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In Lorna Windsor and William Hancox's inspiring new collection of English Songs, the many gems include well-loved songs and poems alternated with premiere recordings (in their voice and piano guise) of two song cycles by Carey Blyton, and a third late group. In the cycle of songs Lachrymae (in memoriam John Dowland), and in the two groups of Lyrics - settings of poems from ancient eastern worlds from Greece to China - Windsor and Hancox explore Blyton's expressive contrasts and idiomatic subtleties, hitherto little known by audiences. Peter Warlock's songs enigmatically pass from sentiment to expressive beauty, to wit and drollery, whilst Arnold Bax's one song is a joyful hymn to the long- awaited return of summer, to words by Chaucer. Then E.J. Moeran's choice of poems by James Joyce so perfectly express the charm, magic and sorrow of young love within the natural cycle of the seasons, and John Mitchell's Bright Clouds set verses by the war poet Edward Thomas, which here deal with observations of nature and rural life. Peter Thompson's is a new setting of Robert Burns' famous love poem A red, red rose, and alongside this comes a song utilising lines from that half-playful, half-bitter Swinburne poem, A Match. In this album by composers of the recent past and of the present day, it is significantly apparent that all the music is tonal and resisted the periods of experimentation by various schools and tendencies, surviving these trends, whilst always seeking variety within the tonal system, chromaticism and even bitonality. Through traditionally idiomatic folk or Elizabethan harmonisation, or more recent hues of late nineteenth or early twentieth century, even impressionistic colourisation, woven into and enriching the musical language of these composers, the tradition of English Song lives on and flourishes to the delight of performers and listeners.
Peter Warlock