LAUDIBUS • MIKE BREWER Choral Settings of Scottish Poetry From
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Choral settings of Scottish poetry from ROBERT BURNS to ALEXANDER McCALL SMITH LAUDIBUS • MIKE BREWER AVjY^WjhB^`Z7gZlZgXdcYjXidg 7Zi]BVX`VnbZood"hdegVcd-!&%I]dbVhAV^c\"GZ^aandg\Vc- 1 Dream Angus arr. John Powell [3:25] Michael Bradley baritone solo Scotland at Night Tom Cunningham (b. 1946) 2 Dusk [2:54] 3 Refinery in the darkness [1:12] 4 Ceilidh [2:06] 5 Simmer Dim in Shetland [1:57] 6 Trout loch [1:53] 7 Lullaby [2:36] 8 My Heart’s in the Highlands Arvo Pärt (b. 1935) [7:38] 9 So Deep James MacMillan (b. 1959) [3:36] 10 Address to Edinburgh Howard Skempton (b. 1946) [2:33] 11 The Gallant Weaver James MacMillan [5:31] The Painter’s Eye Tom Cunningham 12 Peaceable Kingdom (after Edward Hicks) [1:35] 13 Tower of Babel (Pieter Bruegel the Elder) [2:24] 14 The Skating Minister (Sir Henry Raeburn) [1:37] 15 Birth of Venus (Sandro Botticelli) [1:39] 16 An Old Man and His Grandson (Domenico Ghirlandaio) [3:20] A Medieval Scottish Triptych Ronald Stevenson (b. 1928) 17 Qwhen Alexander our Kynge was Dede [3:04] 18 Wallace’s Lament for the Graham [5:38] 19 Fredome [2:49] 20 Ye Banks and Braes arr. Mike Brewer [2:23] Lisa Swayne soprano solo 21The Seagull a choral tone-poem John Hearne (b. 1937) [4:14] Total playing time [64:18] Notes on the music ‘Scotland’, wrote the novelist and poet Nan with a living Scottish poet. Still newly returned Shepherd in her 1928 novel The Quarry to the Scottish scene at this point, he wrote Wood, ‘is bounded on the south by England, to McCall Smith for advice about potential on the east by the rising sun, on the north collaborators, little imagining that McCall Smith by the Arory-bory-Alice, and on the west by would offer his own services. Eternity.’ It was not a new thought – indeed, Shepherd appears to have adapted it (perhaps The result, a cycle of choral pieces collectively semi-ironically) from a similar bon mot about entitled Scotland at Night, was so successful America – but it might stand as a motto over that a second collaboration followed quickly – the programme of music on this disc, a many- another choral cycle, with McCall Smith’s faceted journey through Scotland’s geography, poems this time based on five famous hi-story and myth. paintings. The working partnership continues apace: Cunningham has just completed a The project started out in a collaboration new opera – The Okavango Macbeth, for between composer Tom Cunningham and best- a small group of six singers and keyboard selling author Alexander McCall Smith. When accompaniment – to a libretto by McCall Smith, Cunningham returned to his native Edinburgh to be premiered in October 2009 at the No. 1 in 2002 after eighteen years as musical director Ladies’ Opera House which McCall Smith has of the Brussels Choral Society, he began to helped found in Botswana as a venue for the establish working relationships with a number many talented local singers there. Meanwhile, of Scottish choirs, including the National Youth Delphian producer Paul Baxter – whose Choir of Scotland and the professional Scottish friendship with McCall Smith dates back to chamber choir Cappella Nova. When the the writer’s discovery of an early Delphian opportunity arose to write for the latter group, disc in an Edinburgh bookshop in 2004 – had Cunningham wanted to compose something become involved, conceiving a programme challenging to sing but approachable for of choral music around the ‘Scotland at night’ listeners, and he conceived the idea of working theme McCall Smith had alighted on for that Recorded on 3-5 January 2009 in Colinton Album concept: Paul Baxter Booklet editor: John Fallas Parish Church, Edinburgh except track 8, Design: Drew Padrutt Delphian Records – Edinburgh – UK recorded 30 March at St Cuthbert’s Parish Photograph editing: Raymond Parks www.delphianrecords.co.uk Church, Edinburgh, and track 10, recorded 21 May at Prestonkirk, East Linton Cover image: Sir Henry Raeburn, Revd With thanks to the Revd Neil Gardner, Dr Robert Walker (1755–1808) Skating Eddie McGuire, the Revd Peter Allen, Producer/Engineer: Paul Baxter on Duddingston Loch, National Gallery Duncan Ferguson and the Very Revd 24-bit editing & mastering: Paul Baxter of Scotland – by permission Graham Forbes first collaboration with Cunningham. By the Cunningham’s settings match the texts with It would be hard to imagine a Scottish poetry solo voice of Burns’ ‘Address to Edinburgh’ is time The Painter’s Eye received its first run of a musical language similarly poised between without the presence of Robert Burns, of a double tribute: to Delphian producer Paul concert performances in March 2009, it had the vernacular and the magically evocative. course. Many of the Burns poems that we Baxter on his thirtieth birthday, and to the already been included in the January 2009 The working process was largely a matter of know best today were written by Burns as voice of Baxter’s wife Beth Mackay, whose rich recording sessions for the present disc. words first, music following after, sometimes song lyrics, and the first of the two pieces by mezzo-soprano tone in the solo song included throwing up serendipities en route – as at James MacMillan heard here is an arrangement on Delphian’s Skempton portrait disc The * * * * * the end of ‘Trout Loch’, where the wordless of Burns’ own (pentatonic) melody for one of Cloths of Heaven had impressed the composer vocalises evoking the ripples in the lake his most famous lyrics of all, ‘A Red Red Rose’. so much. Appropriately for a disc with the twin themes suddenly enact the prayer mentioned in the MacMillan gives the melody to the sopranos, of Scotland and night, we begin under the sign final line (‘Ah … men’!). Sometimes McCall who are divided into two groups, and rather If less overtly folk-like than the MacMillan of Angus, the Celtic god of dreams, invoked in Smith’s images inspired in Cunningham than a conventional harmonic accompaniment settings, Skempton’s piece is still essentially a lullaby to John Powell’s arrangement of an old a compositional idea which necessitated has the other voices pick out single words strophic. So, albeit in a particularly subtle Gaelic folk-tune. There is a happy coincidence further input from the writer. ‘Ceilidh’ was a from the tune, which they sustain like an echo way, is Arvo Pärt’s setting for counter-tenor here too, since some years earlier the myth of case in point, where the choral enactment chamber. Just before the mid-way point of the or alto with organ accompaniment of Burns’ Angus had formed the basis of McCall Smith’s of a reel required more words: McCall piece, the sense of different temporal layers ‘Farewell to the Highlands’, which succeeds contribution to a series of books published by Smith obligingly provided them, and in the is magnified when the men’s voices (and one in transforming the familiar text through a Canongate, contemporary re-tellings of myths by movement that resulted they do indeed group of altos) take the words ‘so deep’ and compositional approach which is at once a selection of popular authors. That fertile ground rush past at a speed in keeping with the repeat them at their own independent speeds. simple and radical. The voice sings only the where folklore meets modernity is the source excitement evoked, until finally spinning off Both here, and in the canonic filigree of The three notes of a rising F minor arpeggio, of much of what is expressed in the texts of into wordless shouts of exhilaration. Gallant Weaver – this time set to MacMillan’s staying on a single pitch throughout each verse Scotland at Night. As McCall Smith writes: own melody, but perhaps even more radiantly and then returning to where it began. The If the dance here refers to a pre-existing pure, and again underpinned by a rocking figure organ provides an alternative form of difference When Edison perfected his electric light-bulb, he must musical style, a similar instance in The in longer notes – the effect is dreamlike, as if within repetition – its measured permutations have had little idea of the consequences. Some of Painter’s Eye features an actual musical we were being given less a re-presentation of two or three types of basic material (a these have been of great benefit to humanity; others have not. Night as a time of quiet and dark has been quotation. McCall Smith’s choice of Sir Henry of the lyric, a narration of its events, than a broken chord, stepwise motion in the bass, replaced by night as a time of work and activity. Raeburn’s ‘The Skating Minister’ as one dream about a folk-song: Scotland at night, or a rising or falling fifth crossing over above Artificial light has also largely cut us off from the of the five paintings on which to base his at twilight, again? the melody) are the varied backdrop against heavens, as light pollution floods the world and poems here gave Cunningham the idea of a which the apparently unvarying vocal line obliterates the stars from view. setting based on Émile Waldteufel’s famous The two non-Scottish composers on the disc takes on three-dimensional qualities. Within ‘Skater’s Waltz’. In this case, McCall Smith take perhaps more unexpected approaches to this context the smallest event assumes great Here and there, though, the magic of night persists, rewrote his original text to fit the music; the Burns texts, though an approach in each case significance, as when the leading note is and we glimpse a world that is subtly different from the world of day.