SKU: ST.Y329

ISBN 9790220224553.

In her song-set for baritone and piano A Swift Radiant Morning, Rhian Samuel, a noted contemporary composer of English song, has created a portrait in words and music of the young poet Charles Hamilton Sorley (1895-1915). Robert Graves described Sorley's death - at the Battle of Loos - as among the three most significant amongst poets in the First World War (the others being Wilfred Owen and Isaac Rosenberg). The five songs are 'Rooks', 'The Sounds of War', 'The Signpost', 'In Memoriam', and 'Earth's King'. The composer offers in the last song a celebration of Sorley's life, and a testament to his enduring legacy. A Swift Radiant Morning was commissioned by the Three Choirs Festival, Hereford, 2015, for a first performance by Roderick Williams, baritone, and Susie Allan, piano, at Holy Trinity Church, Hereford, on 25 July 2015.

CONTENTS
1 Rooks
2 The Sounds of War
3 The Signpost
4 In Memoriam
5 Earth's King.

SKU: ST.Y272

ISBN 9790220222849.

1. Arrival Dream
2. Snow Squalls
3. It Happens
4. East Wind
5. A Clearer Memory

The contrasting aspects of nature are a major theme in the work of Rhian Samuel, and in her song cycle Spring Diary for baritone and piano she responds passionately to its vernal magic.

Beginning in dream and ending in memory, the five movements of the collection are a dramatic response to the turning season in Wales, conveyed through the fine detail of its characteristic weather and landscape as observed by the poet Anne Stevenson.

Premiered at London's City University, Spring Diary is excellent material for graduate singers and pianists, who will draw inspiration from its vivid and assured word-setting and substantial and evocative keyboard part.

SKU: FP.FMJ02

ISBN 9790570503896.

A wonderfully balanced and yet contrasting set of songs for baritone voice and piano, inspired by Sir John Manduell’s long-standing love of French renaissance verse.

In the first, perhaps the most often quoted of Ronsard's poems, the poet invites young Mignonne to come and look at the purple rose and to realise that her beauty like the rose's will fade all too soon. Du Bellary's poem is redolent of late summer heat and haze as the thresher of the title calmly pursues his work. The Marot is a brief exercise in courteous mockery as the poet chides his ailing lady upon her gastronomic self-indulgence and warns her of the inevitable consequences upon her figure.

Finally published in 2013, Trois Chansons is one of the of the composer’s earliest surviving works, written while he was studying with the late Sir Lennox Berkely as a postgraduate student at the Royal Academy of Music. The first performance was given by Beverley Humphreys at the Royal Academy of Music in 1956.