Jeremy Huw Williams, Wendy Hiscocks - Grace Williams: Songs (2024) [Hi-Res]

Tracklist

01. Slow, Slow, Fresh Fount
02. I Had a Little Nut Tree
03. Green Rain
04. Stand Forth, Seithenin! (Version for Voice & Piano)
05. 9 Welsh Folk Songs (Version for Voice & Piano): No. 1, Ffarwel i langyfelach
06. 9 Welsh Folk Songs (Version for Voice & Piano): No. 6, Llangynwyd
07. The Song of Mary (Version for Voice & Piano)
08. 3 Carols: No. 3, Shepherds Watched Their Flocks by Night (Version for Voice & Piano)
09. Fairground
10. Flight
11. À Lauterbach (Version for Voice & Piano)
12. 2 French Folk Songs: No. 1, Le Chevalier du guet (Version for Voice & Piano)
13. 4 Folk Songs (Version for Voice & Piano): No. 1, O Rare Turpin
14. 4 Folk Songs (Version for Voice & Piano): No. 2, The Shepherdess
15. 4 Folk Songs (Version for Voice & Piano): No. 3, Bonny at Morn
16. 4 Folk Songs (Version for Voice & Piano): No. 4, The Song of the Flax
17. When Thou Dost Dance
18. 3 Yugoslav Folk Songs (Version for Voice & Piano): No. 1, Mary, Mary, Maiden
19. 3 Yugoslav Folk Songs (Version for Voice & Piano): No. 2, Dalmatian Lullaby
20. 3 Yugoslav Folk Songs (Version for Voice & Piano): No. 3, The Pearly Adriatic
21. Y deryn pur (Version for Voice & Piano)
22. Y Fwyalchen (Version for Voice & Piano)
23. Cariad cyntaf (Version for Voice & Piano)
24. Ow, ow, tlysau (Version for Voice & Piano)
25. Dwfn yw'r Môr (Version for Voice & Piano)
26. Lights Out (Version for Voice & Piano)
27. Fear No More the Heat o' the Sun

Grace Williams’s lifelong interest in vocal writing no doubt owed something to her upbringing in Wales. The original works heard here in their premiere recordings span the entirety of her career, ranging from her earliest surviving composition in any genre to 1967’s Fear no more the heat o’ the sun. Williams’s folk song arrangements were often commissions for BBC children’s programmes, and while her craftsmanship is evident irrespective of the song’s country of origin, her stylistic fingerprints are most firmly placed on her understated setting of the beautiful Welsh love song, Cariad Cyntaf.

Grace Williams is widely considered to be Wales’s foremost female composer. Our previous release of Grace Williams’s chamber music (8571380) received a great deal of attention in the music press, being considered ‘an exciting release’ in Limelight, and Gramophone stating that Williams is ‘a powerful musical personality, well served by some gripping interpretations. More, please.’

Welsh baritone Jeremy Huw Williams’s albums include William Mathias’s A Vision of Time and Eternity (8574053) summed up as ‘a sheer delight’ in the American Record Guide, and also in works by William Alwyn (8570201) in which ‘Jeremy Huw Williams brings conspicuous ardour and intelligence to the task in hand’ (Gramophone).

Wendy Hiscocks is an Australian-born composer-pianist whose music reflects her love of melody, dance, narrative and film. She has appeared on recordings with Naxos with British Violin Conversations (8574560), as well as the songs of Arthur Benjamin and Edgar Bainton (8571377) in which Fanfare noted that ‘The accompaniments from Australian composer-pianist Wendy Hiscocks… are never less than superb.’

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