Description

SOMM Recordings is delighted to announce a thrilling first collaboration between long-time SOMM stablemates, baritone Roderick Williams and the Coull Quartet, joined by tenor James Gilchrist and soprano Sophie Bevan. With six first recordings, On This Shining Night is a ravishing recital focusing revealingly on a 20th-century phenomenon: works for voice and string quartet. It takes its title from a James Agate setting by Samuel Barber (whose masterly Dover Beach is also heard), here in a sublime arrangement by Roderick Williams. Williams also provides arrangements of Barbers Sleep Now and three Frederick Delius pieces from his Seven Songs from the Norwegian: the evocative Twilight Fancies, vivacious Young Venevil and exotic I-Brasil. They serve, as Robert Matthew-Walkers erudite booklet notes observe, as companions to 11 songs by Deliuss close friend and associate, Peter Warlock, including the gentle intimacy of Corpus Christi, the mini-cantata Sorrows Lullaby, and unique free-recitative of My gostly vader. Composed for Williams and the Coull Quartet, Sally Beamishs five-part Tree Carols offer striking, variegated settings of poems by Fiona Sampson in their premiere recording. Roderick Williams SOMM catalogue include the acclaimed three-volume Twelve Sets of English Lyrics by Hubert Parry (SOMMCD 257, 270, 272), Sally Beamishs Four Songs from Hafez (Birdsong, SOMMCD 0633), and the classic English song cycles A Shropshire Lad and Maud (SOMMCD 0615), which MusicWeb International declared a game changer in terms of our appreciation of Arthur Somervells songs. The Coull Quartet has recorded a wide repertoire for SOMM. Their recording of Nicholas Maw and Benjamin Britten quartets (SOMMCD 065) was a Gramophone Editors Choice and a BBC Music Magazine Benchmark Recording. Gramophone declared their recent SOMM release with Cllia Iruzun, Treasures from the New World, featuring piano quintets by Amy Beach and Henrique Oswald (SOMMCD 0609), a delight.