Carolyn Sampson & Joseph Middleton – The Contrast: English Poetry in Song (2020) [FLAC 24bit/96kHz]

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.

From John Dowland’s 17th century lute music to more recent, refined and intellectual rethinking of the genre in the 20th century, Great Britain has had a long tradition of writing “songs”. For her new album, with pianist Joseph Middleton, English soprano singer Carolyn Sampson has chosen a series of pieces composed within the last 120 years. She has willingly decided to exclude from the repertoire well-known musicians, such as Britten and Tippett, whose compositions have often been recorded.

This pleasant album begins and ends with Walton. The first track, a piece of occasional music, is full of Walton’s slightly mistimed nonchalance. It portrays different aspects of life in London. The record’s last tracks, however, were selected from Façade, an Erik Satie (and Les Six)-influenced composition which scandalized the city when it was first performed in 1923 and boosted the composer’s career. Also featured in the record is a myriad of musical skits from Ralph Vaughan Williams, Frank Bridge, Roger Quilter and Huw Watkins, whose Five Larkin Songs were commissioned by Carolyn Sampson. – François Hudry

Tracklist:
01. A Song for the Lord Mayor’s Table (Version for Soprano & Piano): No. 1, The Lord Mayor’s Table (3:20)
02. A Song for the Lord Mayor’s Table (Version for Soprano & Piano): No. 2, Glide Gently (2:47)
03. A Song for the Lord Mayor’s Table (Version for Soprano & Piano): No. 3, Wapping Old Stairs (2:27)
04. A Song for the Lord Mayor’s Table (Version for Soprano & Piano): No. 4, Holy Thursday (3:13)
05. A Song for the Lord Mayor’s Table (Version for Soprano & Piano): No. 5, The Contrast (2:47)
06. A Song for the Lord Mayor’s Table (Version for Soprano & Piano): No. 6, Rhyme (2:02)
07. 3 Songs from Shakespeare: No. 3, Orpheus with His Lute (3:04)
08. The Sky Above the Roof (2:47)
09. The House of Life: No. 2, Silent Noon (4:09)
10. Go Not, Happy Day, H. 34 (1:23)
11. When Most I Wink, H. 5 (2:47)
12. Adoration, H. 57 (2:57)
13. Come to Me in My Dreams, H. 71 (3:46)
14. When You Are Old, H. 142 (4:01)
15. Mantle of Blue, H. 131 (2:19)
16. Love Went a-Riding, H. 114 (1:51)
17. 5 Larkin Songs: No. 1, Who Called Love Conquering (2:48)
18. 5 Larkin Songs: No. 2, Wants (1:39)
19. 5 Larkin Songs: No. 3, Love Songs in Age (3:29)
20. 5 Larkin Songs: No. 4, Money (1:53)
21. 5 Larkin Songs: No. 5, Dawn (2:43)
22. Dream Valley, Op. 20 No. 1 (2:20)
23. 7 Elizabethan Lyrics, Op. 12 (Excerpts): No. 7, Fair House of Joy (1:54)
24. 7 Elizabethan Lyrics, Op. 12 (Excerpts): No. 6, By a Fountainside (3:01)
25. Arab Love Song, Op. 25 No. 4 (1:24)
26. Autumn Evening, Op. 14 No. 1 (3:02)
27. 7 Elizabethan Lyrics, Op. 12 (Excerpts): No. 2, My Life’s Delight (1:42)
28. 3 Songs to Poems (After “Façade”): No. 1, Daphne (2:58)
29. 3 Songs to Poems (After “Façade”): No. 2, Through Gilded Trellises (4:06)
30. 3 Songs to Poems (After “Façade”): No. 3, Old Sir Faulk (2:28)