Charles Villiers Stanford felt a special affinity for the orchestral song, an idiom which began to establish itself as a distinct art form in its own right at the end of the nineteenth century with composers such as Mahler, Richard Strauss, Elgar and Bantock.
This recording, released to mark the composer’s centenary year, features a wide selection of colourful and inventive orchestrations he made of his own songs and arrangements of Irish folk melodies for the concert hall, many of which were made for the leading soloists of the days such as Harry Plunket Greene, David Bispham, Marie Brema and Olga Michailoff (the wife of Henry Wood).
Works:
•Charles Villiers Stanford: Fairy Lough aus "An Irish Idyl in Six Miniatures" op. 77 Nr. 2
•Charles Villiers Stanford: Come Away Deatz aus "The Clown's Song from Twelfth Night" op. 65 Nr. 2
•Charles Villiers Stanford: Is it the Wind of the Dawn
•Charles Villiers Stanford: La belle dame sans merci
•Charles Villiers Stanford: The Triumpf of Love op. 62 (Ausz.)
•Charles Villiers Stanford: Cavalier Songs op. 17
• Charles Villiers Stanford: Songs of Faith op. 97 (Ausz.)
• Charles Villiers Stanford: Chieftrain of Tyrconell aus "Irish Songs and Ballads"; Songs of Old Ireland (Ausz.)
•Charles Villiers Stanford: O Ye Dead
• Charles Villiers Stanford: The Alarm aus "Songs of Erin" op. 76 Nr. 22
•Charles Villiers Stanford: A Song of Hope aus "Bible Songs" op. 113 Nr. 3