Utwory na płycie:

• Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen: 1. Wenn mein Schatz Hochzeit macht
• Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen: 2. Ging heut' morgen über's Feld
• Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen: 3. Ich hab' ein glühend Messer
• Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen: 4. Die zwei blauen Augen
• The Housatonic at Stockbridge
• Mists
• Bright Travellers: 1. Soundings
• Bright Travellers: 2. Brew
• Bright Travellers: 3. Visitations
• Bright Travellers: 4. Milk Fever
• Bright Travellers: 5. Council Offices
• Serenity
• The Children's Hour
• Songs my Mother taught me
• Kindertotenlieder: 1. Nun will die Sonn' so hell aufgehn
• Kindertotenlieder: 2. Nun seh' ich wohl, warum so dunkle Flammen
• Kindertotenlieder: 3. Wenn dein Mütterlein
• Kindertotenlieder: 4. Oft denk' ich, sie sind nur ausgegangen!
• Kindertotenlieder: 5. In diesem Wetter!
• Suo Gân, Welsh lullaby

Gustav Mahler:
Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen
Kindertotenlieder

Charles Ives:
The Housatonic at Stockbridge
Mists
Serenity
The Children’s Hour
Songs my Mother taught me

Helen Grime:
Bright Travellers

Suo Gân, Welsh lullaby (arr. Huw Watkins)

After appearing on a quartet of very different BIS releases, ranging from early baroque arias to orchestral songs by Alban Berg and Mahler’s ‘Resurrection Symphony’, the British soprano Ruby Hughes has devised a song recital, together with her regular Lieder partner Joseph Middleton. The process began in 2018 when the two gave the world premiere of Helen Grime’s Bright Travellers, a set of five poems charting the interior and exterior worlds of pregnancy and motherhood. Ruby Hughes soon set about planning a programme which would converge with Grime’s music and the themes of new life and of love in all its aspects.

The recital is bookended by two song cycles by Gustav Mahler which explore love, grief, loss and reconciliation through quite different lenses. In the opening cycle we experience Mahler as solitary wayfarer and hear of unrequited love. In Kindertotenlieder, the second cycle, the poet Friedrich Rückert pours out his pain as a grieving father in songs about the beauty and innocence of children. Completing the programme is Charles Ives – described by Ruby Hughes as Mahler’s ‘musical kindred spirit’ – with a selection of love songs, prayers and lullabies.

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Recording: February and September 2019 at Potton Hall, Westleton, Suffolk, England. Instrumentarium: Grand piano: Steinway D.