In this small-scale song cycle Taverner coloured his melodic Soprano lines with Eastern European and Slavic flavour. At some points the composer interplayed the Piano line with the sung melody and at other times used the Pianoas drone and allows the Vocal line to soar above. The ‘love’ of the title is according to the composer ‘the notion of Eros raised to the divine ’ and the texts are written mostly by monks.John Tavener was that rare creature acomposer of serious music and serious religious music who has also achieved commercial success. He burst into the popular consciousness with the performance of his Song for Athene at the funeral of Princess Diana but had been ahighly respected and frequently-performed composer since the premiere of his dramatic cantata The Whale in 1968.

Ivor Gurney doubly gifted as both poet and composer was born in 1890. The wonderful song cycle presented here was inspired by Gurney's discovery of William Bliss Carmen's poems in 1919. Carmen's poems were imaginative reconstructions of the surviving fragments of the nine volumes written by Sappho who was born in 612BC. Sappho is said to have been the leader of a band of maidens who worshipped Aphrodite Goddess of Love. Sappho's affections seem to have been directed exclusively at women and the sensuously erotic fragments that have come down through millennia to us tell of one of Sappho's passionate love affairs. This wonderful song cycle full of beauty andemotion transports us back to the isle of Lesbos and with words of great tenderness and beauty tells the story of a heady passionate all-consuming love that is so strong the pain of parting becomes overwhelming and almost too much to endure.

A3 Size Score-Edward Thomas was born in Lambeth on 3rd March 1878 and spent most of his childhood in London. His holidays however were spent with relatives in Swindon and it was there that he developed his abiding love of all things rural. He was educated at St Paul's Hammersmith and was encouraged in his creative writing by James Ashcroft Noble whose daughter he secretly married after her father's death and to the great disapproval of her family. Despite growing anxiety over poverty ill health and literary discouragement which exacerbated a natural tendency to depression Thomas worked unstintingly as a reviewer and wrote and published over 30 books between 1897 and 1917.'Adlestrop' was written with four other poems between 7th and 9th June 1915. He enlisted in 1915 at the age of 37 and was called to the Front in 1917. He arrived at Arras on 9th February 1917 and was killed on the 9th April Easter Monday by a shell blast in the opening minutes of the offensive.This work for Soprano and Piano is set to the text of Edward Thomas.

This work was commissioned by Geoffrey Herdman for the 2006 Paxos Festival and first performed on August 31st 2006.