144booklet 23/10/08 09:43 Page 1 ALSO AVAILABLE on signumclassics Man I Sing Choral Music by Bob Chilcott BBC Singers, Bob Chilcott conductor SIGCD100 The world-renowned choral composer and conductor Bob Chilcott leads the BBC Singers, as well as the internationally recognised soloists Simone Rebello and Paul Silverthorne, in these new performances of some of his best and most loved choral works. “ ... you get a sense of the settings having grown organically out of their texts, so attuned is Chilcott to words and their import ... As for the singing, it is superb throughout, the BBC Singers, no doubt spurred on by Chilcott’s conducting, giving themselves entirely over to both words and music without for a moment allowing any technical lapses ... The booklet notes and sound recording are both of the same excellence” International Record Review Available through most record stores and at www.signumrecords.com For more information call +44 (0) 20 8997 4000 144booklet 23/10/08 09:43 Page 3 Remoter Worlds 13. Unpredictable but Providential [3.35] Judith Bingham Soloist: Christopher Bowen tenor 14. Beneath these Alien Stars [3.45] 1. Gleams of a Remoter World [6.49] Soloist: Alison Smart soprano Iain Farrington organ The Shepheardes Calender 2. Winter [3.57] 3. Spring [4.18] Ghost Towns of the American West 15. I Speak Out of the Desert [3.33] 4. Autumn [2.44] 16. The Gray Mask High in the Mountains [4.20] 5. Water Lilies [7.03] Soloists: Margaret Feaviour soprano Deborah Miles-Johnson mezzo-soprano Irish Tenebrae Robert Johnston tenor 6. My Lagan Love [4.15] Jennifer Adams-Barbaro whistler 7. The Road to Sligo [3.34] 17. The Voices of the Multitude [3.31] Soloist: Edward Goater tenor Soloists: Margaret Feaviour soprano Christopher Bowen tenor 8. The Crying of the Women at the Slaughter [5.15] 9. The Wake: Round the House and Mind the Dresser [2.01] Total Timing: [71.21] Soloists: Edward Goater tenor Stephen Charlesworth baritone Edward Price bass BBC Singers 10. I Have a Secret to Tell [4.28] David Hill conductor Soloists: Stephen Jeffes tenor Andrew Murgatroyd whistler Richard Benjafield percussion 11. I Know My Love [2.24] Chris Brannick percussion Iain Farrington organ 12. The Sailor Boy [6.00] KRYsia Osostowicz violin Irish Tenebrae Soloists: Olivia Robinson soprano Olivia Robinson soprano Krysia Osostowicz violin Iain Farrington chamber organ Richard Benjafield, Chris Brannick percussion www.signumrecords.com 144booklet 23/10/08 09:43 Page 5 Gleams of a Remoter World (1997) of height and depth as well as the feeling that Intrigued by the tune, I decided I would use it as the choir and back again, a somewhat shorter snow falling is like the ‘veil of life and death’ that the basis for the piece. He also pointed me in the distance than in the Cathedral-Basilica of St Louis! Both Gleams and Waterlilies come from the same Shelley talks of in Mont Blanc. Shifting weather direction of Edmund Spenser and The period in my life, when I was continuously gives different aspects on the landscape. Shepheardes Calender. Water Lilies (1999) influenced by Alpine landscapes. I made many visits, especially to the cul-de-sac valley of The Shepheardes Calender (2006) I thought I would write a piece that was an Water Lilies was commissioned in 1998 to be part Kleinwalsertal in Austria, and my first Mass allegory for sin and forgiveness, and so the of ‘A Garland for Linda’, a compendium of eight setting and trumpet concerto A Shooting Star were I have had an enjoyable creative relationship with movements move from winter to autumn, cruel anthems about the healing power of music. The a direct result of experiencing the landscape there the St Louis Chamber Choir for several years now, weather to a good harvest. In the first movement, previous year I had been to Kleinwalsertal on in different seasons. thanks to Richard Rodney Bennett, who introduced Winter, the rhythms are stilted and jagged, holiday and had swum in a warm lake, high up in us. Their conductor, Philip Barnes, concocts wonderful describing a vicious winter with the sheep and the Allgäuer Alps. There had been rafts of Gleams however, slightly predates those and was themed concerts and has commissioned many cows (and their herdsmen) standing frozen and flowering water lilies, which twined round my legs influenced by a singing job I did with the Schütz composers over the years. Both for the SLCC and shivering. With the cold comes Death. Spenser as I got out. It reminded me not so much of Monet Choir, travelling round the Dolomites. Views of the Philip’s other choirs in Missouri I have written five warns that you may think yourself invincible, but a as of the morbid eroticism of John Waterhouse’s mountains straddling different countries gave me pieces - Aquileia (of which more anon), two freezing winter can carry you off! In the middle painting of Hylas, lured to his death by the idea for having the Shelley words ‘sleep and settings of God be in my Head, and most recently movement, Spring, I wanted to give the impression Pre-Raphaelite nymphs in a pool of water lilies. death’ echoing in different languages, and so a The Shepheardes Calendar. Most commissions start of the mysterious and magical arrival of the first The following winter in Austria was very harsh and solo quartet sings ‘sonno e morte’ and ‘schlaf und with a brief, but one of the briefest and strangest shoots, pushing up through the cold earth. The I wondered what happened to the lilies, whether tod’ distantly. In this recording, we took advantage ones was for this piece, in that I should include words are ‘The Lord to me a Shepherd is’, from the they could survive being frozen. I looked it up and of the space in St Paul’s church and placed the the word ‘rams’. The dedicatee of the piece Linda 1651 Bay Psalm Book, because I liked the idea of found that the buds for next year’s flower form in soloists behind the main body of the choir. Ryder, the Executive Director of the choir, is a linking the rich English of Spenser with the first the summer under water and often freeze in supporter of the St Louis Rams, their baseball art of the Puritan Americans. In the last winter. This struck me as a wonderful symbol for The Alpine influence has been a constant in my team. She was not to know how difficult it would movement, Autumn, the shepherd saves a sheep surviving serious illness and I decided to write my composing life, as it has embraced other themes be to find a poem with that word in it! I asked a from the wolf and a beautiful description of own poem for the Garland. This took a long time, as well, in particular Shelley (and, just lately, friend of mine, John Rowlands Pritchard, who is an autumn ‘all in yellow clad’ follows. The folk song and may have been the reason why I only took two Byron) and Turner. The watercolour views of expert on all things English, for his advice, and he is finally heard in its entirety, like a Morris, weeks to write the anthem itself. chasms on Mont Blanc had an effect also on immediately thought of the Somerset folk song ushering in warm weather and redemption. For Vorarlberg, a guitar duet written just after One Man shall Mow my Meadow with the words this recording a small group from the choir walked, The idea was to create a tapestry of sound, Gleams. In Gleams I tried to give a mystical sense ‘shall shear my lambs and ewes and rams’ in it. while singing, from the west end of the nave up to multi-dividing the choir and having lots of tiny - 4 - - 5 - 144booklet 23/10/08 09:43 Page 7 solos which would further thin out the texture. This and in that mysterious way in which pieces what is come upon us: our inheritance is turned to Lavin, with its imagery of tiny shiny fishes evading was something akin to dots of impressionistic develop in the peri-compositional stage, this idea strangers’. The atmosphere is heightened, sinister. the strictures of the fisherman offers a different paint. The work opens in a dream-like way where and the idea of Irish folk song settings came The men are unable to contemplate forgiveness way from the terrible dark world of the men, locked the word ‘nympheas’ rises from the texture like together. The Tenebrae have powerful overtones of (‘only the dead can be forgiven’) and the organ into their hatreds and vendettas. In the final sirens calling. The sound is warm and dreamy but violent revenge, and their mood typified for me the solo at the end of the movement seems to move movement The Sailor Boy, we are back in that gradually becomes more worrying. In the middle cycle of blame that made the Irish situation (and the action into the church. In The Crying of the world, where the men are brooding on perceived section all is ice with tiny staccato chords and so many others) so addictive to its protagonists. Women at the Slaughter I set part of Seamus injustice. Using the spaces of St Paul’s again, on long high melodic lines. Finally the summer Gradually a drama unfolded, in which a solo Heaney’s great poem Casualty. The solo soprano is this recording the men are at a distance. There are returns, ecstatically, and the water lilies flower.