Echo: songs across the ages – Ruby Hughes & Huw Watkins

Contents:

Bach, J S: Partita No. 4 in D major, BWV828 V. Sarabande /Huw Watkins (piano)

Bach, J S: Gedenke doch, mein Geist, BWV509 Arr. B. Britten for Voice & Piano /Ruby Hughes (soprano), Huw Watkins (piano)

Bach, J S: French Suite No. 3 in B Minor, BWV814, III. Sarabande /Huw Watkins (piano)

Bach, J S: Komm süsser Tod, BWV478, Arr. B. Britten for Voice & Piano /Ruby Hughes (soprano), Huw Watkins (piano)

Bach, J S: Partita No. 6 in E minor, BWV830, III. Corrente /Huw Watkins (piano)

Bach, J S: Liebster Herr Jesu! wo bleibest du so lange?, BWV484 /Ruby Hughes (soprano), Huw Watkins (piano)

Watkins, H: Echo /Ruby Hughes (soprano), Huw Watkins (piano)

I. Echo

II. For Each Ecstatic Instant

III. If Grief Could Burn Out

IV. When You Are Old

V. Baby Blue

Purcell: By beauteous softness (from Now does the glorious day appear, Z332) Arr. T. Adès for Voice & Piano /Ruby Hughes (soprano), Huw Watkins (piano)

Purcell: Music for a while, Z583, Arr. Sir M. Tippett & W. Bergmann for Voice & Piano /Ruby Hughes (soprano), Huw Watkins (piano)

trad.: I wonder as I wander, Arr. B. Britten & J.J. Niles for Voice /Ruby Hughes (soprano), Huw Watkins (piano)

trad.: Dafydd y Garreg Wen, Arr. B. Britten & C. Matthews for Voice & Piano /Ruby Hughes (soprano), Huw Watkins (piano)

trad.: Folksong Arrangements, Vol. 4, How Sweet the Answer (The Wren) /Ruby Hughes (soprano), Huw Watkins (piano)

Pritchard, Deborah: The World /Ruby Hughes (soprano), Huw Watkins (piano)

Frances-Hoad: Lament /Ruby Hughes (soprano), Huw Watkins (piano)

Wallen: Peace on earth /Ruby Hughes (soprano), Huw Watkins (piano)

Huw Watkins’ song cycle Echo, composed for soprano Ruby Hughes and premiered in 2017 at Carnegie Hall, is at the centre of this artfully crafted recital. Setting texts by five different poets, the cycle is a work centred on melancholy – on transience, remembrance, and in the final song a numbed cry of inconceivable loss. As such it permeates the entire programme, adding a new and unexpected depth to that which precedes as well as follows. Another strand of the recital is the idea of how composers across the ages have addressed and echoed one another lovingly in their music – often in the most nuanced and unconscious way. Bach’s solo keyboard works capture something of a sense of timelessness, or more accurately, inspire an emotional connection that transcends time. A similar affinity seems to inform Britten’s folksong arrangements and his realisations of Bach’s Geistliche Lieder as well as the Purcell realisations by Thomas Adès and Tippett. A different kind of echo is created by the inclusion of Britten’s version of Dafydd y Garreg Wen(David of the White Rock) – a nod to the performers’ shared Welsh heritage. Closing the disc, three songs by contemporary British composers admired by both Watkins and Hughes also resonate with the previous works, bringing the programme full circle.

Hughes’s pure, clear but supremely expressive soprano is the ideal vehicle for this poignant recital exploring the themes of loss and mourning, which takes its title from a powerful new song-cycle by Watkins setting texts by Rossetti, Dickinson, Yeats, Larkin and Harsent with unflagging imagination and sympathy. The Purcell songs are beautifully done, as are Watkins’s performances of astutely-chosen movements from Bach’s solo keyboard works, and Errollyn Wallen’s radiant ‘Peace on Earth’ makes for a cathartic closer. — Katherine Cooper, Presto Music, November 2022