Rory Carver, Katherine Bryer, Irena Radić - British Music for Tenor, Oboe and Piano

Melrose Music Society

This recital by three rising stars features two magnificent but rarely performed song-cycles. Vaughan Williams’ beautiful 10 Blake Songs are for the unusual, perhaps unique, combination of tenor and oboe. Britten’s settings for tenor and piano of eight poems by Thomas Hardy range greatly in mood: sinister uncertainty in Midnight on the Great Western, charming whimsy in The Little Old Table, transcendent melancholy in Before life and after. Britten’s works for solo oboe and piano, and two contrasting duets, Ruth Gipps’ playful Sea-Shore Suite and Thea Musgrave’s searingly plaintive Night Windows, complete this hauntingly atmospheric programme.

Benjamin Britten: I wonder as I wander; Notturno; Six Metamorphoses; Winter Words
Ruth Gipps: Sea-Shore Suite
Ralph Vaughan Williams: Ten Blake Songs; Linden Lea
Thea Musgrave: Night Windows