1 Louisa [4:41] (b. 1993) Emily Benson soprano, Christopher Pelmore tenor Sing to me, windchimes * 2 I. Sing to me, windchimes [3:12] Owain Park piano * 3 Interlude – The inundation of the Spring [0:36] Gabriella Jones violin ** 4 II. Loveliest of trees [3:44] Annie Hamilton soprano 5 III. Star of the frost [2:03] 6 IV. The Rainy Summer [4:58] 7 Interlude – A Wind that woke a lone Delight [0:52] 8 V. Into my heart an air that kills [3:38] 9 VI. Life has a loveliness to sell [7:41] 10 Antiphon for the Angels ** [10:23] Shakespeare Love Songs 11 I. Love is a smoke [2:31] 12 II. Love, whose month is ever May [2:40] Jess Haig alto 13 III. So sweet a kiss [4:30] John Robb tenor 14 IV. When love speaks [2:15] 15 Holy is the true light [5:57] With thanks to the RVW Trust for its financial support towards the making of this recording. Helen Price soprano, Abaigh Wheatley alto, Tim Lintern tenor, Morgan Simes baritone Becky Ryland-Jones, Emma Kjellin, Richard Holdsworth, Adrian Collister quartet Epiphoni is grateful to our many friends, supporters and benefactors for their ongoing support. Shakespeare Songs of Night-Time We are particularly grateful to the 66 backers who have given specifically to this project, including 16 I. Light thickens [2:21] the following who made significant donations: Jenny & James McPherson, Roger & Mary Simes 17 II. Weary with toil [3:56] and Andrew Stratford (supporters); Will Buxton, Ian Carpenter, Milly Taylor soprano, Jenny McPherson alto, Milo Comerford bass John Reader, Lara Scheidegger and Morgan Simes (benefactors). 18 III. Now it is the time of night [2:05] 19 IV. Let fall the windows of thine eyes [2:37] Recorded on 25-27 October 2019 in Booklet editor: Henry Howard Milly Taylor soprano the Church of St John the Evangelist, Design: Drew Padrutt 20 V. Be not afeard [2:43] Upper Norwood Cover: Daniele Levis Pelusi/Unsplash Pippa Wright soprano, Milo Comerford bass Producer/Engineer: Paul Baxter Session photography: Sapphire Armitage 21 VI. The cloud-capp’d towers [3:26] 24-bit digital editing: Matthew Swan Concert photography: Ben Tomlin 24-bit digital mastering: Paul Baxter Delphian Records Ltd – Edinburgh – UK Total playing time [76:59] www.delphianrecords.co.uk All tracks are premiere recordings Notes on the music Since singing is so good a thing physiological and psychological health would This ‘choral birthright’, both in skills and Latin motets using texts set by Charles I wish all men would learne to sing. come as no surprise to William Byrd. musical experience, was expanded and Stanford – Trinity College’s Organist – in developed for Owain Park through a pre- the late nineteenth century; or a setting of So wrote William Byrd in the preface to his Likewise with composition: whereas the choral university year as Organ Scholar at Wells Frances Chesterton’s poem ‘Here is the little 1588 Psalmes, Sonets, & songs of sadnes idiom was once regarded as no more than a Cathedral, and membership of the National door’ – also known in a much-loved version and pietie, commending the social and musical byway by many composers, major Youth Choir of Great Britain, singing a wider by Herbert Howells. Or, as on this recording, spiritual advantages of singing, but also its figures today – James MacMillan or Judith and more extensive choral repertoire than lines from The Tempest which many choirs benefits to health, clear pronunciation, and Weir, to name just two – would see their choral that of the Anglican Church. Then, the first of will know from Vaughan Williams’ famously even as ‘a singular good remedie for stutting music as the equal of their other works. two years as an assistant conductor to the challenging setting of 1951. and stammering’. Millennium Youth Choir of the Royal School of But one notable difference remains: the scarcity Church Music brought him to Trinity College, Owain Park’s version of The cloud-capp’d In that glorious ‘Golden Age’, where the of notable choral composers today who are Cambridge in 2013 as a trained singer, an towers forms the final movement of importance of choral and vocal music themselves trained professional singers. The accomplished organist (the chapel choir’s Shakespeare Songs of Night-Time (not just in England but internationally) subject of the present recording, Owain Park, is Organ Scholar), an experienced choral director and shares with Vaughan Williams’ some was unsurpassed, many composers a member of that small and select club. And he and a composer who had already been hearing gloriously luxuriant chordal writing. But this is were themselves professional singers. can claim membership of another: those whose his own music performed since his late teens. a characteristic of Owain Park’s choral style The Catholic Church employed figures lifelong musical tracks were set, in childhood, by as a whole – described by John Rutter, his such as Palestrina, Victoria and countless joining a choir affiliated to what can be called the When Owain Park was made a ‘house former teacher, as ‘towers of sound’. And the others as singers-who-compose, rather ‘cathedral tradition’. composer’ by the music publishers Novello piece demonstrates other typical facets of a than the reverse. As a choirboy Lassus was in 2015 he paid tribute to those many composer instinctively at home in the choral said to have been kidnapped three times by In Park’s case, the choir in question was that ‘compositional idols’ already represented medium and with precise ‘insider knowledge’ rival choirmasters covetous of his beautiful of St Mary Redcliffe Church in Bristol, in the by that house. ‘It was amazing to walk into about how to achieve the effects he wants: treble voice. Byrd, while remembered now west of England – a glorious Gothic building the office and be reminded of some of the for example, the flickering sustained voices in as a composer, was, like many English famously described by Queen Elizabeth I musical icons who have been associated the opening bars, and the evolving scoring of contemporaries, a Gentleman ‘singing-man’ as the fairest in the land. This has for many with [it],’ he has said. These idols and icons the words ‘Light thickens’ which creates not in the Chapel Royal. years operated a choral programme which are figures who sit comfortably in Owain just contrasts of pitch and dynamics, but also emulates, in scope and repertoire, that of Park’s musical universe, and his own – highly weight and colour. Today choirs and choral singing – of every kind the great cathedrals. For a young singer, the sophisticated – musical language happily and degree of accomplishment, professional formative influence of such a programme acknowledges and reflects the heritage of This and the remaining five movements take and amateur – enjoy renewed popularity. cannot be overstated – and neither can the those predecessors but yet remains entirely nocturnal texts from eight other Shakespeare In Europe it is said that more people sing professionalism (discipline, concentration and his own. plays, along with a sonnet, each concluding with in choirs than attend football matches; application) and the technical skills (sight- a pair of lines from Romeo and Juliet, Act III, and the fact that choral singing is now reading, vocal flexibility, choral technique) Sometimes that heritage is referenced in scored in contrasted ways. Common to all of widely recognised as an activity benefiting which membership of such a choir demands. the titles of his pieces: for example, three them, and Owain Park’s writing in general, is Notes on the music an effortless (and instinctive) ability to make Elgar’s ‘Nimrod’, the Enigma Variation which that particular guardian of melancholy in the his audiences.And this in a composer not the words clear and discernible at all times, has come to be associated with funerals, English rural landscape, A. E. Housman. yet thirty. He, and we, have much to look even when the textures and harmonies are at commemorations, grief and loss. In the same forward to. their most complex – something with which year, Antiphon for the Angels, for violin and Works for children and for adults, for so many composers of choral music struggle. eight-part choir, was commissioned by the accomplished amateurs and top-rank © 2020 Michael Emery ensemble Voces8 and the violinist Rachel professional choirs: to all of these, Owain English-speaking composers have been Podger. It uses Latin and English versions of Park brings an innate understanding of the Michael Emery was formerly Senior Producer notably cautious about setting Shakespeare words by St Ambrose and Hildegard of Bingen, choral medium, an instinctive ability to track for the BBC Singers in London, and is now but, although Owain Park talks about the and, in the interaction between singers and down just the right text, and a capacity to Artistic Director of the professional choirs of sense of responsibility he feels in adding violin, recalls the ‘call-and-response’ technique write music that speaks powerfully to all Danish Radio in Copenhagen. music to the ‘holy writ’ of a great national of antiphonal singing which Ambrose is poet, his experience in school Shakespeare supposed to have invented. But Rachel Podger productions has made him comfortable about is a violinist celebrated for her playing of J. S. working with these texts. When the Maesbury Bach, and so the piece is framed by a hymn- Singers commissioned Shakespeare Love like passage which, in texture and harmony, Songs in 2013 he was happy to make his own evokes the congregational chorales which compilation, combining lines from different punctuate Bach’s cantatas and Passions.