Celebrating 25 Years of Excellence

Stephen Dodgson Songs, Volume 1: The Peasant Poet

£6.00£14.00

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Catalogue No: SOMMCD 0659
Release Date: 2022-11-18
Number of Discs: 1
EAN/UPC: 748871065925
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Liner Notes
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SOMM Recordings announces the launch of a major three-volume series devoted to the rich and varied songs of Stephen Dodgson on the eve of the 10th anniversary of his death in 2013, aged 89.

Volume 1, The Peasant Poet, features tenor James Gilchrist, baritone Roderick Williams, soprano Ailish Tynan and mezzo-soprano Katie Bray, accompanied by Christopher Glynn (piano), Mark Eden (guitar) and Ian Wilson (recorder).

Son of the Symbolist painter John Arthur Dodgson and a distant cousin of Lewis Carroll, Stephen Dodgson was a prolific composer with a notable focus on works for guitar, harpsichord and recorder. Although neglected, his more than 100 songs are a substantial and defining part of his output.

Composed in 1961, ‘The Peasant Poet’ from Four Poems of John Clare, settings of the troubled and travailed poet, gives Volume 1 its title. Contrastingly, 1950’s Tideways sets four poems by the idiosyncratic Ezra Pound.

The six songs from Dodgson’s 1998 Second Series of Australian Bush Ballads “makes use of his own melodic style, graceful, elegant or sharply original and witty… with expressive accompaniments, sometimes simple, sometimes richly chromatic”, as John Warrack comments in his booklet notes, supplemented by Robert Matthew-Walker’s informative note on Dodgson’s style.

Writing in his native Gaelige, Irish playwright and political activist Joseph Campbell prompted 1949’s Irishry, the late The Monk and His Cat from 2004 returning to Ireland to animatedly set a playful ninth-century text.

Seven other songs, drawn from a variety of sources and voiced with appropriate individuality, complete a recital that eloquently argues for Dodgson’s place amongst the best of modern British art-song composers.

SOMM’s championing of British song includes Stanford’s Children’s Songs (SOMMCD 0655), “fairly and squarely in the great English song tradition” (MusicWeb International), and Roderick Williams and Susie Allan’s Celebrating English Song (SOMMCD 0177), hailed by Gramophone as “a treat”.

On This Recording

    Four Poems of John Clare
    James Gilchrist, tenor; Mark Eden, guitar

  1. Trotty Wagtail
  2. The Peasant Poet
  3. Turkeys
  4. The Fox
  5. Mrs Hen
    Katie Bray, mezzo-soprano; Christopher Glynn, piano
  6. Heaven-Haven
    Roderick Williams, baritone; Christopher Glynn, piano
  7. Five Eyes
    Katie Bray, mezzo-soprano; Christopher Glynn, piano
  8. The Monk and his Cat
    Ailish Tynan, soprano; Christopher Glynn, piano; Ian Wilson, recorder
  9. Bush Ballads (Second Series)
    Roderick Williams, baritone; Christopher Glynn, piano

  10. Meet Me in Botany Bay
  11. The Sick Stockrider
  12. Holy Dan
  13. The Style in Which It's Done
  14. Old Harry
  15. The Parson and the Prelate
  16. From Eight Fanciful Pieces

  17. A Leaf in the River
    Christopher Glynn
  18. Shrovetide Procession
    Christopher Glynn
  19. Irishy
    Ailish Tynan, soprano; Christopher Glynn, piano

  20. Tinkers
  21. The Midwife
  22. The Mill Girl
  23. Rags and Bones
  24. Tideways

  25. Psyche
    Ailish Tynan, soprano; Christopher Glynn, piano
  26. The Needle
    James Gilchrist, tenor; Christopher Glynn, piano
  27. The Gypsy
    James Gilchrist, tenor; Christopher Glynn, piano
  28. Δώρια (Doria)
    Ailish Tynan, soprano; Christopher Glynn, piano
  29. Inversnaid
    James Gilchrist, tenor; Christopher Glynn, piano
  30. Slow, Slow Fresh Fount
    James Gilchrist, tenor; Christopher Glynn, piano