James Geer, Ronald Woodley – Dreams Melting (2021) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

James Geer, Ronald Woodley - Dreams Melting (2021) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download

James Geer, Ronald Woodley – Dreams Melting (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:07:57 minutes | 1,14 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © SOMM Recordings

At the recital’s heart are two substantial cycles. Setting seven poems by Thomas Hardy, Gerald Finzi’s Till Earth Outwears provides an intimate and movingly melancholic commentary in what Ronald Woodley describes in his extensive and informative booklet notes as a “male perspective on life, love and loss”. Rarely recorded, Howard Ferguson’s five-part treatment of Denton Welch’s poems, Discovery, typifies “the subtlety of the relationship between late romanticism, modernism and the inherited idioms of ‘Britishness’ that composers of Ferguson’s generation inevitably grew up with”. Its second song, Dreams Melting, provides the recital’s title.

Three songs make their first appearance in recording’s history. Elizabeth Maconchy’s setting of John Donne’s passionate but tortured A Hymn to God the Father boasts a searching vocal line underpinned by tellingly interrogative piano. Phyllis Tate’s The Falcon is a sparse but powerful setting of an anonymous medieval text while her variegated treatment of William Blake’s poem Cradle Song is reminiscent of a Bartók folksong arrangement.
Also heard are Maconchy’s Four Shakespeare Songs and settings of Ben Jonson’s Have You Seen but a Bright Lily Grow? and Robert Herrick’s A Meditation for his Mistress, alongside six varied and vital songs by Rebecca Clarke, including The Seal Man, “one of her most soaring flights of imagination”, and Tate’s Epitaph, in which her “quietly understated writing is masterly”.

A compendium of songs by William Walton and Constant Lambert, “Façades”, James Geer and Ronald Woodley’s debut SOMM release (with pianist Andrew West) was hailed by “The Telegraph” as “a wonderful collection of beautifully crafted miniatures”.

Tracklist:

01. James Geer & Ronald Woodley – Ferguson: Discovery, Op. 13: No. 1, Dreams Melting (01:11)
02. James Geer & Ronald Woodley – Ferguson: Discovery, Op. 13: No. 2, The Freedom of the City (01:51)
03. James Geer & Ronald Woodley – Ferguson: Discovery, Op. 13: No. 3, Babylon (01:36)
04. James Geer & Ronald Woodley – Ferguson: Discovery, Op. 13: No. 4, Jane Allen (00:44)
05. James Geer & Ronald Woodley – Ferguson: Discovery, Op. 13: No. 5, Discovery (02:47)
06. James Geer & Ronald Woodley – Clarke: The Seal Man (05:21)
07. James Geer & Ronald Woodley – Clarke: The Cloths of Heaven (02:07)
08. James Geer & Ronald Woodley – Clarke: The Cherry-Blossom Wand (02:56)
09. James Geer & Ronald Woodley – Clarke: Infant Joy (01:09)
10. James Geer & Ronald Woodley – Clarke: Cradle Song (02:27)
11. James Geer & Ronald Woodley – Clarke: Tiger, Tiger (04:20)
12. James Geer & Ronald Woodley – Maconchy: 3 Donne Songs: No. 1, A Hymn to God the Father (03:19)
13. James Geer & Ronald Woodley – Maconchy: Have You Seen but a Bright Lily Grow? (01:38)
14. James Geer & Ronald Woodley – Maconchy: A Meditation for His Mistress (02:45)
15. James Geer & Ronald Woodley – Finzi: Till Earth Outwears, Op. 19a: No. 1, Let Me Enjoy the Earth (02:28)
16. James Geer & Ronald Woodley – Finzi: Till Earth Outwears, Op. 19a: No. 2, In Years Defaced (03:31)
17. James Geer & Ronald Woodley – Finzi: Till Earth Outwears, Op. 19a: No. 3, The Market Girl (01:43)
18. James Geer & Ronald Woodley – Finzi: Till Earth Outwears, Op. 19a: No. 4, I Look Into My Glass (02:06)
19. James Geer & Ronald Woodley – Finzi: Till Earth Outwears, Op. 19a: No. 5, It Never Looks Like Summer (01:14)
20. James Geer & Ronald Woodley – Finzi: Till Earth Outwears, Op. 19a: No. 6, At a Lunar Eclipse (03:40)
21. James Geer & Ronald Woodley – Finzi: Till Earth Outwears, Op. 19a: No. 7, Life Laughs Onward (02:09)
22. James Geer & Ronald Woodley – Maconchy: 4 Shakespeare Songs: No. 1, Come Away, Death (03:10)
23. James Geer & Ronald Woodley – Maconchy: 4 Shakespeare Songs: No. 2, The Wind and the Rain (02:23)
24. James Geer & Ronald Woodley – Maconchy: 4 Shakespeare Songs: No. 3, Take, O Take Those Lips Away (02:07)
25. James Geer & Ronald Woodley – Maconchy: 4 Shakespeare Songs: No. 4, King Stephen (00:57)
26. James Geer & Ronald Woodley – Tate: 2 Songs: No. 2, The Falcon (03:12)
27. James Geer & Ronald Woodley – Tate: Cradle Song (01:59)
28. James Geer & Ronald Woodley – Tate: Epitaph (02:53)

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