EMR CD036 | DETAILS
  EMR CD036
   
  HERACLEITUS
Works by Gurney, Warlock and Butterworth
  The Bridge Quartet
Michael Dussek (pf.) | Charles Daniels (ten.)
   
  Release date: 27 May 2016 | EAN 5 060263 500377

This CD commemorates and celebrates the talents of a golden generation of English lyricists through the voices of the greatest song-writer composers of the era. The lives of two of these, George Butterworth and Ivor Gurney, remain inextricably linked to the catastrophic 1914-18 conflict played out over the fields of Flanders. The poignancy of their songs, selected and performed by tenor Charles Daniels, pianist Michael Dussek and The Bridge Quartet, comprise an intimate journal, encapsulating moods of innocence and naivety, transience and despair epitomised by the poetry of Housman and Gurney’s 1919 song cycle ‘Ludlow and Teme’.

 

The Bridge Quartet also introduces two World Première recordings. Butterworth’s miniaturist Suite for String Quartet (1910) is a eulogy to the ‘untouchable England’ before the First World War, but also a perfectly expressed prophetic warning from a young man extinguished in his prime. Gurney’s epic nine-minute Adagio (1925) is a moving threnody from a survivor trying bravely to express in music the pain of living on with the consequences of what he encountered.

TRACK LISTING AND AUDIO EXTRACTS
     
Ivor Gurney (1890-1937)
‘LUDLOW AND TEME’ (1919)
1. ‘When smoke stood up from Ludlow’  
2. ‘Far in a western brookland’  
3. ‘’Tis time, I think, by Wenlock Town’  
4. ‘Ludlow Fair’  
5. On the idle hill of summer’  
6. ‘When I was one-and-twenty’  
7. ‘The Lent Lily’  
       
George Butterworth (1885–1916)
8. ‘WHEN THE LAD FOR LONGING SIGHS’ (1910–11)  
9. ‘BREDON HILL’ (1910–11)  
10. ‘ON THE IDLE HILL OF SUMMER’ (1910–1911)  
11. ‘WITH RUE MY HEART IS LADEN’ (1910–11)  
       
SUITE FOR STRING QUARTET (1910) (World Première recording)
12. Andante con moto, molto espressivo  
13. Scherzando – non allegro  
14. Allegro molto  
15. Molto moderato ed espressivo –  
16. Moderato  
       
Peter Warlock (1894–1930)
17. ‘HERACLEITUS’ (1917) (World Première recording)  
18. ‘SWEET CONTENT’ (1919) (World Première recording)  
       
George Butterworth
19. ‘FILL A GLASS WITH GOLDEN WINE’ (1911–12)  
20. ‘ON THE WAY TO KEW’ (1911–12)  
       
Ivor Gurney
21. ADAGIO (1924) (World Première recording)  
22. ‘THE CLOTHS OF HEAVEN’ (1918)  
23. ‘SEVERN MEADOWS’ (1917)  
24. ‘BY A BIERSIDE’ (1916)  

 

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