The Contrast: English Poetry in Song Carolyn Sampson & Joseph Middleton

• William Walton (1902 - 1983): A Song for the Lord Mayor's Table (Version for Soprano & Piano):
• 1 A Song for the Lord Mayor's Table (Version for Soprano & Piano): No. 1, The Lord Mayor's Table 03:14
• 2 A Song for the Lord Mayor's Table (Version for Soprano & Piano): No. 2, Glide Gently 02:43
• 3 A Song for the Lord Mayor's Table (Version for Soprano & Piano): No. 3, Wapping Old Stairs 02:20
• 4 A Song for the Lord Mayor's Table (Version for Soprano & Piano): No. 4, Holy Thursday 03:07
• 5 A Song for the Lord Mayor's Table (Version for Soprano & Piano): No. 5, The Contrast 02:45
• 6 A Song for the Lord Mayor's Table (Version for Soprano & Piano): No. 6, Rhyme 01:52
• Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872 - 1958):
• 7 3 Songs from Shakespeare: No. 3, Orpheus with His Lute 02:59
• 8 The Sky Above the Roof 02:39
• 9 The House of Life: No. 2, Silent Noon 04:03
• Frank Bridge (1879 - 1941):
• 10 Go Not, Happy Day, H. 34 01:18
• 11 When Most I Wink, H. 5 02:41
• 12 Adoration, H. 57 02:50
• 13 Come to Me in My Dreams, H. 71 03:38
• 14 When You Are Old, H. 142 03:54
• 15 Mantle of Blue, H. 131 02:12
• 16 Love Went a-Riding, H. 114 01:41
• Huw Watkins (b. 1976): 5 Larkin Songs:
• 17 5 Larkin Songs: No. 1, Who Called Love Conquering 02:45
• 18 5 Larkin Songs: No. 2, Wants 01:37
• 19 5 Larkin Songs: No. 3, Love Songs in Age 03:26
• 20 5 Larkin Songs: No. 4, Money 01:47
• 21 5 Larkin Songs: No. 5, Dawn 02:33
• Roger Quilter (1877 - 1953):
• 22 Dream Valley, Op. 20 No. 1 02:14
• 23 7 Elizabethan Lyrics, Op. 12 (Excerpts): No. 7, Fair House of Joy 01:46
• 24 7 Elizabethan Lyrics, Op. 12 (Excerpts): No. 6, By a Fountainside 02:56
• 25 Arab Love Song, Op. 25 No. 4 01:17
• 26 Autumn Evening, Op. 14 No. 1 01:34
• 27 7 Elizabethan Lyrics, Op. 12 (Excerpts): No. 2, My Life's Delight 02:55
• William Walton: 3 Songs to Poems (After "Façade"):
• 28 3 Songs to Poems (After "Façade"): No. 1, Daphne 03:58
• 29 3 Songs to Poems (After "Façade"): No. 2, Through Gilded Trellises 03:58
• 30 3 Songs to Poems (After "Façade"): No. 3, Old Sir Faulk 01:57
• Total Runtime 01:18:39

Info for The Contrast: English Poetry in Song

Song composition has been a constant in British music since the lute and consort works of the early seventeenth century. By 1900, it had developed into a sophisticated genre embraced by almost all serious composers. The music on this amply-filled disc illustrates the diversity of British song-writing and its transformation over a century: from Vaughan Williams’s Orpheus and his Lute (ca 1901) to HuwWatkins’s Five Larkin Songs, composed in 2010 for Carolyn Sampson, who performs them here. Together with Joseph Middleton, her partner on several acclaimed recital discs, she has devised a highly contrasting programme bookended by two groups of songs by William Walton – A Song for the Lord Mayor's Table from 1962, celebrating the diversity of London, and three songs from Façade, the ‘entertainment’ with which the young composer gained both fame and notoriety in 1923.These frame settings by Ralph Vaughan Williams, Roger Quilterand Frank Bridge of poetry by writers from Shakespeare and Shelley to Keats and Yeats. In comparison, the anti-romantic poems by Philip Larkin have been described as marked by ‘a very English, glum accuracy’. Huw Watkins (b. 1976) has selected texts from across Larkin’s output, catching the various moods – ranging from a certain unsentimental nostalgia to the poet’s seemingly habitual pessimism - in settings that often carry a bittersweet sting in the tail.

Carolyn Sampson, soprano
Joseph Middleton, piano

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Booklet for The Contrast: English Poetry in Song