HUBERT PARRY

 

Songs of Farewell

 

Traditional, arr. VAUGHAN WILLIAMS

The Turtle Dove

 

Arthur SULLIVAN, arr. Philip Lawson

The Long Day Closes

 

Richard RODNEY BENNETT

A Good-Night

 

PARRY

Never weather-beaten sail, There is an old belief, At the round earth’s imagined corners, My soul, there is a country, I know my soul hath power to know all things, Lord, let me know mine end [Songs of Farewell]

 

HOWELLS

Take Him, Earth, for Cherishing

 

TAVENER

Funeral Ikos

 

HOLST

The Evening-watch Op.43 No.1

 

HARRIS

Bring us, O Lord God

 

ELGAR

They are at rest

 

VAUGHAN WILLIAMS

Rest

 

Tenebrae / Nigel Short

 

Following a string of five-star reviews for their previous discs of 20th-century French choral music (Poulenc’s Figure Humaine ) and Renaissance polyphony (Victoria’s Requiem), the professional chamber-choir Tenebrae go from strength to strength with this new recording of British partsongs and choral music – centred on Hubert Parry’s Songs of Farewell.

 

Composed towards the end of Parry’s life, the Songs of Farewell have taken on something of an epithetical interpretation; they are almost a musical summation of his compositional life, reflecting Parry’s love of English renaissance madrigals and partsongs as much as the influence on his work from German composers like Brahms – made more complicated as these works were composed as the country (and its music) fell out of favour at the start of the Great War.

 

Signum SIGCD267