Fight for a song: British songs

Gerald Finzi: Ditty (A Young Man's Exhortation) John Ireland: If There Were Dreams to SellGerald Finzi: Life Laughs OnwardsJonathan Dove: Song IV (Out of Winter) Hubert Parry: My heart is like a singing birdPeter Warlock: SleeProger Quilter: Autumn EveningIvor Gurney: Sleep (Five Elizabethan Songs) Will Harmer: Wild NightsRoger Quilter: Now Henry Purcell: If music is the food of loveBenjamin Britten: The Ash Grove (Welsh song) Benjamin Britten: The Last Rose of Summer (Irish song) Benjamin Britten: The Salley Gardens (Irish song) Muriel Herbert: Tewkesbury RoadMuriel Herbert: The Lake Isle of InnisFree hyd y nos (Welsh song arranged by Sebastian Hill) Peter Warlock: My Own Country

Sebastian Hill tenorWill Harmer piano

The programme takes us through several centuries of British song tradition — from Henry Purcell, through its extraordinary heyday at the turn of the 20th century, to the music of Jonathan Dove and Will Harmer. In it, images characteristic of English poetry return: night and sleep, changing seasons, gardens, lakes and rural landscape. Nature, however, is not just a background — very often it becomes a language for talking about love, longing and transience.

Along with Finzi, Ireland, Parry, Warlock, Quilter and Gurney, the lesser-known work of Muriel Herbert appears, and an important complement to the program are traditional Welsh and Irish songs — among others in Benjamin Britten's compositions. They show a special feature of British musical culture: the incessant dialogue between artistic song and folk melody, between what is composed and what is passed down from generation to generation.

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Sebastian Hill photo by Dave Buttle