Anyone with an ear for Thomas Hardy’s poetry will reply to the sinewy number of The Previous & I – settings, composed or organized by Arthur Keegan (b 1986), and outstandingly carried out by Lotte Betts-Dean (mezzo-soprano), James Girling (guitar) and the Ligeti Quartet. The album opens with Keegan’s Elegies for Emma, six songs that discover the unhappy complexity of Hardy’s emotions for his useless first spouse. Derek Holman’s Midnight on the Nice Western, for voice and string quartet, with a gently lurching rhythm and splashes of dissonance, is the primary of three “practice” poems included right here. Faintheart in a Railway Prepare is a quick, poised track by Muriel Herbert (1897-1984).
In Benjamin Britten’s On the Railway Station, Upway – from the composer’s track cycle Winter Phrases – a boy performs his violin on a crowded platform. Right here, the switch to guitar (from the piano unique) is very sensuous. Betts-Dean, who has an acute response to the texts, is equally at house within the pastoral wistfulness of Gerald Finzi and Imogen Holst as within the quirky originality of Kerry Andrew (b 1978). Her The Echo Elf Solutions was commissioned for this venture. The recital ends with Keegan’s String Quartet No 1, Elegies for Tom, an atmospheric response to the opening songs for Emma and a becoming finish.
