Charles Villiers Stanford - Orchestral Songs

Sir Charles Villiers STANFORD (1852–1924)

Orchestral Songs

An Irish Idyll in Six

Miniatures, Op. 77, No. 2

A Fairy Lough

The Clown’s Songs from

Twelfth Night, Op. 65, No. 2

Come Away Death

Is it the Wind of the Dawn?

La belle dame sans merci

From The Triumph of Love, Op.82

I think that we were children

When in solemn stillness

O Flames of Passion

Cavalier Songs, Op. 17

From Songs of Faith, Op. 97

To the Soul

Tears

Joy, Shipmate, Joy!

From Irish Songs and Ballads

Chieftain of Tyrconnell

From Songs of Old Ireland

The Foggy Dew

When She Answered me

O Ye Dead

From Songs of Old Ireland

Battle Hymn

Lament for O R O’Neill

Emer’s Farewell to Cucullain

Songs of Erin, Op. 76, No. 22

The Alarm

Bible Songs, Op. 113, No. 3

A Song of Hope

Sharon Carty (mezzo-soprano); Morgan Pearse (baritone)

BBC Singers (male voices)

BBC Concert Orchestra

John Andrews

Recorded: 2023, Battersea Arts Centre, London

Review:

Hard on the heels of the premiere recording of Stanford’s delightful ‘romantic comic opera’ Shamus O’Brien (5/24) comes a comparably significant and enterprising release to mark the centenary of his death. The Dublin-born composer displays a consistently deft and idiomatic touch in these orchestrations of his songs, many of which were specially created for prominent artists of the day.

Baritone Harry Plunket Greene (Stanford’s countryman and dear friend) was the grateful recipient of no fewer than eight of the 22 items on the programme. ‘When she answered me’, ‘The Foggy Dew’ and ‘Lament for Owen Roe O’Neill’ are all drawn from Songs of Old Ireland (published by Boosey in 1882, texts by Albert Perceval Graves and dedicated to Brahms), the nobly affecting ‘O ye dead’ is taken from The Irish Melodies of Thomas Moore (1895), and one can easily imagine ‘The Alarm’ (a dramatic number from the 1900 anthology Songs of Erin) bringing the house down (much the same goes for the arresting ‘Chieftain of Tyrconnell’, completed on New Year’s Eve 1892). The second of The Clown’s Songs from Shakespeare’s Comedy ‘Twelfth Night’ (Stanford’s solitary solo-song settings of the Bard, composed in October 1896), the plangent ‘Come away, death’ was orchestrated some 17 months later. Originally from the 1901 cycle entitled An Irish Idyll, ‘A Fairy Lough’ (with its haunting refrain of ‘Lough-a-reem-a!’) became a mainstay of Plunket Greene’s repertory; Stanford wrote the present, gorgeously evocative arrangement for him in September 1909.

Orchestrated in June 1906 for soprano Olga Michailoff (1869-1909), three songs from the impressive 1903 cycle The Triumph of Love comprise a highly effective sequence. In the event she sang only two of them – the wistful ‘I think that we were children long ago’ and emotive ‘O flames of passion’ at an October 1909 Queen’s Hall Prom with her husband Henry Wood on the podium; consequently, the expansive, scena-like ‘When in the solemn stillness of the night’ may well have been receiving its first-ever hearing at these October 2023 sessions. Two arrangements for mezzo-soprano Marie Brema (1856-1925) – ‘Emer’s Farewell to Cucullain’ (to the well-known tune of ‘Londonderry Air’) and ‘Battle Hymn’, both again from Songs of Old Ireland – certainly make their mark (Brema went on to sing the role of Beatrice in Stanford’s seventh opera, Much Ado About Nothing), while the reworking for strings and organ of ‘A Song of Hope’ (to the text of Psalm 130) from the Six Bible Songs of 1909 concludes proceedings in deeply felt fashion. What’s more, annotator Jeremy Dibble chips in with two expert orchestrations of his own: ‘Joy, Shipmate, Joy!’ (here joining those other two really fine Whitman settings of ‘To the Soul’ and ‘Tears’ from the 1909 Songs of Faith); and a conspicuously potent treatment (originally dated 1877) of Keats’s ‘La belle dame sans merci’ that Stanford scored for a March 1888 concert at the Royal College of Music (the manuscript having long since disappeared).

Suffice to report, mezzo-soprano Sharon Carty and baritone Morgan Pearse do a sterling job with all of this rare material, and they are in turn ably supported by John Andrews, who secures commendably tidy results from the BBC Concert Orchestra. Listen out, too, for a suitably lusty contribution from the men of the BBC Singers in the roistering Three Cavalier Songs after Robert Browning: originally scored for baritone, male chorus and piano, they were given in March 1882 by the Cambridge University Musical Society; this vivid orchestration was made 11 years later for the American soloist David Bispham, who first performed them with the Bach Choir in London on May 8, 1894.

An altogether most invigorating and valuable issue, this, boasting eminently truthful sound (Battersea Arts Centre) and helpfully detailed presentation (which includes complete texts).

Andrew Achenbach (Gramophone)