Dowland Suite is extracted and adapted material from Mike Svoboda's music theater Robin Hood - to good, to be true (2012) for mezzo soprano and brass quintet which was premiered at the Lucerne Festival in September 2013 / Brass Quintet

Like many of Davies’s smaller works this is in a relatively lucid modal style midway between the clarity of his carols and the complications of his symphonies: the opening is in a kind of B flat minor and the close is triumphantly in G flat major. What happens in between -- always in 4/4 march time but usually with exuberant syncopations and cross-rhythms - is a sequence of transformations of the theme heard first from the second trumpet on the top line at the start; it will be heard again from the horn and from the first trumpet in upward-moving inversion with brilliant climaxes to punctuate. An ebullient piece in a simplified yet still very distinctive harmonic andrhythmic style and surely destined to make a rousing encore item. Arranged for brass quintet.

You Raise me Up has topped the charts all around the world. Its memorable Irish-style melody sticks with you like a real earworm! Here it is beautifully arranged by Bert Appermont.