The English Song Series Volume 23 - Jonathan Dove Song Cycles
Claire Booth (soprano), Patricia Bardon (mezzo-soprano), Nicky Spence (tenor) & Andrew Matthews-Owen (piano)
Awards:
-
Gramophone Magazine, October 2014, Editor's Choice
All three singers are very good, particularly Spence, but the star of [the] show is Matthews-Owen. So much of the effectiveness of these songs lies in Dove's inventive piano writing with its...
The English Song Series Volume 23 - Jonathan Dove Song Cycles
Claire Booth (soprano), Patricia Bardon (mezzo-soprano), Nicky Spence (tenor) & Andrew Matthews-Owen (piano)
Purchase product
Awards:
-
Gramophone Magazine, October 2014, Editor's Choice
All three singers are very good, particularly Spence, but the star of [the] show is Matthews-Owen. So much of the effectiveness of these songs lies in Dove's inventive piano writing with its...
About
Jonathan Dove is one of Britain’s most resourceful and versatile contemporary composers, whose affinity for vocal setting is especially striking. From the operatic canvas of his acclaimed Flight to his song cycles, his acutely perceptive approach to texts is unmistakeable. Out of Winter, written in collaboration with Dove, is the late Sir Robert Tear’s poetic response to Thomas Hardy’s Winter Words. Cut My Shadow is a powerful and harrowing setting of three Lorca texts notable for a sense of constant unease and longing for a homeland. All You Who Sleep Tonight, to poems by Vikram Seth, is elegant, moving, and witty whilst Ariel explores Shakespeare’s elusive character from The Tempest in a rôle for unaccompanied soprano.
Contents and tracklist
Awards and reviews
-
Gramophone MagazineOctober 2014Editor's Choice
All three singers are very good, particularly Spence, but the star of [the] show is Matthews-Owen. So much of the effectiveness of these songs lies in Dove's inventive piano writing with its cross rhythms and shifting patterns.
September 2014
Matthews-Owen is an immaculate accompanist, showing a particularly clean pair of fingers in the dashing virtuosity of Song III. The unaccompanied Ariel...is like opera without the orchestra, and soprano Claire Booth shows a technical accomplishment comparable to Spence’s in meeting its many challenges…this is a richly stimulating recital.
Spence has a beautiful lyric tenor which he uses with great facility and always to expressive ends...The piano playing of Matthews-Owen is full partner in the music writing in this and the other cycles for voice and piano...I cannot imagine anyone with an interest in singing, or music for voice and piano, or young singers, or British music not responding to this.
August 2014
[Dove] is one of the most vivid painters of words in music today...
That much becomes clear with Out of Winter...Dove's 20-minute cycle, characterfully sung by Nicky Spence, casts a spell - not least in the ecstatic finale, where pianist Andrew Matthews-Owen contributes to the theatrical atmosphere...Claire Booth, unaccompanied, animates Ariel's bewitching narrative, whilst mezzo Patricia Bardon explores the amorous moods, alternately playful and sultry, of All You Who Sleep Tonight.
October 2014
If you want to find out what has happened to English song since Britten, this is as good a place to start as any...Spence puts [Out of Winter] across with Pears-like point...Matthews-Owen is the supportive accompanist. Here are four highly imaginative new song-cycles, each deserving of a life of its own.
13th October 2014
Apart from his excellent booklet notes, Andrew Matthews-Owen is a superlative pianist, and he is well treated by the resonant recording. Throughout these cycles one is grateful to encounter a composer whose writing for the voice, and his understanding of its technique, is so approachable.
Classical Net September 2014
It is to the credit of the three singers here and pianist Andrew Matthews-Owen that they completely understand the delicate balance between pushing an object into motion and guiding it throughout the course of its natural vector. Then they pull their hands away; and leave us wanting more. Equally noteworthy is the extent to which pianist and singer create almost orchestral sonorities…
