SOMM RECORDINGS announces a major new recording of songs by Charles Villiers Stanford including the first complete recording of Songs of Faith and 12 first recordings of other distinctively vital songs.
Songs of Love, Faith and Nonsense continues SOMM’s widely acclaimed commitment to Stanford’s music with baritone Roderick Williams, tenor James Way (making his SOMM debut) and pianist Andrew West throwing revealing new light on his gift for word setting and the variety of his responses to matters of emotional ardour, spiritual fervency and the sublime nonsense poems of Edward Lear.
Setting poems by Tennyson and Walt Whitman, Songs of Faith demonstrates Stanford’s ability to give unique expression to the profound and the arcane with music of dramatic force and harmonic ingenuity. Three songs by Robert Bridges (librettist for Stanford’s oratorio Eden) and four songs from the opera Shamus O’Brien tap into Stanford’s Irish roots to colourful and evocative effect.
Composed to mark his 25th wedding anniversary and receiving its first recording, The Triumph of Love sets five sonnets by his close cousin, Edmond Gore Alexander Holmes, in richly executed settings.
The delightful Nonsense Rhymes taken from Edward Lear’s inimitably playful, poignant and pointed limericks show a different side to Stanford, a “highly articulate, dry humour like many literary Irishmen of his era”, as Jeremy Dibble says in his authoritative booklet notes.
SOMM’s previous Stanford recordings include the recently released String Quintets (SOMMCD 0623) and the complete, three-volume String Quartets (SOMMCD 0160, 0185, 0607) with the Dante Quartet praised by Gramophone for their “ardent, alert and thoroughly lived-in performances”, and Partsongs with the Birmingham Conservatoire Chamber Choir and Paul Spicer (SOMMCD 0128) which Limelight described as “excellent… beautifully sung”.
SOMM’s world premiere recording of The Travelling Companion (SOMMCD 274-2) was hailed “a landmark” by Gramophone.
On This Recording
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Songs of Faith, Op.97 (1907) a*
- Strong son of God, immortal Love
- God and the universe
- Faith
- To the Soul
- Tears
- Joy, Shipmate, Joy!
- Since thou, O fondest and truest
- I praise the tender flower
- Say, O say! Saith the music
- My heart is thrall b
- Glengall b
- Ochone, when I used to be young a
- I love my ould Ireland a
- The Hardy Norsewoman b
- The Compleat Virtuoso a
- The Absent Barber a
- The Cow and the Coward a
- Barkerolle a
- Dithyramb a
- The Generous Parishioner a
- Limmerich ohne Worte Andrew West piano
- The Boat Song b
- Nileinsamkeit a
- The Aquiline Snub b
- Tone Poem b
- Gongdichtung a
- A Vist of Elizabeth a
- O one deep sacred outlet of my soul
- Like as the thrush in winter
- When in the solemn stillness of the night
- I think that we were childre
- O flames of passion
- Barkerolle (alternative version) a
Three Songs of Robert Bridges, Op.43 (1891) a**
Four Songs from Shamus O’Brien, Op.61 (1896) ***
Nonsense Rhymes (pub. Post.)
The Triumph of Love, Op.82 (1903) b
Nonsense Rhymes (pub. Post.)
*First complete recording
**First recordings
***First digital recording
a Roderick Williams, baritone
b James Way, tenor
