This recital programme of Summer English Song was originally prepared with baritone Paul Sheehan and two composers, Stephen Dickinson and Rob Keeley, playing the piano. We perform familiar songs by Peter Warlock (three Shakespeare settings) and Gerald Finzi (the song-cycle, To a Poet).
In addition we have programmed contemporary English song. Stephen Dickinson’s What Have You In Your Heart? sets seven poems from AE Housman’s A Shropshire Lad, and Rob Keeley’s Five Stevie Smith Songs offer a strongly contrasted style, both poetically and musically.
The Programme
Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872–1958)
It was a lover and his lass (duet)
Peter Warlock (1894-1930)
Three Shakespeare Songs
- Sigh No More Ladies
- Take, O Take Those Lips Away
- Pretty Ring Time
Robert Keeley (1960 – ) Five Stevie Smith Songs
- Avondale
- La Gretchen de nos jours
- Le singe qui swing
- Tender only to one
- Will ever?
Stephen Dickinson (1948 – ) What Have You In Your Heart?
- When I Was One And Twenty
- Loveliest Of Trees
- Is My Team Ploughing
- Oh, When I Was In Love With You
- White In The Moon
- From Far, From Eve And Morning
- If Truth In Hearts That Perish
Gerald Finzi (1901 -1956) To a Poet
- To a Poet a Thousand Years Hence
- On parent knees
- Intrada
- The Birthnight
- June on Castle Hill
- Ode on the Rejection of St Cecilia
Our Revels Now Are Ended (duet)