Echo

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Watkins’s cycle shares Britten’s ability to meld text and musical gesture with an acuity seemingly effortless, almost plucked ready-formed out of the air...An exquisite release touched with poignant... — BBC Music Magazine, February 2023, 5 out of 5 stars More…

Release Date: 4th Nov 2022
Catalogue No: BIS2568
Label: BIS
Length: 63 minutes

Presto Editor's Choice

November 2022
BBC Music Magazine

February 2023

Recording of the Month

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Excerpt, Bach, J S: Partita No. 4 in D major, BWV828

Work length3:27

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Huw Watkins (piano)

V. Sarabande

Track length3:27

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Bach, J S: Gedenke doch, mein Geist, BWV509

Work length1:32

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Arr. B. Britten for Voice & Piano
Ruby Hughes (soprano), Huw Watkins (piano)

Excerpt, Bach, J S: French Suite No. 3 in B Minor, BWV814

Work length1:48

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Huw Watkins (piano)

III. Sarabande

Track length1:48

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Bach, J S: Komm süsser Tod, BWV478

Work length3:07

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Arr. B. Britten for Voice & Piano
Ruby Hughes (soprano), Huw Watkins (piano)

Excerpt, Bach, J S: Partita No. 6 in E minor, BWV830

Work length2:44

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Huw Watkins (piano)

III. Corrente

Track length2:44

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Bach, J S: Liebster Herr Jesu! wo bleibest du so lange?, BWV484

Work length3:42

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Ruby Hughes (soprano), Huw Watkins (piano)

Watkins, H: Echo

Work length15:28

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Ruby Hughes (soprano), Huw Watkins (piano)

I. Echo

Track length4:25

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II. For Each Ecstatic Instant

Track length1:46

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III. If Grief Could Burn Out

Track length3:34

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IV. When You Are Old

Track length2:23

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V. Baby Blue

Track length3:20

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Purcell: By beauteous softness (from Now does the glorious day appear, Z332)

Work length4:45

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Arr. T. Adès for Voice & Piano
Ruby Hughes (soprano), Huw Watkins (piano)

Purcell: Music for a while, Z583

Work length4:09

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Arr. Sir M. Tippett & W. Bergmann for Voice & Piano
Ruby Hughes (soprano), Huw Watkins (piano)

trad.: I wonder as I wander

Work length4:45

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Arr. B. Britten & J.J. Niles for Voice
Ruby Hughes (soprano), Huw Watkins (piano)

trad.: Dafydd y Garreg Wen

Work length3:42

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Arr. B. Britten & C. Matthews for Voice & Piano
Ruby Hughes (soprano), Huw Watkins (piano)

trad.: Folksong Arrangements, Vol. 4

Work length2:35

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Ruby Hughes (soprano), Huw Watkins (piano)

How Sweet the Answer (The Wren)

Track length2:35

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Pritchard, Deborah: The World

Work length4:12

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Ruby Hughes (soprano), Huw Watkins (piano)

Frances-Hoad: Lament

Work length3:34

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Ruby Hughes (soprano), Huw Watkins (piano)

Wallen: Peace on earth

Work length3:20

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Ruby Hughes (soprano), Huw Watkins (piano)

About
Reviews
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About

Huw Watkins’s song cycle Echo, composed for soprano Ruby Hughes and premiered in 2017 at Carnegie Hall, is at the centre of this artfully crafted recital. Setting texts by five different poets, the cycle is a work centred on melancholy – on transience, remembrance, and in the final song a numbed cry of inconceivable loss. As such it permeates the entire programme, adding a new and unexpected depth to that which precedes as well as follows.

Another strand of the recital is the idea of how composers across the ages have addressed and echoed one another lovingly in their music – often in the most nuanced and unconscious way. Bach’s solo keyboard works capture something of a sense of timelessness, or more accurately, inspire an emotional connection that transcends time. A similar affinity seems to inform Britten’s folksong arrangements and his realisations of Bach’s Geistliche Lieder as well as the Purcell realisations by Thomas Adès and Tippett. A different kind of echo is created by the inclusion of Britten’s version of Dafydd y Garreg Wen (David of the White Rock) – a nod to the performers’ shared Welsh heritage. Closing the disc, three songs by contemporary British composers admired by both Watkins and Hughes also resonate with the previous works, bringing the programme full circle.

Reviews

February 2023

Watkins’s cycle shares Britten’s ability to meld text and musical gesture with an acuity seemingly effortless, almost plucked ready-formed out of the air...An exquisite release touched with poignant pleasures and depth-plumbing reflections that echo, re-echo, linger and endure.

January 2023

With the composer at the piano and Hughes effectively navigating the words, the cycle is a perfectly beguiling experience.

November 2022

Hughes's pure, clear but supremely expressive soprano is the ideal vehicle for this poignant recital exploring the themes of loss and mourning, which takes its title from a powerful new song-cycle by Watkins setting texts by Rossetti, Dickinson, Yeats, Larkin and Harsent with unflagging imagination and sympathy. The Purcell songs are beautifully done, as are Watkins's performances of astutely-chosen movements from Bach's solo keyboard works, and Errollyn Wallen's radiant 'Peace on Earth' makes for a cathartic closer.

2nd November 2022

the title song cycle [is] a brilliantly effective meditation on different shades of grief and loss...Hughes’s vibrato-light voice is extremely expressive even when her volume’s turned low, as it is, you may feel, for slightly too much of the time. But, whispered or not, this is still a most thoughtful and tender album.

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