Smyth - Songs and Ballads
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Label: Somm
Cat No: SOMMCD0611
Format: CD
Number of Discs: 1
Genre: Vocal/Choral
Release Date: 28th February 2020
Contents
Works
Lieder (5), op.4Songs (3)
Songs (4) for voice and chamber orchestra
Songs and Ballads (5), op.3
Artists
Lucy Stevens (contralto)Elizabeth Marcus (piano)
Berkeley Ensemble
Conductor
Odaline de la MartinezWorks
Lieder (5), op.4Songs (3)
Songs (4) for voice and chamber orchestra
Songs and Ballads (5), op.3
Artists
Lucy Stevens (contralto)Elizabeth Marcus (piano)
Berkeley Ensemble
Conductor
Odaline de la MartinezAbout
Contralto Lucy Stevens has a long relationship with Smyth, portraying the composer, political activist and writer in her widely admired stage show Ethel Smyth: Grasp the Nettle. She is joined by her long-time stage companion, pianist Elizabeth Marcus, and Odaline de la Martinez conducting the Berkeley Ensemble. All four are making their debuts on SOMM.
Published in 1886 and receiving their first recordings in English are the five Op.3 Songs and Ballads. Dedicated to Livia Frege, the singer to whom Mendelsohn and Schumann dedicated some of their finest songs, they blend images of the natural world with themes of lost love to reveal Smyth as a songwriter of already considerable gifts.
Three Songs from 1913, composed during the period of Smyth’s suffragette activity – which saw her jailed for two months for throwing a stone through a cabinet minister’s window – deftly combine the political and personal. With lyrics by the suffragist Ethel Carnie Holdsworth, Possession is dedicated to Emmeline Pankhurst, On the Road: a marching tune to Pankhurst’s daughter, Christabel. The Clown sets a text by Maurice Baring, whose biography Smyth wrote in 1938.
Written for voice and chamber orchestra, the Four Songs from 1908 boast exquisite orchestrations that revel in Smyth’s associations with artistic circles in France and were hailed by Debussy as “tout à fait remarquables”.
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