EMR CD060 | DETAILS
  EMR CD060
   
 

‘COME, LET US MAKE LOVE DEATHLESS’
Songs of Holst and Holbrooke

   
  James Geer (tenor)
Ronald Woodley (pf)
   
  EAN 5 060263 500575

This disc from EM Records, ‘Come, let us make love deathless’, explores two very different and intriguing aspects of early twentieth-century English music, with twenty-five songs by Gustav Holst (1874–1934) and Joseph Holbrooke (1878–1958), including World Première recordings of twelve works.

 

James Geer is fast gaining a reputation as one of the UK’s most engaging lyric tenors, whose voice has a particularly natural attraction to English songs of this period. He is partnered on the disc by Ronald Woodley, whose combined expertise as performer and musicologist brings a fresh research dimension to these new and rarely performed repertories. The recording was made in August 2018 in the Bradshaw Hall of the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, engineered and produced by Andrew Hallifax.

TRACK LISTING AND AUDIO EXTRACTS
     
Gustav Holst (1874–1934)
TWELVE HUMBERT WOLFE SONGS (1929)
1. ‘Persephone’  
2. ‘Things Lovelier’  
3. ‘Now in these Fairylands’  
4. ‘A Little Music’  
5. ‘The Thought’  
6. ‘The Floral Bandit’  
7. ‘Envoi’  
8. ‘The Dream-City’  
9. ‘Journey’s End’  
10. ‘In the Street of Lost Time’  
11. ‘Rhyme’  
12. ‘Betelgeuse’  
       
13. ‘THE HEART WORSHIPS’ (1908)  
       
14. EPILOGUE: ‘I LAY THESE LILIES’ (1929)
completed by Colin Matthews (2018)
(WORLD PREMIÈRE RECORDING)
 
       
Joseph Holbrooke (1878–1958)
SELECTED SONGS (WORLD PREMIÈRE RECORDINGS)
15. ‘ANNABEL LEE’ (1905)  
16. ‘I CAME AT MORN’ (1907)  
17. ‘HOMELAND’ (1926)  
18. ‘COME, LET US MAKE LOVE DEATHLESS’ (1908)  
19. ‘KILLARY’ (1909)  
20. ‘TO DIANEME’ (1913)  
21. ‘GOLDEN DAFFODILS’ (1905)  
22. ‘A FAREWELL’ (1906)  
23. ‘GOLD’ (1930)  
24. ‘IN AN ALMOND TREE’ (1930)  
25. ‘THE REQUITAL’ (1910)  

 

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