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█ █ P U B L I C . S O U N D
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█ █ presenting our latest release
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r e l e a s e . i n f o
Artist.....: VA
Title......: NMC Songbook
Rip Date...: Feb-2011 Cat.No.....: NMCD150
Style......: Avantgarde Label......: NMC
Quality....: VBRkbps Type.......: Sampler
Size.......: 367,6 MB Source.....: CDDA
r e l e a s e . n o t e s
CLASSIC FM GRAMOPHONE AWARD WINNER 2009
GRAMOPHONE 'RECOMMENDATION FOR MAY 2009'
BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE 'CHOICE FOR MAY 2009'
MUSIC WEB RECORD OF THE MONTH FOR MAY 2009
"This extraordinary project confirms the robust health and
endlessly varied landscape of BritainÆs new music" John Adams,
composer
"Unpredictable, audacious, exhilarating and continually
fascinating, the Songbook is an outstanding project. A Lucullan
feast for the ears" International Record Review
"The NMC Songbook will remain as a vital document of song
composition at a particularly interesting point of development for
British music, a point in which the songbook itself will have
played no small part" Musical Criticism
"The year's most ambitious and richly enjoyable recording project"
Classic FM Magazine
"The performances are uniformly superb ... The more one listens,
the more one gains from this set." The Guardian
"Anyone listening to these discs will find many things to savour -
a treasure-trove of delights" Bbc Music Magazine *****
"Remarkable - the song is back" Time Out
"an invaluable overview of British music, beautifully sung and
played by more than two dozen top performers" The Observer
"One of the most imaginative anniversary projects I have seen"
Radio 3 CD Review
"Provides a remarkable snapshot of the oxymoronic mongrelism of UK
culture ... ranging from high art and literature to the vernacular
and the comic" The Wire
The British label for new notated music NMC celebrates its 20th
anniversary this year. In honour of this, the label invited a vast
array of British, British-based, and Irish composers to compose
songs to be recorded by a select group of musicians, and drawn
together for release as a compendium entitled The NMC Songbook.
The project's initial impetus was simply the upcoming anniversary,
which the board of directors wanted to mark with something
appropriately ambitious and suitably memorable. Thus, the idea of
an anthology of song made out of new commissions from composers
young and old, was put forward. Such a project would, according to
Bayann Northcott, help to invigorate the somewhat dormant genre of
art song in Britain, whilst at the same time serve to increase the
representation of song in the NMC catalogue.
As reported by Colin Matthews, Iain Burnside, and Northcott in the
sleeve notes to the release, the process of commissioning and
selecting songs for inclusion, and then 'matchmaking', as Iain
Burnside describes it, performers and songs, was a long and
complicated one. Yet despite the difficulties automatically
attendant on such a project, the songbook, in the end, became more
expansive, more eclectic, than any of its originators had
originally hoped for. The project took on a life of its own, with
over one hundred composers responding enthusiastically to the
commission, and the berth was expanded from two CDs to four
(though sadly a fifth accommodating the ultimately excluded
settings proved too far a stretch).
King's Place offered free use of its concert facilities for the
hectic recording sessions, which took place in the Autumn of 2008.
At these sessions composers and performers engaged in what
Burnside describes as a process of 'speed dating', with as little
as twenty minutes available to strike up some sort of a rapport
and to establish a collaboration. Over four successive days from
April 1 2009, that same venue will host the launch of the fine set
of recordings that emerged out of these original sessions. In
eight concerts spread out over those four days the entire songbook
will be performed, by the original musicians, in a series of
thematically-organised shows. Instrumental music from Dowland and
from the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book (which links with a Galliard
from Thomas Morley that features heavily on the recordings) will
be interwoven into the performances. These concerts will surely
prove to be, in their breadth of ambition at the very least, as
'crazy and exhilarating' an endeavour as the generation of the
songbook itself seems to have been.
Tynan
The NMC Songbook is comprised of 96 new or newly arranged songs
from across the spectrum of new notated music. It features
committed and highly fluent performances, which are all the more
remarkable given the necessarily strained circumstances (each
musician having to take on so much after all). Claire Booth,
Elizabeth Atherton, Susan Bickley, Benjamin Hulett, George Mosley,
Andrew Watts, and Ailish Tynan are just some of the illustrious
singers involved, whilst Iain Burnside (piano), Jane Chapman
(harpsichord), and Lucy Wakeford (harp) take on much of the
accompaniments. The range of songs is vast and diffuse, as befits
such a sprawling project. Yet if an overarching integrity is
lacking, some sense of coherence is ensured throughout the four
discs by the strictures all composers were subject to, namely to
limit their settings to one or two singers, to a small range of
accompaniment instruments, and to a maximum of length of about
four minutes (though most fall into the 100 to 200 second
bracket).
The songbook should thus be taken piecemeal. But sequential
listening does nevertheless throw up some intriguing contrasts,
and many interpenetrating juxtapositions. So one picks up on, for
example, the focused, chamber intensity of Claire Booth in Colin
Matthews arrangement of Birtwistle's This Silence before Light,
and then is thrown suddenly into the more demonstrative, expansive
anger of Stephen Loges and Iain Burnside in Julian Philips'
Blist's Hill, before suddenly encountering the comparatively
luscious harp accompaniment in Anna Meredith's Fin Like a Flower.
Contrasts like this abound, though a personal favourite is to be
found on the third disc where the Finzi-like strains of Michael
Berkeley's Echo, bleed into the hushed stillness of Roger Marsh's
Lullaby, before this gives way to the postmodern vernacularism of
Dai Fujikura (discussed below). These wild juxtapositions enrich
the flow, it seems to me, despite the syntactical upset they
sometimes cause. Their appearance must be accepted as inevitable
on a project like this, and embraced as natural revelations where
each distant cousin informs the appreciation of the other. It is
rare to find a collection of composers so resolutely separated in
style and execution as those collected here.
Burnside
As expected a large selection of the songs are co-extensive in the
sense that they employ piano and solo singer (usually soprano,
mezzo, tenor or baritone; the bass voice is avoided completely),
whilst many others share the quality of using canonical British
poets as source material. Examples of the latter include the
clever mirroring voices which undercut the textual sentiment in
Simon Bainbridge's setting of ShakespeareÆs famous Shall I compare
thee to a summer's day?, the mutually revealing though disparate
John Clare settings from Tansy Davies, Anthony Payne, and Brian
Elias, Giles Swayne's caustic enhancement of Thomas Hardy's I look
into my glass, and Gordon Crosse's deeply impressive setting of a
dirge from Shakespeare's Cymbeline. In the latter, Crosse displays
a dextrous handling of musical colour and weight, which Lucy
Wakeford on Harp and the baritone David Stout respond to with
playing and singing of pin-sharp responsiveness, and great
expressive depth. William Blake is a touchstone throughout the
collection; Jonathan Harvey's creative evocation of time-laden,
ethereal naturalism in Ah! Sun-flower, is typical of the
sensitivity the composers bring to the setting of Blake's unique
texts.
Composers also find myriad ways to deal with canonical texts in a
more lateral way. Morgan Hayes sardonically sets an extract from
Dickens' Dictionary of London (featuring a richly guttural
characterisation from the mezzo-soprano LorΘ Lixenberg), Chris
Dench makes creative and giddy use of text from Tristram Shandy in
An Hypallage, whilst Edward Rushton offers a characterful and
gently subversive take on a particularly anachronistic vignette
from Samuel Pepys' diary from June 21, 1662. Gerald Barry juggles
simple material in highly complex configuration in his extraction
of lines from Wilde's Earnest, himself giving a full throttle,
somewhat off the wall performance on voice and piano.
Vernacular texts are also used, and they in fact inspires some of
the discs' more singular moments. Mark-Anthony Turnage's setting
of a Leyton Orient football chant, fairly stock territory for the
composer at this point, comes across as genuinely amusing and
ear-catching. The ironic interplay of Andrew Watts and Benjamin
Hulett (counter-tenor and tenor respectively) is vital to the
earthy setting's success however. Dai Fujikura's use of a text
from Harry Ross with two voices (Lixenberg recorded over herself)
listing off bravura self-satisfactions (centring on Bluewater
shopping centre and a Ford Mondeo), and then insults ('pillock,
git'), is thrilling. Jonathan Cole's Scelsi-like (IÆm thinking
particularly of his Canti del Capricorno) abandonment of
denotative sense in favour of consonant sounds and breathy
explorations of the detailed grain of the human voice in tss-k-haa
is entirely involving in Roderick Williams' tensile reading here.
Still more composers set their own text; Jordan Hunt neatly
encapsulates the 'lines' of his text in the swirls and strokes of
his music (the consistently excellent Claire Booth nails the
eddying momentum of Hunt's piece well). Claudia Molitor signals
the importance of urban tropes in the sounds and words of the
younger composers in her piece for electronics and two voices My
favourite sound. Geoffrey Poole's humorous, fecund Heynonnnynonny
Smallprint is given with the true spirit of the raconteur by David
Stout. Bryn Harrison's An Oblique closes the songbook. It consists
simply of a repeated melodic phrase on the words 'Course of change
too small to see', which is mirrored in the circling, regretful
piano figure underneath. The song is impressive in itself, but it
works especially well in this context, where before all had been
change, but suddenly, with an intimation of arrested movement, of
stilling elegy, the song draws the listener into an ambiguous,
ambitious conclusion of wispy tranquillity.
Many other fine settings abound on this release. Christopher Fox's
typically pointed and direct The True Standard Advanced is taken
on with spark and vim by the tenor Daniel Norman and Nathan
Gunnell on drum. Tarik O'Regan's Darkness Visible is a highlight
of the set; it is haunting, attentively scored, and sensitively
performed, with Watts, Hullett and Wakeford each offering tiny
inflections of expression at various moments within the
performance. Roger Marsh offers an achingly affecting Lullaby
(with Claire Booth again on lustrous form). Donnacha Dennehy's
Swift's Epitah is typically punchy and forcefully expressive,
whilst Lloyd Moore's Music, thou Queen of Souls gives a lyrical
and passionate platform to Ailish Tynan, who responds with an
expertly pitched and intelligently (not to mention affectingly)
phrased performance. Tynan is partnered on this song by a deft
Iain Burnside. Burnside, it must be said, does a remarkable job
throughout these four CDs, where he is called on again and again,
in wildly different aesthetic contexts (from a spiky Philip Grange
to a neo-romantic Roxanna Panufnick), without ever faltering in
technique or in poetry of execution.
As can be expected on a release such as this, quality is not
entirely consistent. One would have liked something more engaging
from Emily Hall, Huw Watkins and Peter Maxwell Davies, for
example. The arrangements of a Thomas Morley Gaillard from Colin
Matthews that are interspersed amongst the songs, moreover, don't
always sit too easily in the flow of the contemporary pieces of
expression. Yet taken on its own terms, as a sui generis
documentation of a genre thoroughly neglected in the last few
decades of British composition, The NMC Songbook is an
invigorating and stimulating proposition. The company has been
instrumental not only in drawing together these disparate songs,
but also, of course, in their commissioning, and so deserves much
praise. There stands few records of living, breathing musical
cultures quite as eclectic and pleasing as the one encased in the
songbook, and the project is thus a testament to the current scene
in Britain, thriving and plural as it is. For this, the endeavour
should be applauded, and, indeed, cherished. This is the kind of
release that repays investment time and time again; in years to
come, when certain composers have faded, and certain others have
emerged, The NMC Songbook will remain as a vital document of song
composition at a particularly interesting point of development for
British music, a point in which the songbook itself will have
played no little part.
By Stephen Graham @ www.musicalcriticism.com
p l a y l i s t
cd1 ..
..
01 David SAWER - The Source 01:55
02 Luke BEDFORD - Upon St George's Hill 01:37
03 Anthony POWERS - Shining Plain 03:55
04 Gary CARPENTER - Interlude 01:25
05 Jonathan COLE - tss-k - haa 03:11
06 Colin MATTHEWS - Galliard 1 01:05
07 Anthony GILBERT - Those Fenny Bells 03:57
08 Philip CASHIAN - the sun's great eye 02:03
09 Nicola LEFANU - The Bourne 03:27
10 Nicholas SACKMAN - Maiden of the moor lay 02:41
11 John WHITE - House and Gardens 02:31
12 Colin MATTHEWS - Galliard 2 01:28
13 Harrison BIRTWISTLE 02:39
(arr MATTHEWS, Colin) - Silence before Light ..
14 Julian PHILIPS - Blist's Hill 02:38
15 Anna MEREDITH - Fin like a Flower 02:13
16 Joe DUDDELL - Cease Sorrows Now 03:12
17 Alison BAULD - Titania's Song 03:35
18 Donnacha DENNEHY - Swift's Epitaph 02:50
19 Helen GRIME - Nobody Comes 03:26
20 John McCABE - The Cat 02:59
21 Colin MATTHEWS - Galliard 3 01:47
22 Michael FINNISSY - Outside Fort Tregantle 03:18
23 Philip Neil MARTIN - Blaze of Noon 04:01
24 Joe CUTLER - Bands 02:31
25 James MACMILLAN - Mouth of the Dumb 03:56
26 Jonathan POWELL - Stanzas 1814 02:35
27 Colin MATTHEWS - Galliard 4 01:33
28 Hugh WOOD - Easter 02:07
..
cd2 ..
..
01 Gordon CROSSE - Fear No More the Heat of the Sun 03:20
02 David HORNE - A curious thirsty fly 02:20
03 Rachel LEACH - Out of Town 03:21
04 Richard CAUSTON - English Encouragement of Art 01:02
05 David BLAKE - A Swallow 02:59
06 Colin MATTHEWS - Galliard 5 01:42
07 Robert SAXTON - The Beach in Winter - Scratby 02:31
08 Julian ANDERSON - Lucretius 03:14
09 James DILLON - Upon the cloudy night 03:16
10 Sadie HARRISON - Easter Zunday 03:50
11 Peter Maxwell DAVIES - Labyrinth to Light 02:44
12 Edward RUSHTON - With my Whip 02:44
13 Simon HOLT - Raju Ragavishnu is a Ghost 03:40
14 Thea MUSGRAVE - A Winter's Morning 03:20
15 Colin MATTHEWS - Galliard 6 01:07
16 Tarik O'REGAN - Darkness Visible 03:46
17 Emily HALL - A Simple Neo - Georgian Summer 01:43
18 Peter WIEGOLD - A Cause for Wonder 03:44
19 Emily HOWARD - Wild Clematis in Winter 02:39
20 Bayan NORTHCOTT - Poet and Star 02:41
21 Colin MATTHEWS - Galliard 7 01:47
22 Rupert BAWDEN - Loch Lurgainn in the Sunshine 02:16
23 Roderick WILLIAMS - A Coat 02:58
24 Julian GRANT - Know the Kings and Queens 02:13
25 Robert KEELEY - Because I breathe no love 03:12
26 Tansy DAVIES - Destroying Beauty 02:11
27 Philip GRANGE - First Known When Lost 02:20
28 Colin MATTHEWS - Galliard 8 01:25
29 Blaar KINDSDOTTIR - Haiku 01:29
..
cd3 ..
..
01 Brian ELIAS - Meet me in the green glen 03:12
02 Lloyd MOORE - Music, thou queen of souls 01:45
03 David MATTHEWS - Plover's Peak 03:12
04 Jeremy Dale ROBERTS - Spoken to a bronze head 04:06
05 Jonathan LLOYD - The greenwood's lament 03:15
06 Diana BURRELL - Love Song (for yoga) 01:44
07 John CASKEN - Night & Morning 03:17
08 Daniel BASFORD - Hour - glass 03:36
09 Colin MATTHEWS - Galliard 9 01:07
10 Huw WATKINS - Proud Masie 01:43
11 Lyell CRESSWELL - A Recipe for Whisky 03:28
12 Michael BERKELEY - Echo 03:30
13 Roger MARSH - Golden Slumbers 02:46
14 Dai FUJIKURA - Lake Side 02:38
15 Richard BAKER - English Lullaby 02:44
16 Stephen MONTAGUE - A Poison Tree 02:39
17 Judith BINGHAM - She Walks in Beauty Like The 03:34
Night ..
18 Colin MATTHEWS - Galliard 10 01:49
19 Christopher FOX - The True Leveller's Standard 02:16
Advance ..
20 Roxanna PANUFNIK - That Mighty Heart 02:51
21 Chris MAYO - The Fitfull Alternations of the Rain 02:46
22 Erollyn WALLEN - Tree 04:09
23 Chris DENCH - An Hypallage 03:18
24 Edwin ROXBURGH - A Dangerous Crossing 02:54
25 David BEDFORD - The Roman Centurian's Song 03:16
26 Luke STONEHAM - 25 03:08
27 Colin MATTHEWS - Galliard 11 01:26
28 Mark-Anthony TURNAGE - Bellamy 01:14
..
cd4 ..
..
01 Jonathan HARVEY - Ah! Sunflower 01:56
02 Judith WEIR - Blackbirds and thrushes 02:48
03 Stuart MACRAE - The Life of this World 03:42
04 Gerald BARRY - The importance of Being Earnest 02:06
05 Martin BUTLER - London 03:38
06 Colin MATTHEWS - Out in the dark 02:18
07 Colin MATTHEWS - Galliard 12 01:26
08 Gavin BRYARS - Old Man and Sea 04:50
09 Alexander GOEHR - Ulysses' Admonition 03:32
10 Claudia MOLITOR - My favourite sound 02:52
11 John WOOLRICH - Stendhal's Observation 01:58
12 Howard SKEMPTON - Silence on Ulswater 00:53
13 Geoff POOLE - Heynonnynonny Smallprint 04:18
14 Joseph PHIBBS - The Moon's Funeral 03:21
15 Colin MATTHEWS - Galliard 13 01:30
16 Julia SIMPSON - Bees a - zwarmen 02:03
17 Simon BAINBRIDGE - Shall I cmopare thee 03:19
18 Robin HOLLOWAY - Go, lovely Rose 04:06
19 Jordan HUNT - An Aesthetic of Lines 02:46
20 Giles SWAYNE - I look into my glass 02:12
21 Anthony PAYNE - Ghost Train 04:07
22 Morgan HAYES - A Dictionary of London 03:11
23 Ben FOSKETT - Driving 02:03
24 Colin MATTHEWS - Galliard 14 03:09
25 Bryn HARRISON - An Oblique 03:45
299:21 min
g r e e t i n g s
agw - amok - bass - bcc - bex - boss - cmg - cmc - cms - d2h
def - dh - disc0 - drum - emp - ftd - fwyh - gem - i8 - ipc
jce - jfk - jrp - just - khz - kinky - kw - lame - maem - mbs
mgc - psycz - r2r - rac - radial - rapid - rks - rtb - sb
sever - sfe - soup - sour - sq - tr - trt - ube - uc - upe
uki - xtc - yard - zi
respect to music lovers worldwide
never forget : go to the show. buy the t-shirt. order the vinyl