Haigh-Wood to T.S. Elliot. Librettist Andy Rashleigh has given a voice to Vivienne, forcibly silenced by a barbaric regime of drugs and who died in an asylum, using Eliot’s poetry as a jumping-off point to create a powerful identity for Vivienne.

Reviews

The Classical Reviewer June 2016

This is a quite remarkable gathering together of songs that evoke so many emotions. Clare McCaldin shows how she is able to shape and control her voice to draw so much from each song, following the subtle nuances of each text to deliver the most remarkable performances. Libby Burgess provides the most sensitive accompaniment adding much to the emotional thrust of these songs

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Notes from the Asylum

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