Andrew West

Roderick Williams, James Way, Andrew West – Stanford: Songs of Faith, Love and Nonsense (2021) [Official Digital Download 24bit/88,2kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · August 4, 2023 · Comments off

Somm beginns here a major new recording of songs by Charles Villiers Stanford including the first complete recording of Songs of Faith and 12 first recordings of other distinctively vital songs.

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Roderick Williams & Andrew West – Birdsong (2021) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · August 4, 2023 · Comments off

SOMM Recordings is pleased to announce Birdsong, a fascinating crossgender exploration of art songs associated with the female voice by baritone Roderick Williams, accompanied by pianist Andrew West. The recital features signature songs from the height of Romanticism by Brahms and Clara and Robert Schumann alongside a more recent quartet of sensuous songs by Sally Beamish. In his revealing foreword, Williams recalls having his choice of Brahms’s Sapphische Ode refused by competition organisers because it was “a woman’s song”. Returning recently to the work prompted him to question why some songs are considered gender specific. Birdsong is his response.

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James Geer, Andrew West, Ronald Woodley – Façades (2020) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · April 9, 2023 · Comments off

James Geer, Andrew West, Ronald Woodley - Façades (2020) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download

SOMM Recordings explores one of the most significant partnerships in 20th-century British music with Facades, an album of piano-accompanied songs and music for four-hand piano by William Walton and Constant Lambert. Facades takes its title from Walton’s era-defining “entertainment”, heard here in arrangements for four-hand piano of its two orchestral Suites by Lambert – regarded by Walton as the definitive reciter of Edith Sitwell’s nonsense verses. Lambert’s Trois pi`eces n`egres pour les touches blanches for piano duet are a kaleidoscopic, jazz-accented tour de force exploration of the piano’s white keys. Described by the composer as an “idyll”, Walton’s Siesta (also for two-player piano) is, says Ronald Woodley in his entertaining and informative booklet notes, “infused with the clear light and open charm of Italy”.

The eight song settings by Lambert of poems by the eighth-century Chinese poet Li Po are “exquisitely crafted, restrained and often enigmatic miniatures [marked by an] elusive and allusive musical style”. Completing the recital, a selection of songs by Walton range from Tudor pastiche (Under the Greenwood Tree) to the atonal-inflected Tritons and lyrically captivating Beatriz’s Song. Making their SOMM debuts are tenor James Geer and his accompanist in the songs, pianist Ronald Woodley. The latter is joined at the keyboard in the four-hand piano arrangements by Andrew West whose previous SOMM recordings include three acclaimed volumes of Parry’s English Lyrics.
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Cristo Barrios, Andrew West – Deep Light: Clarinet Masterpieces (2018) [Official Digital Download 24bit/88,2kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · November 26, 2022 · Comments off

Cristo Barrios and Andrew West write of their new release Deep Light: “We were inspired to gather together this collection of chamber works for reasons beyond the obvious prestige of the individual composers and the importance of their works. We wanted to present the listener with a satisfying musical journey, as much through the formal variety as the expressive content of the pieces, full of contrasts that are to be found among different movements of the same piece, as well as among the five works on the recording. Rather than offering a historical overview of the programme, we would prefer to look briefly at our choice of title, Deep Light, and its various meanings. On the one hand, it aims to evoke the luminosity that lies in the depth of feeling, represented here by two major works of the German Romantic clarinet repertoire, the Grand Duo Concertant by Carl Maria von Weber and Robert Schumann’s Phantasiestücke. Emotionally profound in their darker, slower movements, these works also display an exalted brightness in their exuberant finales. On the other hand, however, the deep and the light are simply synonyms for the serious and the playful. Seen in this way, the two German works provide the weight on the album, while the three others fall more into the second category. It is our hope that the contrasting styles and the unusual juxtaposition of repertoire will stimulate those familiar with these works into fresh ways of listening, and provide those new to them with the delight of discovery.”

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