Mary Bevan / Roderick Williams / William Vann / Jack Liebeck TIME AND SPACE

TIME AND SPACE

Chapel Choir of the Royal Hospital Chelsea / William Vann IN REMEMBRANCE

In the centenary anniversary year of the end of the First World War and on the eve of the 80th anniversary of the beginning of the Second World War, SOMM Recordings pays tribute to those who fought and fell in battle with In Remembrance.

A moving compendium of music spanning 130 years, it features the Chapel Choir of the Royal Hospital Chelsea, the Choir of Chelsea Pensioners, Staff and Volunteers, sopranos Katy Hill and Leah Jackson, baritone Gareth John and organists James Orford and Hugh Rowlands under the direction of William Vann.

Founded in 1682 by King Charles II, the Royal Hospital is home to the world-famous Chelsea Pensioners – retired veterans of the British army – whose contributions on three tracks adds its own special poignancy to In Remembrance.
Moving choral works commemorating courage and offering comfort by Hubert Parry (his anthemic Jerusalem), Gustav Holst (the stirring I Vow to Thee, My Country) and Edward Elgar (his serene partsong They are at rest) are heard alongside equally affecting pieces by their contemporaries and successors, Charles Villiers Stanford, John Ireland, Douglas Guest and Charles Harris.
Fauré’s Requiem, arranged for choir and organ by Iain Farrington, and Ian Venable’s newly-composed Requiem aeternam (in its first recording) both offer succour and solace in their conviction that death is not the end but, as Fauré thought of it: “a happy deliverance, an aspiration towards happiness above, rather than as a painful experience”.
Carols from Chelsea, the Chapel Royal Choir, James Orford and William Vann’s first release on SOMM in 2016, was praised for its “luminous, adroitly crafted” singing by Choir & Organ magazine.

Dame Sarah Connolly / Joseph Middleton COME TO ME IN MY DREAMS

I had a pretty good time at the Royal College of Music in the mid-1980s. As a joint first study student, while I loved singing in Sir David Willcocks’s chamber choir, I probably saw myself principally as a pianist, hooked on song repertoire. 

The cocoon-like basement library (where I spent at least half of each week sprawled on the cerise carpet among sheaves of music) houses an astonishing collection of British songs. It also keeps a wonderful discography from which I learned what makes a song come alive, particularly from Ben Luxon, Peter Pears and Britten, Janet Baker, and Kathleen Ferrier. For this disc I have attempted to create a snapshot of over 120 years of song, tracing the lineage from Stanford to Turnage. I tried to find suitable songs by Coleridge-Taylor and Elizabeth Maconchy but no luck this time. However, two beautiful early compositions by Muriel Herbert and Rebecca Clarke stand proudly alongside songs by Frank Bridge, Thomas Dunhill, and Gustav Holst. 

I am thrilled that Colin Matthews and the Britten Estate gave permission to Joseph 20 Middleton and me to record the world premiere of two unknown songs that Benjamin Britten had composed for but in the event excluded from A Charm of Lullabies. 

Mark Turnage very kindly wrote me a song to bring the programme right up to the present day. 

As he knew that Michael Tippett’s ‘Full fathom five’ would be on the disc, I sense that Mark was inspired by similar ghostly chimes: 

Hark! now I hear them, – 

Ding-dong, bell. (Dame Sarah Connolly)