Isolation Songbook

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The results are varied, from comic miniatures to distilled dramas and contemplative outpourings, but together add up to a recital that’s hard to resist, at once fresh and profoundly familiar. — Gramophone Magazine, July 2021 More…

Release Date: 26th Mar 2021
Catalogue No: DCD34253
Label: Delphian
Length: 64 minutes

Presto Editor's Choice

March 2021
Presto Recordings of the Year

Finalist 2021

Usually despatched in 3 - 4 working days

Delphian

Special offer ends: 08/05/2024

This release includes a digital booklet

Delphian

Special offer ends: 08/05/2024

Park: 18th April

Work length4:32

$1.00

$1.40

$1.75

Helen Charlston (mezzo-soprano), Michael Craddock (baritone), Alexander Soares (piano)

Werner, Héloïse: The Orange Vendor

Work length3:16

$1.00

$1.40

$1.75

Helen Charlston (mezzo-soprano), Michael Craddock (baritone)

Brixey-Williams: Abat-jour

Work length4:26

$1.00

$1.40

$1.75

Helen Charlston (mezzo-soprano), Alexander Soares (piano)

Briggs, Kerensa: Melancholy (and Buttercream)

Work length6:23

$1.00

$1.40

$1.75

Helen Charlston (mezzo-soprano), Michael Craddock (baritone), Alexander Soares (piano)

Dearden, N J: the way we go

Work length4:09

$1.00

$1.40

$1.75

Helen Charlston (mezzo-soprano), Alexander Soares (piano)

Barnard, R: Three Early Stroll Songs

Work length5:22

$3.00

$4.20

$5.25

Michael Craddock (baritone), Alexander Soares (piano), Helen Charlston (mezzo-soprano)

No. 1, Early Stroll 28.3.20

Track length1:07

$1.00

$1.40

$1.75

No. 2, Early Stroll 29 / 30.3.20

Track length1:31

$1.00

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No. 3, Early Stroll 31.5.20

Track length2:44

$1.00

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Borin: Nature is Returning

Work length6:16

$1.00

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Helen Charlston (mezzo-soprano), Alexander Soares (piano)

Rowarth: The King's Breakfast

Work length3:03

$1.00

$1.40

$1.75

Helen Charlston (mezzo-soprano), Michael Craddock (baritone), Alexander Soares (piano)

Park, E: Skysong

Work length8:01

$4.00

$5.60

$7.00

Helen Charlston (mezzo-soprano), Alexander Soares (piano), Elliott Park (tape), Michael Craddock (baritone)

Refrain

Track length1:36

$1.00

$1.40

$1.75

Dawn

Track length3:07

$1.00

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Soothe

Track length1:36

$1.00

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$1.75

Refrain II

Track length1:42

$1.00

$1.40

$1.75

Lewis, D J: A Moment

Work length2:15

$1.00

$1.40

$1.75

Helen Charlston (mezzo-soprano), Michael Craddock (baritone), Alexander Soares (piano)

Charlston, T: Duets (3)

Work length4:22

$3.00

$4.20

$5.25

Helen Charlston (mezzo-soprano), Michael Craddock (baritone), Alexander Soares (piano)

No. 1, O Solitude

Track length1:14

$1.00

$1.40

$1.75

No. 2, Hurried Letter

Track length1:13

$1.00

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$1.75

No. 3, Endless Song (Version with Piano)

Track length1:55

$1.00

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$1.75

Ward, M J C: Concerning Cows: A Rural Song Cycle

Work length1:36

$3.00

$4.20

$5.25

Michael Craddock (baritone), Alexander Soares (piano)

No. 1, The Chicken Is a Noble Beast

Track length0:33

$1.00

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No. 2, The Cow Is of the Bovine Ilk

Track length0:23

$1.00

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No. 3, I Saw Three Cows

Track length0:40

$1.00

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$1.75

Blok-Wilson: I'm Nobody

Work length2:29

$1.00

$1.40

$1.75

Helen Charlston (mezzo-soprano), Michael Craddock (baritone), Alexander Soares (piano)

Davy, J: Dreams

Work length4:01

$1.00

$1.40

$1.75

Helen Charlston (mezzo-soprano), Michael Craddock (baritone), Alexander Soares (piano)

Bick: On His Blindness

Work length3:40

$1.00

$1.40

$1.75

Helen Charlston (mezzo-soprano), Alexander Soares (piano)

About
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About

The feeling which many of us experienced in spring 2020 as, country by country, the world went into lockdown a sense of life gone into standstill was especially acute for musicians, deprived suddenly of both their livelihoods and the human connections that give their work meaning.

For singers Helen Charlston and Michael Craddock, it was not only their art that they could no longer express publicly: they had been due to marry in April. Forced like so many to put plans of any kind on hold, Helen began to find ways of redirecting her creative energies. She wrote a poem for Michael to mark their postponed wedding date, and the composer Owain Park, a friend of the couple, set it to music.

Helen began to contact other composers and poets, and unexpectedly but quickly a project took shape that would both fill the empty time and bear witness to it. The project chimed with Delphian's determination to maintain the flow of album releases while live music was in abeyance, and so with music again proving its ability to build connections across physical distance the Isolation Songbook swiftly found a home on disc; recorded during the summer relaxation of restrictions, its release marks the anniversary of the beginning of lockdown in the UK.

Reviews

July 2021

The results are varied, from comic miniatures to distilled dramas and contemplative outpourings, but together add up to a recital that’s hard to resist, at once fresh and profoundly familiar.

March 2021

Witty and touching in equal measure, this personal but deeply relatable lockdown project from a young husband-and-wife-to-be stemmed from Owain Park’s appropriately bitter-sweet setting of a poem which Charlston wrote for her fiancé to mark what would have been their wedding-day last year. Other highlights include Joshua Borin’s darkly funny Nature is Returning (sung with savage brilliance by Charlston), and Stephen Bick’s setting of Milton’s On His Blindness, which resonates powerfully in this period of ‘standing and waiting’.

13th March 2021

Héloïse Werner, Elliott Park and Gerda Blok-Wilson are included in this lovely, accomplished miscellany of composers, poets and moods.

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