Isolation Songbook
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Genre:
Vocal
Label: Delphian
Magazine Review Date: 07/2021
Media Format: CD or Download
Media Runtime: 65
Mastering:
DDD
Catalogue Number: DCD34253

Tracks:
Composition | Artist Credit |
---|---|
18th April |
Owain Park, Composer
Alexander Soares, Piano Helen Charlston, Mezzo soprano Michael Craddock, Baritone |
Dreams |
James Davy, Composer
Alexander Soares, Piano Helen Charlston, Mezzo soprano Michael Craddock, Baritone |
Abat-jour |
Andrew Brixey-Williams, Composer
Alexander Soares, Piano Helen Charlston, Mezzo soprano Michael Craddock, Baritone |
Melancholy (and Buttercream) |
Kerensa Briggs, Composer
Alexander Soares, Piano Helen Charlston, Mezzo soprano Michael Craddock, Baritone |
the way we go |
Nathan James Dearden, Composer
Alexander Soares, Piano Helen Charlston, Mezzo soprano Michael Craddock, Baritone |
Three Early Stroll Songs |
Richard Barnard, Composer
Alexander Soares, Piano Helen Charlston, Mezzo soprano Michael Craddock, Baritone |
Nature is Returning |
Joshua Borin, Composer
Alexander Soares, Piano Helen Charlston, Mezzo soprano Michael Craddock, Baritone |
The King's Breakfast |
Ben Rowarth, Composer
Alexander Soares, Piano Helen Charlston, Mezzo soprano Michael Craddock, Baritone |
Skysong, Movement: Extracts |
Elliott Park, Composer
Alexander Soares, Piano Helen Charlston, Mezzo soprano Michael Craddock, Baritone |
A Moment |
Derri Joseph Lewis, Composer
Alexander Soares, Piano Helen Charlston, Mezzo soprano Michael Craddock, Baritone |
Three Duets |
Terence Charlston, Composer
Alexander Soares, Piano Helen Charlston, Mezzo soprano Michael Craddock, Baritone |
Concerning Cows: A Rural Song Cycle |
Matthew J C Ward, Composer
Alexander Soares, Piano Helen Charlston, Mezzo soprano Michael Craddock, Baritone |
I'm Nobody |
Gerda Blok-Wilson, Composer
Alexander Soares, Piano Helen Charlston, Mezzo soprano Michael Craddock, Baritone |
On His Blindness |
Stephen Bick, Composer
Alexander Soares, Piano Helen Charlston, Mezzo soprano Michael Craddock, Baritone |
Author: Alexandra Coghlan
Some of us baked, others did DIY, and most of us managed our daily walks. Mezzo Helen Charlston and baritone Michael Craddock – lockdown over-achievers par excellence – commissioned, rehearsed, premiered and recorded an album of entirely new music.
‘Isolation Songbook’, recorded at Edinburgh’s Queen’s Hall with pianist Alexander Soares in September 2020, is a musical snapshot of a moment, an act of testimony to the strange time-outside-time we’ve all recently shared. An open call for scores attracted some 15 composers, all keen to translate their experiences – of intimacy, loss, introversion, isolation, nature and companionship – into song. The results are varied, from comic miniatures to distilled dramas and contemplative outpourings, but together add up to a recital that’s hard to resist, at once fresh and profoundly familiar.
It’s lovely to see so many young voices here, to hear Craddock and Charlston performing the works of contemporaries Owain Park, Héloïse Werner, Derri Joseph Lewis and Kerensa Briggs. Park’s opener, ‘18th April’, is particularly poignant. Titled for what should have been Charlston and Craddock’s wedding day (cancelled by Covid), it sets words by Charlston herself against a muted bell-peal of a piano accompaniment. Gentle melancholy and affirmation intermingle in voices initially separate but ultimately united.
It’s a contrast to the playful, surreal quality of Werner’s ‘The Orange Vendor’, two voices freed from anchoring piano accompaniment chasing and echoing in drifting portamentos – a musical picking-over of the fragmented minutiae of lockdown life. Also striking is Stephen Bick’s Milton setting ‘On His Blindness’, its elegiac, Tallis-infused lyricism a showcase for the stern beauty of Charlston’s mezzo and her legato phrasing.
Craddock has fun with Matthew JC Ward’s aphoristic Concerning Cows, and both rise to the operatic challenge of Ben Rowarth’s ‘The King’s Breakfast’ with its tangle of characters, accents, spoken and sung dialogue. Soares is a sensitive accompanist throughout.
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