ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The artists are grateful for the sponsorship consideration of the following individuals and organiza- tions: Karen Vickers in memory of John E. Vickers and Velma Schuman Oglesby, Michael Wolf in memory SONGS OF JUDITH WEIR, BENJAMIN BRITTEN & HAMISH MACCUNN of Clarice Theisen, Mark and Donna Hance, Nan and Raleigh Klein, Steve and Mary Wolf, Tim and Amanda Orth, Martha and Emil Cook, Brett Cook, Megan Clodi in memory of Eric McMillan, Steve Stapleton, CALEDONIAN SCENES Nathan Munson, Sherri Phelps and Ronaldus Van Uden, Jennifer Fair, Lucy Walker, Tony Solitro, Zachary Justin Vickers, tenor Geoffrey Duce & Gretchen Church, piano Wadsworth, Robert and Margaret Lane, Ian Hamilton in memory of John Hamilton, Anthony and Maria Moore, Carren Moham, Melissa Johnson, Joy Doran in memory of Steve Doran, Jonathan Schaar in memory of organist John Weissrock, Jerold Siena and Stasia Forsythe Siena in memory of William J. Forsythe, James Major in memory of Bettie Major, Roy Magnuson, Michele Robillard Raupp, Eric Saylor, Christopher Scheer, Brooks Kuykendall, Thornton Miller, Andrew Luke, Emily Vigneri, Hilary Donaldson, Imani Mosley, Annie Ingersoll and Eric Totte, and Jeanne Wilson and Gary Stoodley; research funds from the School of Music and the Wonsook Kim College of Fine Arts at Illinois State University; a grant from the Office of Research and Sponsored Programs at Illinois State University; an Illinois Arts Council Grant; research funds from Illinois Wesleyan University; and a PSC-CUNY Grant from City University of New York. The MacCunn songs and the cycle on this disc may be found in Hamish MacCunn: Complete Songs for Solo Voice and Piano, Parts 1 and 2 (A-R Editions, 2016), edited by Jennifer Oates. Recorded in the Foellinger Great Hall of Krannert Center for the Performing Arts, Urbana, Illinois, on a Hamburg Steinway D. Recording Engineer: Graham Duncan Cover Image: Jennifer Oates WWW.ALBANYRECORDS.COM TROY1800 ALBANY RECORDS U.S. 915 BROADWAY, ALBANY, NY 12207 TEL: 518.436.8814 FAX: 518.436.0643 ALBANY RECORDS U.K. BOX 137, KENDAL, CUMBRIA LA8 0XD TEL: 01539 824008 © 2019 ALBANY RECORDS MADE IN THE USA DDD WARNING: COPYRIGHT SUBSISTS IN ALL RECORDINGS ISSUED UNDER THIS LABEL. Caledonian Scenes_1800_book.indd 1-2 11/18/19 11:40 AM DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF During the compositional period of the cycle, Weir commented that she felt as if she was practicing RITA THOMSON an ancient craft in her deep connection to the age of the texts and the sound world she intended to create around them. “On closer examination, the grisly happenings of these familiar poems came as a shock,” (16 August 1944 – 11 October 2019) Weir recalls, “and the resulting songs are histrionic and nervous, though framed by ‘beautiful’ piano CAREGIVER, NURSE, AND FRIEND TO BENJAMIN BRITTEN AND accompaniments, just as Scotland’s violent past is obscured by its abundant scenery.” The Scotland that Judith Weir conjures in Scotch Minstrelsy is one inspired by gloom and the specter of evil and cruelty. And PETER PEARS, AND MANY OTHERS yet the ebullience of the piano accompaniment—itself a principal role in and of itself alongside that of the voice—transcends such menacing tales, occasionally providing a glimmer of hope couched in the delicacy of lightheartedness and wit. THE MUSIC The opening song of the disc is Weir at her most atmospheric. “Bessie Bell and Mary Gray” is an This recording emerged from a series of personal Scottish connections including my Scottish heritage via extended scena for the solo piano that ushers the listener into Weir’s Scotland. The introductory single my maternal grandfather; my colleague and friend, the pianist Geoffrey Duce, who grew up in Scotland; and piano line expands and contracts time and again, creating an image as if flying high above in the country- conversations and collaborations with Jennifer Oates, a foremost scholar of Hamish MacCunn. After several side. Dipping down through glens and copses, the single line repeatedly expands upward before returning to lecture-recitals with Oates and her work on a critical edition of MacCunn’s complete songs for A-R Editions, its solitary mission: speeding through the air until we reach Miss Bell and Miss Gray. The two women were we began to explore a number of the individual songs, with American pianist Gretchen Church, settling sheltered together in Lednock, because the plague had reached the neighboring town of Perth. It was 1645. on the selections represented on this disc to accompany the first recording of MacCunn’s Cycle of Six The stark realization of the song is that the very waters beside which they had built themselves a protective Love-Lyrics. The Britten and Weir cycles, staples of my recital repertoire, round out the recording and bower carried the plague to the two women, who were otherwise safe, killing them both. provide a diverse snapshot of songs inspired by Scotland and, in the case of MacCunn and Weir, “Bonnie James Campbell” is a seemingly romantic and adventurous ballad that recounts the tale composed by Scots. of Bonnie James Campbell who went gallantly out to battle one day and whose horse returns, but he does *** not. The text is collected in the Child Ballads, an anthology of 305 Scottish and English ballads, of which “Bonnie James Campbell” is number 210. His mother’s grief is eclipsed by that of his bride, crying: “My As a song cycle, Judith Weir’s Scotch Minstrelsy is unique for its overarching darkness. Saturated as it meadow lies green and my corn is unshorn, but Bonnie James Campbell will never return.” Weir’s treat- is in death—disease, murder, and intrigue—Weir creates a lilting quality that is immediately approach- ment of the three verses intensifies to the climax of the third verse, which describes his initial departure able for the listener, subject matter notwithstanding. Scotch Minstrelsy was commissioned for the tenor but lends vivid detail to the bloody saddle atop the lone horse, punctuated by a delicate, hollow response Neil Mackie by the McEwan Bequest at Glasgow University, where it was premiered on 14 May 1982. Weir in the piano. writes: “Scotch Minstrelsy is a song cycle comprising settings of five (greatly abbreviated) Scottish ballads Perhaps the most brilliant song of the cycle is “Lady Isobel and the Elf-Knight.” It is certainly the whose subject matter is almost exclusively violent happenings which take place against the beautiful back- most magical. Its oscillating pair of opening piano notes creates an atmosphere that betrays the deadly ground of the Scottish countryside. It was my intention to reflect this underlying irony in the way the story to follow. Fair Lady Isobel sits innocently sewing and, upon hearing what she knows is the Elf- words are set to music.” Knight’s horn playing, offers a simple conditional “if” that very much changes her life. Her very utterance Caledonian Scenes_1800_book.indd 3-4 11/18/19 11:40 AM of his name beckons him immediately to her window. Surely this is magic. He invites her to travel by horse however, as evidenced in the fluctuating and disorienting rhythmic patterns. This dream state is set with him to the Greenwood. Upon arriving, he declares that she has arrived to the place where he will kill still more on its axis as Weir displaces the unison line in canon for the second verse, culminating in the her (and according to the Broadside Ballads, of which this is Child number 4, he will take her money and unexpected and striking text: “I dreamt my love came headless home.” As if in response to this horror, the horses). “Sev’n kings’ daughters here have I slain, and you shall be the eighth of them.” But the Fair Lady once-simple piano accompaniment assumes a wind-like quality of arpeggiation and animated frenzy: “Oh Isobel has a much different idea. Weir introduces the pair of varying notes from the opening of the song in gentle wind that bloweth south, to where my love repaireth.” This verse is an immediate and very present a sort of nod to the very clever nature of the fair lady: “O sit down a while, rest your head upon my knee, contrast to the previous pair, invoking the wind to carry a kiss back to the dreamer from his beloved. that we may have some rest before I die.” And here we find that indeed it is Lady Isobel who enchants the The winds of the third verse are consumed with chromaticism, and the song ends with the same bell-like Elf-Knight, using magic of her own: “She stroked him so softly the nearer he did creep; with a small, secret octaves—albeit a half-step lower—with which it opened. But is there hope? The narrator, haunted by the charm she lulled him fast asleep.” And in a stroke of compositional genius, Weir closes this most excellent vision of his headless lover, nevertheless sends for some answer to his deep-seated dread: “Convey a kiss of revenge sagas with a wink and nod in the piano, and a vocal line that arouses the determined silence of from her dear mouth, and tell me how she faireth.” Thus, the conclusion of the song cycle just might offer Lady Isobel’s resolve: “With his own sword belt so softly she bound him; with his own dagger so softly she the faintest hint of hope, carried back to him on a breeze. But in Judith Weir’s Scotland, his beloved may killed him.” indeed have brought him his answer from the ghostly realm. “The Gypsy Laddie” represents the climax of Scotch Minstrelsy. A Scottish “border ballad,” in Judith Weir CBE (b.