EMR CD014 | DETAILS
  EMR CD014
   
  SEASON SONGS
  Richard Edgar-Wilson (tenor) | Eugene Asti (pf)
Andrew Leach (pf) | Sam Wilson (marimba)
   
  Released 1 March 2013 | EAN 5 060263 500124
Celebrating Benjamin Britten’s centenary, EMR CD014 presents his skilfully-composed and colourful song-cycle ‘Winter Words’; and this is complemented by three other cycles by living composers.  Each sets striking and idiosyncratic poetry, including works by two of Britain’s most prominent poets: Thomas Hardy and R.S. Thomas, the centenary of whose birth also falls this year.
TRACK LISTING AND AUDIO EXTRACTS
     
B. Britten (1913-1976)
‘WINTER WORDS’, op.52		  
1. At Day-close in November  
2. Midnight on the Great Western (or The Journeying Boy)  
3. Wagtail and Baby (A Satire)  
4. The Little Old Table  
5. The Choirmaster’s Burial (or The Tenor Man’s Story)  
6. Proud Songsters (Thrushes, Finches and Nightingales)  
7. At the Railway Station, Upway (or The Convict and Boy with the Violin)  
8. Before Life and After  
     
John Parry (b.1930)
SIX SONGS (World Première recording) 		 
9. Night  
10. A Year to Remember  
11. Red Sky  
12. Dancing Lesson  
13. Snow  
14. Making Music  
       
Ben Parry (b.1965)
‘SEASON SONGS’ (World Première recording) 		 
15. Love and June  
16. Summer Song  
17. September  
18. Autumn  
19. November Dawn  
20. Winter Madness  
21. In April  
22. Spring  
       
Andrew Leach (b.1954)
FOUR SONGS (World Première recording)		  
23. January  
24. The Hearth  
25. The Cry  
26. On the Farm  
REVIEWS
Beautifully shaped by Benjamin Frith... Beguiling sounds, graced by the tawny richness and unexaggerated line of Richard Jenkinson’s cello playing... The sense of purpose and sureness of line of Ian Venables’ music is pure oxygen.
EMR CD31 | BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE
Exquisitely rewarding... Ravishing accounts.
EMR CD029 | CHOIR AND ORGAN
This is music of great beauty and integrity and the performances fully do it justice. It would be criminal to let it pass you by.

EMR CD028 | INTERNATIONAL
RECORD REVIEW

The Bridge Quartet approach these pieces with a sympathetic and insightful warmth, and confirm their ambassadorial credentials for British chamber music. A lovely, radiant disc.
EMR CD025 | Gramophone
Duncan Honeybourne’s playing is astonishingly affectionate, yet never saccharine... Honeybourne plays with suave confidence.
EMR CD024 | INTERNATIONAL PIANO
Rupert Marshall-Luck is an ideal interpreter: generously but not effusively lyrical; agile and athletic... The warm, folk-song like slow movement is at times almost painfully beautiful, with a shimmering pastoral central section... Marshall-Luck is, again, indefatigable and keenly picks up on the work’s melancholic strain.  Finely recorded and with comprehensive booklet notes, this is a must for fans of 20th-century English repertoire.
EMR CD023 | THE STRAD